Gravity, God and ghosts? Parents’ beliefs in science, religion, and the paranormal and the encouragement of beliefs in their children

Braswell, Gregory S.; Rosengren, Karl S.; Berenbaum, Howard

doi:10.1177/0165025411424088

Cited by 21 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…In order to avoid multicollinearity, we combined parents’ self‐reported religious and spiritual thinking into a single variable that was used as a covariate. This is in line with past research studying parental beliefs that has found that these scales are highly correlated and load on to a single factor (Braswell, Rosengren, & Berenbaum, ). For non‐functionality, we ran a liner mixed‐effects model with age, parental religious and spiritual thinking, and type of non‐functionality as fixed effects.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 90%

Embracing Death: Mexican Parent and Child Perspectives on Death

et al. 2019

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A mixed‐method approach was used to explore parent and child perspectives on death in Mexico. Parents’ and children’s death‐related experiences and understanding of death were examined. While all children in this sample displayed a biological understanding of death, older children were less likely to endorse that all living things die. Children also displayed coexistence of beliefs related to death that can be attributed to both their biological and spiritual understanding of death. We also found that older children were more likely to report that a child should feel sad following the death of a loved one. These findings highlight how cultural practices shape the development of cognitive and affective processes related to death.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 90%

Embracing Death: Mexican Parent and Child Perspectives on Death

et al. 2019

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“…Science education has been shown to be an effective counterbalance to paranormal beliefs (Martin 1994;Martin-Hansen 2008). Unfortunately, scientific reasoning does not typically develop until middle childhood whereas nonscientific beliefs (fantasy, paranormal, or religion) are cultivated earlier in childhood (Braswell et al 2011). Although parents report that learning science is more important than learning about religion, Braswell et al (2011) found that scientific encouragement by parents was negatively correlated with religious encouragement.…”

Section: The Effect Of Students' Religion On Beliefmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Unfortunately, scientific reasoning does not typically develop until middle childhood whereas nonscientific beliefs (fantasy, paranormal, or religion) are cultivated earlier in childhood (Braswell et al 2011). Although parents report that learning science is more important than learning about religion, Braswell et al (2011) found that scientific encouragement by parents was negatively correlated with religious encouragement. This suggests that although many parents may feel that learning science is important, in homes with higher religious beliefs, science education may not be promoted.…”

Section: The Effect Of Students' Religion On Beliefmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reducing Pseudoscientific and Paranormal Beliefs in University Students Through a Course in Science and Critical Thinking

Wilson

2018

Sci & Educ

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This study measured the relationship between student's religion, gender, and propensity for fantasy thinking with the change in belief for paranormal and pseudoscientific subjects following a science and critical thinking course that directly confronted these subjects. Student pre-course endorsement of religious, paranormal, and pseudoscientific beliefs ranged from 21 to 53%, with religion having the highest endorsement rate. Pre-course belief in paranormal and pseudoscientific subjects was correlated with high scores in some fantasy thinking scales and showed a gender and a religion effect with females having an 11.1% higher belief across all paranormal and pseudoscience subcategories. Students' religion, and frequency of religious service attendance, was also important with agnostic or atheist students having lower beliefs in paranormal and pseudoscience subjects compared to religious students. Students with either low religious service attendance or very high attendance had lower paranormal and pseudoscientific beliefs. Following the critical thinking course, overall beliefs in paranormal and pseudoscientific subcategories lowered 6.8-28.9%, except for superstition, which did not significantly change. Change in belief had both a gender and religion effect with greater reductions among religious students and females.

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“…Understanding why some people strongly believe in psychic phenomena whereas others are strongly skeptical may provide insights into the factors that drive individual differences in scientific thinking and reasoning more generally. Research suggests that many factors are involved in the propensity for various kinds of paranormal beliefs, including sociocultural traditions (e.g., being raised by a caregiver with similar beliefs ;Braswell, Rosengren, & Berenbaum, 2012) and the psychological benefits that such beliefs might afford (e.g., enhanced meaning in life; see Kennedy, Kanthamani, & Palmer, 1994;Parra & Corbetta, 2013). These findings suggest that paranormal beliefs are influenced by a variety of individual differences, and they raise the question as to whether other factors -such as individual differences in cognitionalso contribute to the propensity for paranormal beliefs.…”

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confidence: 99%

Paranormal psychic believers and skeptics: a large-scale test of the cognitive differences hypothesis

Gray

Gallo

2015

Mem Cogn

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Belief in paranormal psychic phenomena is widespread in the United States, with over a third of the population believing in extrasensory perception (ESP). Why do some people believe, while others are skeptical? According to the cognitive differences hypothesis, individual differences in the way people process information about the world can contribute to the creation of psychic beliefs, such as differences in memory accuracy (e.g., selectively remembering a fortune teller's correct predictions) or analytical thinking (e.g., relying on intuition rather than scrutinizing evidence). While this hypothesis is prevalent in the literature, few have attempted to empirically test it. Here, we provided the most comprehensive test of the cognitive differences hypothesis to date. In 3 studies, we used online screening to recruit groups of strong believers and strong skeptics, matched on key demographics (age, sex, and years of education). These groups were then tested in laboratory and online settings using multiple cognitive tasks and other measures. Our cognitive testing showed that there were no consistent group differences on tasks of episodic memory distortion, autobiographical memory distortion, or working memory capacity, but skeptics consistently outperformed believers on several tasks tapping analytical or logical thinking as well as vocabulary. These findings demonstrate cognitive similarities and differences between these groups and suggest that differences in analytical thinking and conceptual knowledge might contribute to the development of psychic beliefs. We also found that psychic belief was associated with greater life satisfaction, demonstrating benefits associated with psychic beliefs and highlighting the role of both cognitive and noncognitive factors in understanding these individual differences.

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Gravity, God and ghosts? Parents’ beliefs in science, religion, and the paranormal and the encouragement of beliefs in their children

Cited by 21 publications

References 35 publications

Embracing Death: Mexican Parent and Child Perspectives on Death

Embracing Death: Mexican Parent and Child Perspectives on Death

Reducing Pseudoscientific and Paranormal Beliefs in University Students Through a Course in Science and Critical Thinking

Paranormal psychic believers and skeptics: a large-scale test of the cognitive differences hypothesis

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