Ghosts, UFOs, and magic: Positive affect and the experiential system.

King, Laura A.; Burton, Chad M.; Hicks, Joshua A.; Drigotas, Stephen M.

doi:10.1037/0022-3514.92.5.905

Cited by 87 publications

(102 citation statements)

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“…In other studies, a negative relation has been found between individual's tendency toward analytical thinking and their religious and paranormal beliefs (Aarnio & Lindeman, 2005Gervais & Norenzayan, 2012;King, Burton, Hicks, & Drigotas, 2007;Lindeman & Aarnio, 2006). This suggests that prevalence of System 2 rational processing might be a factor, which promotes disbelief in magical, religious, and paranormal phenomena.…”

Section: The "Fundamentality Hypothesis": Magical Beliefs Reconsideredmentioning

confidence: 97%

The Belief in Magic in the Age of Science

Subbotsky

2014

Sage Open

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ArticleIn this article, attempt is made to show that the belief in magic is a fundamental feature of the human mind (the "fundamentality hypothesis"). Even those who explicitly consider themselves to be completely rational individuals implicitly still harbor a belief in magical powers. It is also argued that magical thinking and magical beliefs are different psychological constructs. Whereas magical thinking might have important implications for learning, the belief in magic affects communication in modern societies. Finally, the areas of practice are outlined in which magical thinking and implicit or explicit magical beliefs can be engaged, such as education, political influence, commerce, military and political terror, and entertainment. The Starting Point: Theoretical Issues and Empirical Evidence of Hidden Magical Beliefs in Modern People Concepts and ProblemsIn the modern view, magical causality comprises events that violate known physical, biological, and psychological principles and conventions. Affecting or creating physical objects directly through the effort of thought, will, wishes, or words (mind-over-matter magic); affecting people's lives and health through prayer, magic spells, and rituals, or by promising reinforcement in the afterlife (communicative magic); and harming or helping people by manipulating the objects that those people were in contact with, such as their hair, clothes, or shadow (contagion magic) are just a few kinds of magical events (Frazer, 1890(Frazer, /1959Lévy-Brühl, 1923/1966Nemeroff & Rozin, 2000;Piaget, 1929Piaget, /1971Subbotsky, 2010a). The contrast between magical causality and physical causality cannot be properly understood without realization that the belief in magical causality goes back for about 30,000 years, to the Upper Paleolithic period, when people populated nature with spiritual agents that could think or wish; that is, they attributed to inanimate things a certain "theory of mind," a concept that is alien to the objects of science. The assumption that physical objects at the receptive end of a causal event have some kind of consciousness is what distinguishes magical causality from physical causality.1 By addressing their pleas to the Gods and spirits, people tried to beg favors (good weather, good health, luck in hunting) from natural objects. In return, people were prepared to obey when the Gods and spirits spoke to them, either directly or indirectly through medicine men, kings, or wizards. From this it follows that from the beginning, magical causality had two dimensions: natural (people's magical communication with nature) and social (people's magical communication with other people; Boyer, 1994;Boyer & Walker, 2000;Tambiah, 1990).Whereas ordinary fantasy involves mental processing of ordinary characters or events (e.g., a child having AbstractThe widely spread view on magical beliefs in modern industrial cultures contends that magical beliefs are a bunch of curious phenomena that persist today as an unnecessary addition to a much more important set of...

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Section: The "Fundamentality Hypothesis": Magical Beliefs Reconsideredmentioning

confidence: 97%

The Belief in Magic in the Age of Science

Subbotsky

2014

Sage Open

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“…It should be noted that SM and paranormal beliefs are not always directly linked to experiential processing. King et al (2007) have shown that increased SM, as well as beliefs in UFOs and ghosts, are predicted by dispositional experientiality only when individuals experience positive affect.…”

Section: Cognitive Antecedents Of Romantic Smmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…King et al 2007), involved in PSMS beliefs. The lack of systematic and strong evidence of a link between analytical thinking and PSMS beliefs (e.g., King et al 2007) could be due to its interaction with intuitive processes. However, it may also be the result of methodological issues (Svedholm and Lindeman 2013).…”

Section: Cognitive Antecedents Of Romantic Smmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Applying a dual processing account (Evans 2008) to understand individual differences in PSMS beliefs, researchers have repeatedly shown that these beliefs are linked to intuitive thinking (System 1 processes; Epstein et al 1996;King et al 2007; for a review, see Risen 2016), which is fast and experiential and formed of hunches and feelings rather than thinking. Similarly, SM is often described as a Bcognitive intuition ( Nemeroff and Rozin 2000, s. 5) or Bheart-over-head^reac-tion (Rozin et al 2007).…”

Section: Cognitive Antecedents Of Romantic Smmentioning

confidence: 99%

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You make all things special: Developing a scale to measure sympathetic magic in romantic relationships

Niemyjska

Parzuchowski

2018

Curr Psychol

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This paper describes the development and construct validation of the Romantic Sympathetic Magic Scale (RSMS). The scale measures individual differences in directing attachment behavior toward inanimate objects associated with one's partner. We offer a theoretical basis for such behavior in the concept of sympathetic magic and test the motivational and cognitive factors involved in this tendency. Finally, we differentiate romantic sympathetic magic from similar concepts. Three studies (N = 851) showed that RSMS is related to increased experientiality as well as to motivation to increase closeness to one's partner. The RSMS is related to, but substantially different from, paranormal beliefs, anthropomorphism for gadgets, and an overall attachment to inanimate objects. The distinctive feature of romantic sympathetic magic is that it applies specifically to objects associated with people's loved ones and its function is to facilitate a perceived connection with them. This research contributes to our understanding of the correspondence between personal relationships and emotional connection to inanimate objects.Keywords romantic relationship . sympathetic magic . inanimate object . keepsake . individual differencesThe closer our relationships are with objects, the closer our relationships are with people.Daniel Miller (2008, p. 1)What can we learn about an individual from his or her relationship to material possessions? To answer this question, anthropologists-Daniel Miller and Fiona Parrot (Miller 2008)-interviewed residents of a random street in South London, analyzing how belongings reflect the personality and life history of their owners. As a result, the authors created portraits of people whose relationships to things varied widely: from complete detachment, through instrumental use of artifacts, to one noticeable instance of a profound and intimate attachment of an owner to his or her cherished possession. To some people, inanimate objects such as photographs, jewelry, clothes, and family keepsakes are much more than mere representations or recollections of their loved ones. Symptomatically, Miller (2008) observed that the closer the connection between people, the closer the relationship to objects associated with those people. Yet, in psychology, there is surprisingly little empirical support for this effect. Recent studies have even demonstrated the opposite, showing that the more people's loved ones are unreliable and disappointing, the more their attachment is redirected toward inanimate objects (Keefer et al. 2012;Pieters 2013). This paper aims to provide a theoretical and empirical understanding of the processes involved in attachment to inanimate objects that parallels the maintenance of closeness in social relationships.We propose that the sympathetic magical thinking (Frazer 1925;Rozin and Nemeroff 2002) involved in the perception of inanimate objects associated with one's romantic partner elicits a sense that these objects contain some qualities of the partner. Thus, the more people need to ...

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“…Experimental studies of 'positive affect' (PA) and 'faith in intuition' (FI) have predicted superstitious beliefs and sympathetic magic (King et al 2007, Hicks et al 2010 and, thus, are relevant in this study. Like the studies concerning subjective rationality (first identified by William James in 1893), also called the feeling of meaning, which pertains to a feeling about an event or experience which one has found to feel 'right' .…”

Section: Mood and Cognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The enrichment of magical thinking through practices among Reiki self-healers

Pohjanheimo

2012

Scripta

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Reiki is an example of a spiritually based healing context, which offers an entry into the magical thinking through the ritual initiation. There are several practices like Reiki in the field of new spirituality. Their backgrounds are situated in a variety of religious traditions, although many religious ideas in the field are based on assimilation of ideas and practices familiar in Eastern religious traditions. Why is Reiki so particularly famous in the field? It would seem that Reiki is very flexible and easily integrated to other practices. One factor which explains the popularity of Reiki has to do with healing. Healing, as well as illness and sickness, involving pain and relief from pain, are universal experiences felt by everyone. Complementary and alternative ways of healing are as popular among ordinary folk now as they have been throughout the history of medicine. Even medical nursing staff participate in Reiki courses in their leisure time. One reason for the popularity might also be that Reiki courses are open to everybody. Everybody can learn to heal. After initiation, participants are promised, and believed, to be rewarded for the ability to heal themselves and those near to them with the help of cosmic energy.The focus of this article is the enrichment of magical thinking among Reiki self-healers.The term ‘enrichment’ refers to an observable thickness (or density) of spontaneous reasoning going along lines of magical trains of thought. This includes, for example, assumptions of agency and magical contagion.

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Ghosts, UFOs, and magic: Positive affect and the experiential system.

Cited by 87 publications

References 100 publications

The Belief in Magic in the Age of Science

The Belief in Magic in the Age of Science

You make all things special: Developing a scale to measure sympathetic magic in romantic relationships

The enrichment of magical thinking through practices among Reiki self-healers

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