Psychological Reporfs, 2000,86, 183-189. O Psychological Reports 2000

STRONG COMMITMENT T O TRADITIONAL PROTESTANT RELIGIOUS BELIEFS IS NEGATIVELY RELATED T O

BELIEFS IN PARANORMAL PHENOMENA '

ELIZABETH L. HILLSTROM AND MELISSA STRACHAN

Wbeulotz College, Wheaion, Illinois

5urnmay.-Numerous studies have yielded small, negative correlations between measures of paranormal and "traditional religious beliefs". This may partly reflect opinions of Christians in the samples who take biblical sanctions against many "paranormal" activities seriously. To test this, 391 college students (270 women and 121 men) rated their beliefs in various paranormal phenomena and were classified as Believers, Nominal Believers, and Nonbelievers on the strength of their self-rated commitment to key biblical (particularly Protestant) doctrines. As predicted, Believers were significantly less likely than Nominal Believers or Nonbelievers to endorse rein- carnation, contact with the dead, UFOs, telepathy, prophecy, psycholunesis, or heal- ing, while the beliefs of Nominal Believers were similar to those of Nonbelievers. Sub- stantial percentages of Nominal and Nonbelievers (30-50%) indicated at least moder- ate acceptance of the paranormal phenomena surveyed.

Beliefs in paranormal phenomena, which by current, popular definition include mental telepathy, precognition (prophecy), psychic heahng, contact- ing spirits, etc., are surprisingly common in Western culture (Haraldsson, 1985; Gallup & Newport, 1991; Blackmore, 1997). In their search for vari- ables which might be related to such beliefs, a number of researchers have investigated tradtional religious behefs, e.g., belief in God, Heaven and Hell, Me after death, etc., anticipating that persons believing in the latter might also be disposed to believe the former. Two studes have indicated positive relationships between traditional Christian beliefs and beliefs in para- normal ~henomena (e.g., Buhrmann & Zaugg, 1983; Thalbourne, 1995), but most have found negative relationships with small to moderate effect sizes (Tobac~k & Milford, 1983; Ellis, 1988; Persinger & Makarec, 1990; Tobacyk & Wilkinson, 1990; Duncan, Donnelly, & Nicholson, 1992; Skirda & Persin- ger, 1993).

This negative relationship may be partly due to the opinions of Chris- tians in the samples, particularly Protestants of Evangelical or Fundarnental- ist persuasion, who take their faith and the Bible seriously. Instances of prophecy, physical healing, knowing what others are thinlung, and extraor- dmary control over physical events are described in the Bible, but, in con-

'Please address correspondence and re tint requests to Elizabeth Hdstrom, Department of Ps chology, Wheaton College, 501 E. Ll lege Ave., Wheaton, LL 60187 or e-mail (~l izabetl : Hillstrom@wheaton.edu).

184 E. L. HILLSTROM & M. STRACHAN

trast to popular (and parapsychological) opinion, these are not considered human powers. They are attributed to (1) supernatural acts of God, (2) the supernatural activity of evil spirits, e.g., cases of false prophecy and decep- tive visions, or ( 3 ) humans deceiving other humans or themselves, e.g., false ~rophecies or divinations of various types The Bible also explicitly warns against seekmg contacts with spirits or engaglng in astrology, divination, or witchcraft. From this we might predict that Behevers, defined here as people who accept key biblical doctrines (particularly those emphasized within tra- dtional Protestantism) and who say they believe chese very strongly, would be generally less inched to endorse paranormal beliefs than either Nominal Believers (those who are less certain of these particular doctrines or who ac- cept some of them but not others) or Nonbelievers (those who do not ac- cept these doctrines). This study was designed to test this hypothesis.

METHOD The 391 participants (270 women and 121 men; average age=20.2 yr.)

were students from two private, 4-year colleges (one a nondenominational Christian college) and two public universities in the midwest and east. Since most of the students completed the survey for extra credit, the return rate was 90%.

The Unusual Experiences Survey, developed by the researchers, was used to measure the endorsement of the various beliefs. Section 1 asked if respondents believed in various paranormal phenomena (1 = "definitely not," 5 ="yesM) and Section 2 assessed doctrinal beliefs and the strength of those beliefs on six items: (a) beliefs about God, (b) the relationship between God and humans, (c) human destiny, (d) Jesus, (e) the Bible, and ( f ) human na- ture. For each of these items, students chose the one option (among 3-5 choices) "that most closely represented their beliefs" and then rated the strength of their belief for that option (1 ="somewhat certain-but quite a few doubts," 5 ="very certain-few if any doubts"). For each item there was only one option that conformed closely with traditional Protestant doctrines. (The other items variously reflected naturalistic, humanistic, New Age, East- ern, or more "liberal" Christian world views.) Scores for this section were calculated by summing the belief ratings for all the doctrinal items chosen. These scores ranged from 0 (none of these items chosen) to 30 (all six items chosen and rated "5") .

The respondents were assigned to the groups by these "commitment to doctrine scores." To ensure that only the highly committed were classified as Believers, we set the cut-off scores for this group between 26 and 30. (The only way to achieve a score this high was to endorse all six doctrinal items with high certainty.) To preserve symmetry and to ensure that Nonbeliever was an accurate descriptor, the cut-off scores for this group were set from

COMMITMENT T O PROTESTANT OR PAIiANORMAL BELIEFS 1 85

0-5. Students with scores from 6-25 were classified as Nominal Behevers. This yielded 141 Behevers, 158 Nominal Believers, and 92 Nonbelievers. Pre- h i n a r y one-way analyses of variance indicated that these three groups &d not ddfer significantly in age, sex, or family income.

RESULTS The paranormal items surveyed included (a) telepathy (the mental

power to perceive the private thoughts of others), (b) prophecy (the mental power to perceive the future), (c) psycholunesis (the mental power to influ- ence physical events or other people by thought alone), (d) healing (the mental power to heal physical allrnents or sicknesses in other people), (e) whether UFOs are physical (UFOs are real physical craft piloted by inteh- gent beings from other places in the universe), ( f ) whether UFOs are ~Uuso- ry (most or all UFO incidents have natural explanations), (g) reincarnauon, (h) the possibhty of contact with the dead, and (i) the desirabihty of such contacts (these are beneficial experiences that one should seek). Since there were no c o m p e h g a przori reasons to assume that the responses to these items would be related and since the response dstributions for these items were skewed (towards nonbelief ), the belief ratings were analyzed simply, with separate one-way analyses of variance. The differences between groups on eight of the nine items were significant (see Table 1 for the specific F ra- tios values).

TAE3LE 1 ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE VALVES FOR PARANORMAL BELIEF ITEMS

Paranormal Item F MSE

Teleparhy 21.74' 1.44 Prophecy 49.93" 1.49 Psychokinesis 27.14' 0.97 Healing 22.76" 1.30 UFOs Are Physical 32.87* 1.38 UFOs Are Illusory 25.95" 1.35 Reincarnation 63.30" 1.47 Spirir Contacts Are Possible 3.16 2.82 Spirit Contacts Are Good 13.87' 2.54

Note.-The dfs ranged from (2,287) ro (2,290). "p < .0001.

Pairwise comparisons between the groups were obtained using the Ry- an-Einot-Gabriel-Welsh Multiple F Test (a= .05), which controls for the Type I, experimentwise error rate. Similar and predictable patterns emerged with these comparisons. Believers were less lkely to endorse telepathy, prophecy, psychokmesis, heahg , or reincarnation, to say that contacts with the dead are good, or that UFOs are real physical craft than were either

TABLE 2 GROUP A V E ~ G E S FOR PARANORMAL BELIEF ITEMS AND PERCENTACCS O F RESPONDENTS INUICAT~NG BEI.IEF I N THESE ITEMS WITH "YES" OR L c ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ YES"

Survcv Item Grouo Believers (tz = 14 1) Nominal Believers 0; = 158) Nonbelievers 0 1 = 92)

M SD % M SD % M SD %

Do you believe that humans have the mental power (on their own and without the intervention of some spiritual agent) to 1. perceive the private thoughts of others? (Telepathy) 1.9' 1.2 16 2.6b 1.2 27 2.9b 1.2 36 2. forcsce events which arc going to happen in the fu.

ture? (Prophecy) 1.8' 1.2 15 2.9b 1.3 40 3 . 1.2 54 3. influence physical events by thought alone? (Psycho-

kinesis) 1.5" .8 4 2 . 0 ~ 1.0 9 2.4' 1.2 22 4. heal physical ailrnents/sicknesses in other pcople?

(Healing) 1 . 6 V . 1 11 2.3b 1.1 I6 2.6' 1.2 25 With regard to UFOs, d o you believe

5 . that some of the incidents are real events involving physical craft and intelligent physical bcin s from

other places in the universe? (UFOs Are ~ f ~ s i c a l ) 2 . 0 V . 0 9 2.9b 1.2 36 3.0' 1.4 45 6. most (or all) of the incidents have natural explana-

tions, e.g., rhey are due to unexplained physical phe- nomena, mispcrceptions of natural events, tricks of the imagination, stories made up by witnesses, etc.? (UFOs Are Illusory) 4.1' .9 8 3.2b 1.2 49 3.2b 1.3 49

7. Do you believe in reincarnation? 1 .2' .8 4 2.zh 1.4 18 3.0' 1.4 36 8. Do you believe it is possible for living humans to

contact (or be contacted by) the dead? 2.6" 1.6 37 2.93b 1.4 41 3.1b 1.4 46 9. Do vou believe that contacts wirh the dead are nosi-

tivf, beneficial experiences whicli we should sick? .7' 1.0 1 1 . 4 ~ 1.7 38 1 . 7 ~ 2.0 47

Nofe.-Kesponses to the question of whether participants believed in these items were anchored by 1 ("definitely not") and 5 ("Yes"). Means with different superscripts di€fercd by at lcasr p<.05 by the Ryan-Einot-Gabriel-Welsh Multiple F Tcst. Standard deviations were nor used for this test but are included in the t;~bles for added infurmation. The MSEs used for the F tests are in Table 1. The numbers in the % columns arc the oer- centages of respondents who checked " es" or "probably es" when asked if they believed in these items. O.68. This value was < 1 because' re- sponse oprions for this question ranged l o r n 0-5 instead or ] -5 .

COMMITMENT TO PROTESTANT OR PARANORMAL BELIEFS 187

Nominal Believers or Nonbelievers. Nominal Believers were less Uely to be- lieve in prophecy, psychokinesis, healing, or reincarnation than Nonbehevers but these two groups did not differ in their beliefs in telepathy, the physical reality of UFOs, contacts with the dead or that such contacts are beneficial. In addition, Believers were more likely than Nominal Believers or Nonbe- lievers to conclude that UFO incidents have natural explanations, and Nom- inal Believers were less hkely than Nonbelievers to come to the same condu- sion. See Table 2 for the average ratings, standard deviations, and the per- centages of participants in each group who answered "yes" or "probably yes" in response to the question of whether they believed in these phenom- ena. These latter values indicate that there are strLkingly high percentages of paranormal beliefs among Nominal Believers and Nonbelievers (ranging from 30 to 50x1 , particularly for telepathy, prophecy, reincarnation, and the P ~ ~ ~ i b h t y of spirit contacts.

DISCUSSION LLke others, we have found surprisingly large percentages of college stu-

dents who say they believe in various paranormal phenomena. The percent- ages we obtained are similar to those from other studies of college students (Gray, 1987; Messer & Griggs, 1989) and for the population at large (Gal- lup & Newport, 1991). Yet, our results also show that there are some very large differences in the prevalence of such beliefs in ddferent subgroups, in this case, benveen people who are strongly committed to Trahtional Protes- tant doctrines, those who are partially committed to these doctrines, and to those who do not believe these doctrines.

As predcted, individuals who rated themselves as strongly committed to traditional Protestant doctrines (including the belief that the Bible is the word of God) were less likely to say they believed in the phenomena in question than respondents who were modestly or not committed to these doctrines. This may be related to the way such phenomena are portrayed in the Bible, e.g., they are deceptive or dangerous, and its strong warnings against seeking such experiences. The pattern of group differences on vari- ous survey items also appears to support a hypothesis of biblical influence. Nominal Behevers consistently indicated greater belief in the paranormal phenomena than Believers, yet, they also believed less in four of the nine items than h d Nonbelievers. Having some awareness and belief in biblical teachings on these issues may have reduced their w h g n e s s to endorse at least some of the paranormal items.

Our results may also help explain why researchers have found negative relationships between various measures of "traditional rehgious belief" or "religiosity" and paranormal beliefs. Such relationships may be partly (or even largely) due to negative opinions of paranormal phenomena among par-

188 E. L. HILLSTROM & M. STRACHAN

ticipants whose views on this subject are shaped by their acceptance of biblical teachings. The small size of the negative effects in these studies may have been partly a function of different or broader definitions of religious belief which allowed a greater heterogeneity of beliefs within the various groups. In our own study, for example, Believers and Nominal Believers dlf- fered substantially in their beliefs about paranormal phenomena. If we had used a broader range of scores to define the Believers' group, it would have included a number of Nominal Believers and the differences between the three groups would have been reduced considerably.

One puzzhg issue that this study raises but does not address is the high rate of endorsement of paranormal behefs among Nominal and Nonbe- lievers, particularly among the Nonbelievers, whose endorsement ratings ranged from 35 to 50% on most items. There are many substantial reasons for not believing in paranormal phenomena which are unrelated to the teach- ings of the Bible. For instance, there is no consistent experimental evidence to support the view that humans have mental powers h e telepathy, proph- ecy, heahg , or psychokinesis; and a number of investigators have offered very plausible natural explanations for many experiences which have been deemed paranormal (Marks, 1983; Hdlstrom, 1995). While rhese reasons for disbelief undoubtedly influenced people in all three groups, it is somewhat surprising that these did not appear to have more influence on the behefs of Nominal and Nonbelievers. It might be fruitful in subsequent research to see how this kind of disconfirming evidence might influence endorsements of paranormal phenomena in groups with different worldviews.

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Accepted Janua y 24, 2000