Critical Thinking and Belief in the Paranormal

Abstract

The critical thinking ability of 13 believers and 13 nonbelievers in paranormal phenomena was examined in two studies. In the first study, believers and skeptics were given Watson and Glaser's (1964) Critical Thinking Appraisal Scale as well as Trodahl and Powell's (1965) Dogmatism Scale. Skeptics showed a significantly higher level of critical thinking ability than believers and were significantly less dogmatic than believers. A second study was carried out to evaluate the critical thinking ability of believers and skeptics on a task dealing with the paranormal. 18 believers and 17 skeptics were asked to evaluate critically either a research article on a paranormal phenomenon (psychokinesis) or an almost identical article on a nonparanormal phenomenon (pain tolerance). It was anticipated that believers would show a bias in favor of the paranormal article; however, results indicated that believers and nonbelievers were equally critical of the paranormal article.

Normal science and the paranormal: The effect of a scientific method course on students' beliefs

“…The science and pseudoscience class covered the evaluation of evidence for hypothetical claims including consideration of alternative explanations of a more "normal" nature (e.g., coincidence, physical cues, trickery, etc.). Alcock and Otis (1980) have found that skeptics demonstrate significantly better critical thinking ability, as measured by the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal, than do believers in the paranormal. The results of the current investigation found that teaching scientific thinking skills leads to a more skeptical attitude toward the paranormal.…”

Where have all the skeptics gone?: Patterns of new age beliefs and anti-scientific attitudes in preservice primary teachers

“…Additional reasons for educators to be acutely concerned about proliferation of New Age thinking stem from the following earlier findings: (a) three projects established that beliefs in paranormal New Age type beliefs were associated with reduced levels of performance on reasoning type tasks (Blackrnore & Troscianko, 1985;Roberts & Seager, 1999;Wierzbicki, 1985), (b) one project reported links between paranormal beliefs and lower university grades (Messer & Griggs, 1989), and (c) another project found a correlation between paranormal belief and dogmatism in relating to new evidence (Alcock & Otis, 1980). Hence, even though our current project data cannot be used to disparage paranormal or New Age thinking, there is sufficient existing evidence for educators to regard New Age thinking less as harmless fun, and more as potential cognitive liability.…”

Paranormal Beliefs and Personality Traits in Croatia

“…Five major factors of personality (Costa & McCrae, 1992) are amongst the most neglected domains in that aspect. Much of the early research with personality correlations of paranormal belief focused on smaller scope constructs such as locus of control (Tobacyk & Milford, 1983), and sensation seeking (Tobacyk & Milford, 1983) dogmatism (Alcock & Otis, 1980;, narcissism (Tobacyk & Mitchell, 1987) and even psychopathological indices like schizotipy (Goulding, 2005;Tobacyk and Wilkinson, 1990), manic-depression (Thalbourne & French, 1995) and schizophrenia (Thalbourne, 1994). However, with regard to the now widely accepted and almost paradigmatic, Five Factor Model of personality (Costa & McCrae, 1992), there hasn't been much research that we could relate to or draw instances from.…”