20 July 2015
Bilbao Campus
Belief in the paranormal could be due to the illusory perception of cause-effect relationships.
Although researchers have studied this and similar topics for decades, no clear conclusions have been reached. The idea that belief in the paranormal involves differences in intellectual capacity has been discarded. Whatever makes people believe different things, the reasons are not related to their intelligence or educational level.
One way of explaining why people believe in the paranormal is that it occurs due to a cognitive bias. Cognitive biases are shortcuts that our mind uses to solve everyday problems, without our realising it. Like certain beliefs, this may appear in the entire population, as it is a consequence of our evolution as a species.
One particular cognitive bias of interest to this topic is causal illusion. Causal illusion consists of the illusory perception of a cause-effect relationship when there are only coincidences. For instance, a student may think that wearing red will give him good luck on exams, merely because he got good marks in the past after having worn a new red shirt for the first time. Causal illusions of this type could be the origins of superstitions and other beliefs, such as in the paranormal.
Fortunately, causal illusions may be easily studied in psychology laboratories through the use of programmes which are similar to computer games. A group of researchers from the University of Deusto conducted an experiment in which they asked anonymous participants to try to cure some of the characters in the game by giving them some medicine. Without their knowing it, the medicine was actually a placebo. However, the characters often recovered on their own (and with the same probability whether they had taken it or not). Furthermore, the participants filled in a questionnaire on their paranormal beliefs, which included questions about ghosts, telepathy, quackery or spiritual energy.
The researchers found that the participants who had most paranormal beliefs had also developed an (erroneous) belief that the medicine they used in the game was working. In other words, it was a causal illusion. They also observed another interesting pattern. The participants believing in the paranormal tended to use the medicine much more often during the game so the information that they ended up seeing during the game was biased as a result of these decisions: they administered the medicine to most of the patients in the game which meant that they could not know if those patients would have recovered without taking the medicine. We all experience this tendency on a daily basis, such as when we are exposed to advertising. If we want to find out if a new toothpaste actually whitens teeth, we will probably ask people who have tried it and we do not wonder if people who do not use the toothpaste are satisfied with their own brand. This type of biased information we receive can trigger causal illusions and is very widespread. The research indicates that people who believe in the paranormal tend to show a stronger bias when selecting the information they are exposed to and which fosters causal illusions, which could explain why they end up developing strange beliefs.
Article: Blanco, F., Barberia, I., & Matute, H. (2015). Individuals Who Believe in the Paranormal Expose Themselves to Biased Information and Develop More Causal Illusions than Nonbelievers in the Laboratory. PLoS ONE 10(7): e0131378. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0131378
Link: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0131378
