Exam 2- Extra Beliefs

Superstition

belief that an action, thought, or situation can cause an effect on unrelated events

• often tied to ideas of fate, luck, magic, and supernatural

• EX: Someone wears the same socks before every exam because they believe the socks bring good luck.

Magical Thinking

thoughts equate to doing; thought can have effects on the world

• thoughts=power

• EX: Someone worries that thinking about a loved one getting hurt will somehow cause it to happen.

Positive Superstitions Ex:

• lucky numbers

• lucky charms

• knock on wood

• crossing your fingers

• EX: Someone carries a lucky charm to help them succeed on a test.

Negative Superstitions Ex:

• unlucky numbers

• break a mirror

• walking under a ladder

• black cats

• EX: Someone avoids walking under a ladder because they believe it will bring bad luck.

Internal Locus of Control

feeling that you are in control of our outcomes and events in your life

External Locus of Control

feeling that fate, luck, and other things outside of you are in control of your outcomes and events in your life

• more likely to believe in superstitions

Dudley (1999)

Study 2: measured negative superstitious beliefs before and after a solvable or unsolvable puzzle

Tasks: Word Puzzle, Solvable Condition or Unsolvable Condition

Results: unsolvable puzzle had higher beliefs in negative superstitions

Study 1: measured negative superstitious beliefs first and split participants into high/low superstitious groups & measured task performance before and after a solvable or unsolvable puzzle

Tasks: Word Puzzle, Solvable Condition or Unsolvable Condition, Anagram Problems

Results: Participants who had stronger superstitious or paranormal beliefs performed better on a follow-up task after experiencing an unsolvable problem than participants with weaker beliefs, did equally well on the anagrams if they had high superstitions no matter the condition

Wiseman & Watt (2004)

looked at how a personality trait and life satisfaction affected beliefs in positive and negative superstitions

• people believe in more positive superstitions than negative superstitions

• those high in neuroticism tend to have more superstitions

regardless of type, than those low in neuroticism

• Those low in life satisfaction tend to have more negative

superstitions than those high in life satisfaction

Neuroticism

emotional instability, involves anxiety, anger/hostility, self-consciousness, impulsivity, and vulnerability

Negative Agency Bias

negative outcomes lead us to assume an agent purposefully caused it

EX: Someone believing their home internet has slowed down because their internet provider is purposefully changing their internet’s quality, while not believing their internet working properly is being purposefully affected by someone or something.

Agent

something or someone that actively causes an effect

• EX: we lose of get unfavorable treatment in games, we assume someone else, not a computer, caused it

Hamlin & Baron (2014)

• Purpose: Investigate whether infants show a negativity bias when attributing agency.

• Method: Showed infants a mechanical claw causing positive or negative outcomes.

• Results: Infants attributed agency to the claw causing a negative outcome, but not the positive outcome.

• Explanation: Infants may be more sensitive to negative outcomes and more likely to identify a cause or agent responsible for them.

• Conclusion: A negativity bias in agency attribution may emerge early in development.

Astrology

making assumptions between birth details and life events or personality and using those associations to make predictions (horoscopes)

Western Astrology

birth date/time, birth location, and location of stars

Chinese Astrology

birth year, month, day, and hour

Both Types of Astrology

make recommendations or judgements on compatibility with others based on signs

• chinese: that you will have bad luck when it becomes your zodiac year again (every 12 years)

Barnum Effect

general predictions and personal descriptions tend to be perceived as more specific and personal than they are

• what area of psychology and psychology testing is undermined and misunderstood for the same reason: personality

• EX: Someone reads a horoscope saying they are sometimes shy but sometimes outgoing and believes it describes them perfectly, even though it could apply to almost anyone.

Egocentricity

tendency to emphasize our own needs, concerns, and outcomes over those of others

• EX: Someone assumes other people notice their embarrassing mistake as much as they do, even though most people barely noticed it.

Self-serving Bias

tendency to take credit for our successes but deny responsibility for our failures

• EX: A student says they got an A because they studied hard but blames the professor for a bad grade.

Narcissism

excessive egocentricity

• tend to like astrology more than others

• EX: Someone believes they are more special and important than others and expects constant admiration.

Which gender tends to like astrology more?

women

• Tendency to use/prefer System 1 reasoning more

“Women’s Intuition”

women tend to demonstrate more intuitive thinking than men, who tend to demonstrate more analytical thinking?

• Why: socialization? biology?

Voracek (2009)

Biological

• Measured biological markers (finger length & ratio) of testosterone/androgen exposure in gestation and puberty​

• Predicted men’s superstitious beliefs after controlling for confounding variables (education, height, etc.), but not women’s​

• Being shorter at birth (men & women) and in adulthood (women) was associated with such beliefs​

Rogers et al., 2019

Socialization

• Measured connection to masculine and feminine traditional expectations, regardless of sex​

• Being biologically female was weakly positively correlated using intuitive thinking, but rational thinking was uncorrelated with biological sex​

  • Correlation between being biologically female-typical & intuitive thinking turned out to be… weakly positive correlated

  • Was there correlation between biological sex & rational thinking? - NO

  • Correlation between being socially more feminine & intuitive thinking turned out to be… positively correlated

  • Correlations between being socially more masculine & BOTH intuitive and rational thinking turned out to be… positively correlated

  • Correlation between being socially more feminine & paranormal beliefs and perceptions of paranormal experiences and abilities turned out to be… positively correlated

    • This correlation was explained by increases in intuitive thinking

Magic

power to influence or appear to influence events by using unknown or supernatural forces

Stage Magic

performance of tricks and illusion that appear impossible, but are caused naturally

Supernatural Magic

unnatural powers to influence events, often ancient, spiritual, or tied to rituals

Stage Magic and Illusion is achieved through…

messing with people’s sensation and perception of the world

• specifically attention, narrow focus of awareness and cognitive resources

Inattentional Blindness

failure to notice unexpected but perceptible objects or events in a visual scene while one’s attention i focused on something else in the scene

• EX: Someone focuses on counting basketball passes and fails to notice a person in a gorilla costume walking across the screen.

Deception

any distortion or withholding of fact with the purpose of misleading others

• EX: Swiss Cheese Model of Deception (Olson & Raz, 2021)​- multiple layers of deception

• EX: A psychic pretends to have supernatural powers but actually uses tricks and misleading statements to convince people they are real.

Hypnosis

Procedure, or effect of the procedure, in which suggestion is used to evoke changes in sensation, perception, cognition, emotion, or motor control​

• all hypnosis is… self-hypnosis

State Theories

hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness or trance

• EX: Someone under hypnosis enters a trance-like state and becomes deeply relaxed and focused.

Non-state Hypnosis

hypnosis is just expectation and imagination played out

• EX: Someone acts like their arm is too heavy to lift during hypnosis because they expect the hypnotist’s suggestions to affect them.

Franz Mesmer & Mesmerism (1700s)

physician wanting to apply astrology to ailments

• animal magnetism

Royal Investigation Result:

• Placebo effect

• they held hands/legs fro a long time

• ultimately imagination or deception

Animal Magnetism

an invisible natural force in living things produces physical effect and humans can control the force to heal others

• like the force in starwars

• EX: Franz Mesmer believed he could use an invisible magnetic fluid flowing through the body to heal illnesses.

Hypnosis in Psychology

Broca: hypnosis for anesthesia

Charcot: school dedicated to hypnotism

Binet & Freud: students of Charcot, ending up leaving

Hypnosis Induction

series of simple tasks that leads an individual to experience higher suggestibility

• Common elements:

  • fixation of attention

  • relaxation or fatiguing

  • suggestion/shift in perceived control

Ideomotor Effect

motor movement suggestions, thoughts, and mental images lead to unconscious motor movements

• evidence from neuroscience

• EX: your finger is getting lifted by a balloon, not actually thinking it is

What is related to some being more suggestible?

• absorption: tendency to become more focused/absorbed in your own mental imagery and fantasy

• working memory: information processing speed

• fantasy proneness

• metacognition: awareness of your own cognitive processes

• pathological disassociation (illness-related)

Hit

correct reading

Miss

incorrect reading

Main Approaches to Mindreading

priming: change in a response to a stimulus as a result of exposure to a previous stimulus

Nondeclarative Memory

memories that we can unconsciously and effortlessly retrieve, which are difficult to declare/verbalize

• EX: Someone rides a bike after years without practicing because their body remembers how, even if they can't explain how they do it.

Hot reading

gaining information on the one being nread beforehand to make observations and interpretation

Cold reading

making observations and interpretations of total strangers during the reading

Sheep-goat Hypothesis

idea that paranormal phenomena only work if you are a believer (sheep), not a skeptic (goat)

• encourage cooperation

• blame their lack of belief for errors

• EX: Someone who believes in psychic powers reports experiencing telepathy, while someone skeptical of psychic powers does not.

Barnum Statements

general statements with wide applicability

• knowledge of general statistics

• multiple outs

  • double-headed statements

  • shotgunning

  • drop & return

Double-Headed Statements

statements that include their opposite

• EX: A psychic says, “You are confident, but sometimes you doubt yourself,” a statement that could apply to almost anyone.

Shotgunning

give too many observations and questions because at least some will be true

• EX: A psychic rapidly guesses, “I see an older man, the letter J, and someone who died unexpectedly,” hoping one guess matches the person's life.

Drop & Return

note reactions to return to later

• EX: A psychic makes a guess, moves on when it seems wrong, then returns to it later as if it were meaningful after learning more information.

Getting information from the person being read

• just ask (direct or veiled)

• make them interpret a jargony, vague reading

Deduction

make conclusions and inferences with deductive reasoning

• Use:

  • the hits you already have

  • subtle cues and body language

  • general knowledge and statistics

When you get a (major) miss

• distract

• turn misses into hits

  • Shoehorning: force things to fit your reasoning

• flatter

• accept a few errors or treat as part of the process because too many hits raises hot readings suspicions

Parapsychology

psychological study of paranormal phenomena, specifically paranormal abilities

Psi

paranormal abilities

Extrasensory perception (ESP)

acquiring information about or responding to external objects, people, etc, without using a known sensory method

• EX: Someone claims they can guess what card another person is holding without seeing it or receiving clues.

Psychokinesis (PK)

using the mind to affect physical objects and processes

• EX: Someone claims they can move a pencil across a table using only their mind.

Precognition

acquiring information about the future

• (retrocognition when its in the past)

• EX: Someone claims they dreamed about a car accident before it happened.

Telepathy

acquiring information from others’ minds

Remote Viewing

achieving ESP abilities when the information target is out fo range of normal sensory abilities

1927: Psi Research

Parapsychology founded by J.N. Rhine with Louisa Rhine joining after they married

• studied ESP with prediction and Zener cards

• studied PK with dice prediction

Ganzfeld Experiments

employing sensory deprivation to assist in psi abilities

• known to produce.. hallucinations

Psi Research: Issues

• lack of… experimental control

• cheating

• sensory leakage: information obtained through usual sensory means, not psi

• confounding variables: not a variable of interest, but can affect other variables and research conclusions

Psi: Government Research

• cold war fears

Stargate Project (1978-1995)

• focused on whether remote viewing could be used for intelligence and military purposes

• affected by same research problems

• results? no successes

Authority Bias

tendency to believe and be influenced by authority figures, regardless of topic

• EX: Someone believes a psychic’s predictions must be accurate because the psychic is famous and appears on television, without questioning the evidence.

Authoritarianism

tendency toward or personality pattern featuring…

• less scientific thinking

• more distrust in science

• more paranormal and conspiracy beliefs

• EX: Someone strongly believes leaders should never be questioned, distrusts scientific research, and is more likely to believe paranormal claims and conspiracy theories.

Ghosts

lingering existence of a deceased person

Demons

evil supernatural entity

Haunting

a place where a ghost is present

After-Death Communications

any communication, direct and indirect, from a deceased person, such as dream, conversations, and movement of physical objects in the home

Medium

person who can communicate with the dead

Possession

spirits/s taking over one’s body

Channeling

allowing a spirit to take over one’s body

Appeal to Tradition

something is true because it fits with traditional/long-standing practices and beliefs

• we always have believed this/done things this way

• EX: someone believes a ritual must work because their family has practiced it for generations.

Survivorship Bias

focusing on what has passed a selection process (survived), while ignoring what has not

• EX: focused on planes that survived and their surviving areas than those that did not

Multiple Comparisons Problem

when making many inferences and observations, the likelihood of errors increases

• texas sharpshooter fallacy

Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy

in a set of data, ignoring differences and overemphasizing similarities, especially in subsets of the data

• EX: Someone notices that several people who won the lottery were born in March and claims March birthdays bring luck, ignoring all the people born in March who didn't win.

Divine Fallacy

something must be true because it is too incredible to be false

• “I cannot imagine how that ghost sighting can be false, so it must be true”

Can also be used for opposite

• “ I cannot imagine how that ghost sighting can be true, so it must be false”

Representativeness Heuristic

making categorical judgments about a given person or target based on how closely the exemplar matches the typical or average member of the category

• EX: Someone assumes a quiet person who loves books must be a librarian because they fit their stereotype of one.

The Linda Problem

Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoke, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues on discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.

• Which is more probable?

  • Linda is a bank teller (1/100)

  • Linda is a bank teller AND is active in the feminist movement (1/200)

Conjunction Fallacy

Assuming that two situations occurring together is more likely than each situation occurring alone

• EX: Someone thinks it is more likely that a woman is a feminist bank teller than simply a bank teller because the description fits the stereotype, even though the combined event is less likely.

Rogers, Fisk, & Wiltshire (2011)

Objective: examined paranormal beliefs and experiences and conjunction errors

Method: gave a conjunction fallacy problem

Results: paranormal believers made more conjunction errors regardless of the scenario being paranormal or not, conjunction errors were especially associated with perceived past experiences of ESP (themselves or others) and poltergeists

Poltergeist

a ghost that can interact with the physical world

Anchoring Bias

tendency to give excessive weight to the starting value (anchor), based on the first received information or one’s initial judgement, and not to modify this anchor sufficiently considering later information

• EX: Someone hears that a psychic reading costs $200, so a $100 reading seems cheap, even though it is still expensive.

Anthropomorphism

Attributing human characteristics to nonhuman entities such as deities, spirits, animals, plants, or inanimate objects

• affect heuristic

• EX: Someone believes their car is angry at them because it keeps breaking down.

Ghost Hunting Goals

Ghost Hunters: find evidence, find answers, make money

Ghost Hunting Media: find evidence, find answers, entertain, make money

• do not really use the scientific method

Ghost Appear…

• in recording even if not detected by human senses

• as lights/orbs, full-body apparitions, shadows

• as manipulations of electronics and EMF

• as movement of physical objects

Electromagnetic Fields (EMF)

invisible electronic and magnetic fields of force generated by natural phenomena and human activities, like electricity

Video/audio Recording

Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP): recordings of ghost speech

Electronics to manipulate

• EMF meters

• Thermometers

• Ovilus (word database)

• Spirit Boxes (cycles through radio station)

The Hunt Experience

• all nighters, long hours

• often after long-distance traveling and equipment moving

• old locations with poor air quality

  • Hypoxemia/hypoxia

Hypoxemia/hypoxia

low blood/tissue oxygen levels, causing respiratory issues, headache, increased heart rate, confusion, and anxiety

Autokinetic Issues

illusion of seeing a static spot of light moving in a dark room or illusion of movement in a still object

• EX: Someone stares at a stationary dot of light in a dark room and thinks it is moving.

Contrast Effect

perception of an intensified difference between two stimuli or sensations when they are juxtaposed or when one immediately follows the other

• EX: After holding an ice cube, someone perceives room-temperature water as unusually warm.

Cult

small group devoted to a person, idea, or philosophy, often religious or quasi-religious in nature

New Religious Movement

religious or spiritual group that has modern origins and is distinct from dominant religious cultures

Destructive Cults

cults that harm cult members and/or others outside the cult

• EX: A cult leader isolates members from their families and encourages harmful or dangerous behaviors.

Political Cults

cults focused on political action and ideology, often tied to political extremism

• EX: A group demands total loyalty to its political ideology and pressures members to take extreme political action.

Doomsday Cults

cults that anticipate the end of the world (doomsday) is near or a major change in the world is coming

• EX: A cult leader predicts the world will end soon and tells members to prepare for the apocalypse.

Terrorist Cults

cults that systematically ue violence and fear to attain political or ideological goals

• EX: An extremist group uses violence and fear to achieve its political or ideological goals.