University of Helsinki - Research news
Belief in the supernatural stems from childhood
"According to these beliefs, the characteristics of physical, biological and psychological phenomena intersect."
Week 50/ 2006
Belief in the supernatural stems in most cases from a child's perception of the world. Such beliefs can also be explained by an individual's tendency to rely on intuitive thinking.
"According to these beliefs, the characteristics of physical, biological and psychological phenomena intersect. So some may believe, for example, that energy is matter that has characteristics of a living organism or that old pieces of furniture know things about the past. Often these beliefs are subconscious and exist alongside scientific and other learned knowledge," says Marjaana Lindeman, the principal researcher of the Psychology of Superstition study funded by the Academy of Finland.
According to Lindeman, people cannot explain their supernatural beliefs linguistically, and these beliefs can seldom be altered through education for the very reason that they are based on a child's cognitive system, which is subconscious and non-linguistic.
"In contrast, personality, emotional factors, intelligence or analytical thinking are almost completely unconnected to people's supernatural beliefs. And although women have repeatedly been proven to hold more supernatural beliefs than men, gender differences are nonetheless slight and are explained by the different methods of processing information," says Lindeman.
Usually a person who believes in one supernatural phenomenon also believes in other similar phenomena. Although education has not as such been reported to correlate negatively with supernatural beliefs, it has been observed that university students have fewer such beliefs than students of lower educational levels.
This difference already exists at the stage when students choose where they want to study. Education seldom reaches the intuitive knowledge base, from which belief in the supernatural emerges. Scientific education targets our analytical system. For this reason, studies have repeatedly proven that academic education and supernatural beliefs are only very slightly linked.
Text: Arja-Leena Paavola
Photo: Paul Williams
Translation: Valtasana Oy
