Testing vs. Believing Hypotheses: Magical Ideation in the Judgement of Contingencies

Abstract

This paper examines the idea that an important dimension of human cognition is the amount of objective evidence required for perception of meaningful patterns. At the clinical extreme of this dimension are patients with hallucinations and delusions who experience perception with no external evidence and see connections between objectively unrelated events. Also, normal individuals exhibit considerable variation along this continuum. The theory proposed here predicts that normal subjects with low evidential criteria will be more likely to accept causal explanations, not only for everyday ''paranormal'' coincidences, but also for random contingencies in a laboratory experiment. This prediction was confirmed when 40 students completed a differential reinforcement of low rates (DRL) task designed to induce superstitious behaviour and were then questioned about their hypotheses concerning the contingencies for successful performance. Participants scoring high on the Magical Ideation scale (indicating greater belief in paranormal phenomena) tested fewer hypotheses during the task, and they ended up believing in more hypotheses regarding illusory contingencies than did their low-scoring peers. We proposed that a continuum of hypothesis-testing behaviour underlies the schizotypy continuum, with ''positive'' schizotypal traits reflecting a Type I error bias and ''negative'' traits a Type II error bias. Differential activation patterns within frontal-limbic networks are tentatively suggested as a physiological correlate of the behavioural continuum.

Dopamine, Paranormal Belief, and the Detection of Meaningful Stimuli

“…This means that they evidenced a tendency to say "yes" rather than "no," or in more general terms, favored a Type I error over a Type II error strategy. Such an inclination is in accordance with previous research with healthy persons endorsing paranormal beliefs (Reed et al, 2008;Tsakanikos & Reed, 2005;Wiseman, Greening, & Smith, 2003;Weinstein & Graves, 2002;Brugger & Graves, 1997b). Although a reduced criterion may be adaptive in detecting real associations and develop novel links between concepts (Folley & Park, 2005;Folley, Doop, & Park, 2003;Weinstein & Graves, 2001Gianotti et al, 2001;Claridge et al, 1990), it simultaneously bears the risk of false causal attributions and lowers the threshold for hallucinatory perceptual experiences (Bell et al, 2007;Brugger & Graves, 1997b).…”

“…For instance, individuals with paranormal belief evidence a marked willingness to perceive "patterns in noise" (Reed et al, 2008;Bell, Reddy, Halligan, Kirov, & Ellis, 2007;Brugger & Graves, 1997b) and are more inclined than those skeptical about such abilities to attribute meaning to random associations (Mohr, Landis, & Brugger, 2006;Gianotti, Mohr, Pizzagalli, Lehmann, & Brugger, 2001;. Although the creative aspects of paranormal thought have been emphasized by some authors (Folley & Park, 2005;Weinstein & Graves, 2002;Gianotti et al, 2001;Claridge, Pryor, & Watkins, 1990), others have equally stressed its conceptual similarity to psychotic symptoms (Brugger & Graves, 1997b;Kreweras, 1983). Thus, a reduced criterion to acknowledge the presence of a signal not only increases the chances to creatively detect a real stimulus but also bears the risk of Type II errors, that is, hallucinatory perceptions and delusional inferences.…”

“…We here investigated whether DA indeed modulates SNR and/or response bias (Reed et al, 2008;Brugger & Graves, 1997b) in participants with paranormal experiences and beliefs ("believers") as compared to individuals with a critical attitude toward paranormal phenomena ("skeptics"). In order to account for a potential right hemispheric shift of dopaminergic involvement in paranormal belief, we used a double-blind levodopa/placebo design and two lateralized tachistoscopic tasks, one with a known advantage of the LH (lexical decision task [LDT]) and one with a processing advantage of the RH (facial decision task [FDT]).…”

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

“…Similarly, using a word association task, Gianotti et al (2001) found that believers in a variety of paranormal phenomena produced more idiosyncratic words or more distant associations than did skeptics. It also has been suggested that some kinds of paranormal beliefs -and particularly paranormal experiences -might be related to abnormal neurocognitive development or schizotypy (see Brugger & Graves, 1997). While we did find a link between psychic beliefs and personality characteristics such as dissociative experiences and absorption, which may relate to these other cognitive factors, we did not directly investigate these other cognitive factors in the current study.…”

Is our brain hardwired to produce God, or is our brain hardwired to perceive God? A systematic review on the role of the brain in mediating religious experience

“…Saxe et al, 2004Bear et al, 1982Bear & Fedio, 1977Britton & Bootzin, 2004Persinger & Makarec, 1987Lehmann, et al, 2001Aftanas & Golocheikine, 2001Wuerfel et al, 2004Brugger & Graves, 1997Fenwick et al, 1985MacDonald & Holland, 2002Morneau et al, 1996Persinger, 1984 …”