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Paranormal Belief and Religiosity
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Hergovich, Andreas Schott, Reinhard Arendasy, Martin E. |
| Copyright Year | 2005 |
| Abstract | A number of studies have examined the relationship between paranormal belief and religiosity. In accordance with the hypothesis that paranormal belief functions as a substitute for religious belief, some authors have reported a negative relationship between paranormal belief and measures of religious belief (Emmons & Sobal, 1981; Persinger & Makarec, 1990; Beck & Miller, 2001). However, this negative relationship could also be interpreted as a manifestation of rejection of at least some paranormal beliefs (precognition and superstition) by the Catholic Church (Goode, 2000; Sparks, 2001). In contrast to the substitution theory, there exists the hypothesis that people who believe in angels or wondrous healings also believe in other paranormal phenomena such as ghosts and voodoo (Irwin, 1993; Rice, 2003). Thus, the paranormal is undoubtedly a common characteristic of both religion and parapsychology, although in our times the paranormal is probably losing its importance in most religions. Related to the fact that the paranormal is common to religion and parapsychology is the theory of a common worldview (Zusne J Irwin, 1985; Goode, 2000). Thalbourne (2003) even describes the substitution theory as an "urban myth" because in seven out of nine studies he found positive correlations between paranormal belief and religiosity (the coefficients were between r = .20 and r = .55). For a German sample, Thalbourne and Houtkooper (2002) reported a correlation of r = .54 between the Australian Sheep-Goat Scale and religiosity. Orenstein (2002) concluded that past studies could not clearly show whether religious belief is related positively, negatively, or not at all to paranormal belief. A study by Thalbourne and O'Brien (1999) on Australian participants shows that the direction of the relationship may depend on the measurements selected. They obtained an almost significant negative correlation (r = -.17) between the Australian Sheep-Goat Scale (Thalbourne & Delin, 1993) and the Religion-Puritanism Scale from the Wilson-Patterson Attitude Scale (Wilson, 1975), a correlation close to zero with the subscale traditional religiosity (r = .07) from the Paranormal Belief Scale (PBS, Tobacyk & Milford, 1983), and a significant and positive coefficient with the religiosity scale of Haraldsson (derived from Haraldsson, 1981). Another reason why the previous results for the relationship between religious belief and paranormal belief are difficult to compare or generalise is the heterogeneity of the samples that were examined. The samples differ not only with respect to ethnicity or nationality but also, most importantly for this question, with respect to their religious affiliation. For example, in the study by Thalbourne and O'Brien (1999), the sample consisted mainly of Protestants; in a study by Thalbourne and Hensley (2001), which reported a correlation of .30 between a religiosity scale and the Icelandic Sheep-Goat Scale (Haraldsson, 1981), nearly one third of the subjects from Washington University in St. Louis were Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic, respectively. Other studies do not include information concerning the religious affiliation of their sample, although in some instances it can be guessed (e.g., Beck and Miller, 2001, who found a negative relationship between paranormal belief and religiosity, hinted that they recruited their subjects from a "Christian affiliated institution"). … |
| Starting Page | 293 |
| Ending Page | 293 |
| Page Count | 1 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Volume Number | 69 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://homepage.univie.ac.at/andreas.hergovich/php/paranormal_belief_journal_of_parapsychology.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
