Cognitive factors underlying paranormal beliefs and experiences

Paranormal belief and the conjunction fallacy: Controlling for temporal relatedness and potential surprise differentials in component events

“…This reinforces the notion that paranormal believers have a greater misunderstanding of probability (e.g. Blackmore & Troscianko, 1985;Tobacyk & Wilkinson, 1991) and more pronounced cognitive 'deficits' (French 1992;French & Wilson, 2007;Irwin, 1993Irwin, , 2009Irwin & Watt, 2007). Presumably, the lack of believer versus non- Dagnall et al (2007) reflects the methodological limitations such as the use of a single conjunctive scenario and studentbased sampling inherent in their study (see Rogers et al, 2009).…”

“…Previous studies suggest paranormal believers are prone to a variety of cognitive 'deficits' (for reviews see French, 1992;French & Wilson, 2007;Irwin, 1993Irwin, , 2009Irwin & Watt, 2007) of which, arguably the most robust, is an especially poor understanding of probability and/or randomness (e.g., Blackmore & Troscianko, 1985;Blagrove, French, & Jones, 2006;Bressan, 2002;Brugger, Landis, & Regard, 1990;Brugger, Regard, Landis, Krebs, & Niederberger, 1991;Brugger & Taylor, 2003;Marks, 2000;Tobacyk & Wilkinson, 1991;Vyse, 1997;Watt, 1990Watt, -1991Wiseman & Watt 2006; although see Blackmore, 1997;Musch & Ehrenberg, 2002;Roberts & Seager, 1999;Stuart-Hamilton, Nayak, & Priest, 2006). In one study, Blackmore and Troscianko (1985) found participants who believed in the validity of extrasensory perception (ESP) made more errors when estimating coin tossing and sampling outcomes than did non-believers, with the former adopting what the authors referred to as a 'chance baseline shift'.…”

Paranormal belief and susceptibility to the conjunction fallacy

“…Either way, believers' greater susceptibility to the conjunction fallacy is consistent with previous claims that they are especially prone to misperceiving randomness (Bressan, 2002;Brugger et al, 1990;Brugger & Taylor, 2003;Regard et al, 1990), to poor probabilistic reasoning (cf. Blackmore & Troscianko, 1985;Blagrove et al, 2006;Dagnall et al, 2007;Marks, 2002;Tobacyk & Wilkinson, 1991) and ultimately, to deficits in cognitive processing (French, 1992;French & Wilson, 2007;Irwin, 1993Irwin, , 2008Irwin & Watt, 2007). It also supports the view that believers are more likely to adopt an intuitive or heuristical, rather than analytic, style of thinking (Aarnio & Lindeman, 2005;Irwin & Young, 2002;Lester et al, 1987).…”

Mental Health and the Paranormal

“…The following discussion derives from his work (see also French and Wilson, 2007, for a useful discussion). He asserted that sufferers from delusions demonstrate preferential recall or information related to their delusions and attributional biases in which negative events are attributed to the actions of others.…”