Paranormal Beliefs and Personality Among Black South African Students

Abstract

This study set out to replicate research on the relationship between reported paranormal belief, measures of locus of control and psychopathology in an African population. Results indicate an association between internal, external locus of control and paranormal belief. Further, the study found that extraversion was positively associated with the total paranormal belief scale while neuroticism and psychotism were not. Psychotism was associated with Psi Belief.

Personality, conventional Christian belief and unconventional paranormal belief: a study among teenagers

“…Second, the present study has drawn on a large representative sample of young people. Third, the present study has, in one sense, confirmed and, in another sense, developed the findings of Lester (1993), Willging and Lester (1997), Peltzer (2002) and Williams, Francis, and Robbins (2007).…”

“…The present study set out to build on the foundations of the four projects reported by Lester (1993), Willging and Lester (1997), Peltzer (2002) and Williams, Francis, and Robbins (2007) concerning the relationship between paranormal belief and Eysenck's dimensional model of personality. The findings of these four earlier studies were of particular theoretical interest because they suggested that paranormal beliefs were located within a different personality space from that occupied by conventional religious beliefs, attitudes and practices demonstrated by a wide range of recent studies, including, for example, the study reported by Francis, Lewis, Brown, Philipchalk, and Lester (1995) among a total of 1,076 undergraduate students in Australia, Canada, the United States of America and the United Kingdom.…”

“…Similarly, in a study among 94 adolescents (mean age, 15.9 years) in the United States of America, Willging and Lester (1997) found no significant correlations between psychoticism scores and a measure concerned with belief in psychic phenomena, but this study failed to report on the lie scale. In a third study concerning paranormal beliefs and personality among black South Africans, drawing on 260 grade-eleven secondary school students (mean age, 19.2 years) and 244 firstyear social science university students (mean age, 21.9 years), Peltzer (2002) found no significant association between either lie scale scores or psychoticism scores and scores recorded on the full 25-item Paranormal Belief Scale proposed by Tobacyk and Milford (1983). In a fourth study among 279 13-to 16-year-old pupils in South Wales, Williams, Francis, and Robbins (2007) found no significant correlations between either lie scale scores or psychoticism scores and a six-item measure of paranormal belief.…”

“…These four primary studies reported by Lester (1993), Willging and Lester (1997), Peltzer (2002), and Williams, Francis and Robbins (2007) are, nonetheless, limited by three factors: the sample sizes are relatively small; while concentrating on paranormal belief, no comparison is offered with conventional religiosity; and paranormal belief was operationalised in ways that overlap with conventional religiosity. The aim of the present study is to extend the previous research in three ways: by drawing on a much larger sample of young people; by including two discrete indicators of unconventional paranormal belief; and by including in the same study two discrete indicators of conventional Christian belief.…”

Christianity, Paranormal Belief and Personality: A Study among 13- to 16-year-old Pupils in England and Wales

“…The much smaller body of research concerned with the relationship between the Eysenckian dimensional model of personality and paranormal belief has consistently failed to find either negative correlations with psychoticism or positive correlations with lie scale scores (Lester, 1993;Willging & Lester, 1997;Peltzer, 2002;Williams, Francis, & Robbins, 2007;Francis, Williams, & Robbins, in press;Francis & Williams, in press b).…”