Thinking Style and the Formation of Paranormal Belief and Disbelief

Past investigations of the relationship between paranormal beliefs and habitual thinking styles typically have two potentially serious shortcomings: they survey paranormal beliefs formed at some time in the past rather than at the time of their generation, and they treat paranormal belief and paranormal disbelief as polar anchors on a single dimension. An online survey of 129 Australian adults avoided these shortcomings by addressing participants' interpretation of a summary of research on dermo-optical perception and relating thinking styles to these beliefs and disbeliefs as evoked in real time. The combined data confirmed the conventionally observed relationships between belief and thinking style, but separate analyses for paranormal belief and paranormal disbelief suggested the relationships arose fundamentally from processes involved in the formation of disbelief.