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Weird Science

When I first started working in this area, I would sometimes be asked, “What kind of a psychologist are you?” My standard reply was, “I’m interested in the psychology of paranormal belief and ostensibly paranormal experiences.” Now, that hardly rolls off the tongue, does it? I was slightly envious of colleagues who could give a clear and concise reply, such as, “I’m a neuropsychologist” or “I’m a developmental psychologist.” I had no such ready label to offer. The solution? Come up with one!

In fact, it turned out a suitable label did exist. In 1982, Leonard Zusne and Warren H. Jones had published their ground-breaking textbook Anomalistic Psychology.1 That will do for me, I thought, and from then on if anyone asked, “What sort of psychologist are you?” I could reply instantly and concisely, “I’m an anomalistic psychologist.” Unfortunately, there was just one small snag with this cunning plan. Even today, most people have never heard of anomalistic psychology, but back then the number was even smaller. Unless the inquirer had previously had the good fortune to have read Zusne and Jones’s excellent tome, the next question would inevitably be, “And what the heck is that?” To which I would reply, “It’s the psychology of paranormal belief and ostensibly paranormal experiences.” Still, we’re making progress, and maybe more people will get to know what anomalistic psychology is by reading this book.

There is another problem with the term that I had not anticipated. Although “anomalistic psychology” is indeed fairly concise, it turns out many people struggle to pronounce it properly. I have lost count of the number of times that I have been introduced at public lectures as being an “animalistic” psychologist.

At the time of writing, Wikipedia lists over ninety subdisciplines of psychology, a few of which, I confess, are new to me despite having been a professional psychologist for about four decades. Some of the main subdisciplines are defined in terms of their fundamental level of theoretical analysis. Thus, to give but a few examples, neuropsychologists focus on trying to understand the neural substrates of mind and behavior. Behavioral geneticists are interested in the interaction between genetics and environment in influencing aspects of behavior, such as intelligence, aptitude, and personality. Social psychologists concentrate on how our interactions with other individuals or groups influence our behavior and thinking. Other, more applied subdisciplines, such as clinical psychology, forensic psychology, and educational psychology, adopt insights from such fields and attempt to apply them in real-world contexts.

Wikipedia defines anomalistic psychology as “the study of human behaviour and experience connected with what is often called the paranormal, with the assumption that there is nothing paranormal involved.”2 That is a pretty good definition. Wikipedia also classifies anomalistic psychology as an example of applied psychology, and that seems fair too. Anomalistic psychologists typically take insights from a wide range of other subdisciplines within psychology and consider what light they may shine on topics of interest. This is the approach taken by Anna Stone and myself in our textbook Anomalistic Psychology: Exploring Paranormal Belief and Experience.3 Most of this chapter will outline in broad terms what insights the various subdisciplines have to offer, and later chapters will explore them in more depth.

But before we go any further, we should take a step back. There is one crucially important word that has been used a lot so far without any attempt at proper definition. That word is paranormal.

What Does Paranormal Mean?

When you come across the word paranormal, what comes into your mind? Maybe you recall the opening title sequence and spooky music of The X-Files? Maybe you think of films like Paranormal Activity, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, or even Ghostbusters? Given that you probably already have an interest in the area (otherwise, why are you reading this book?), you might think of books you’ve read on the topic or magazines like The Fortean Times. But what exactly does paranormal mean?

To aid you with your reflection on this question, look through the following list of topics and decide in each case whether the label paranormal can be applied to them. More importantly, see if you can come up with a definition that covers everything that you feel is paranormal and excludes everything that is not. (Some of the topics may be a bit obscure, and so I have provided brief definitions.)

I hope you were not expecting a definitive list of the “right answers” regarding which of the above really are paranormal topics and which are not because I am afraid I am going to have to disappoint you. The point of the exercise is to illustrate that it is actually quite hard to come up with a definition of paranormal that identifies only those concepts that we feel should be so labeled and excludes all others.

The online version of the Cambridge Dictionary offers the following definition: “impossible to explain by known natural forces or by science.”4 That is a pretty good stab at a working definition but not perfect by any means. Take consciousness, for example. Science has yet to adequately explain how subjective self-awareness can arise from the physical substrate of the brain, and yet few people would argue that consciousness is a paranormal phenomenon. As another example, physicists believe that 85 percent of the universe consists of dark matter. This form of matter is believed to exist because theoretical astrophysicists insist that empirical observations regarding gravitational effects do not make sense without it. The only problem is that dark matter itself has never actually been observed, and no one knows what it consists of. But, once again, no one would call this a paranormal phenomenon. Many similar nonparanormal examples of things that are “impossible to explain by known natural forces or by science” could be cited.

As already mentioned, parapsychologists typically limit their investigations and speculations to three main general areas, all of which would be considered by everyone to be core paranormal topics. The first of the three is extrasensory perception (ESP), which itself comes in three different flavors. The first is telepathy, the alleged ability of minds to make direct contact without the use of the known sensory channels. The second is clairvoyance, the alleged ability to pick up information from remote locations, again without the use of known sensory channels.5 The final type is precognition, the alleged ability to obtain information about future events other than by ordinary inference.

The second main topic of interest for parapsychologists is psychokinesis (PK), the alleged ability to influence the outside world directly by the power of thought alone. Examples include the ability to levitate objects, to psychically heal ailments, or Uri Geller’s spoon-bending powers. As my students will confirm, I have absolutely no qualms about using very old, very corny dad jokes in my lectures, so I will usually say to my class, “If you believe in psychokinesis, would you please raise my hand?” That one always gets a nice groan.

The final topic of interest to academic parapsychologists is evidence relating to the possibility of life after death. This covers a range of topics from our list above, including ghosts and (possibly) poltergeists, mediumship, reincarnation, and the electronic voice phenomenon (EVP).

I think we can agree that all of the topics within the remit of parapsychology mentioned above are indisputably paranormal. But even here there is a potential problem. The definition of paranormal offered by the Cambridge Dictionary implies that a phenomenon is only paranormal if it is “impossible to explain by known natural forces or by science.” Let us suppose that the skeptics, including me, are wrong and that some people really do have the ability to directly read the minds of others, albeit by means currently unknown to science. Let us suppose that a method has been found to reliably demonstrate this telepathic ability under properly controlled conditions and that there was absolutely no doubt that the ability was real. This would be an incredible scientific breakthrough, and no doubt a Nobel Prize or two would be handed out in recognition of this achievement (although it should be noted that there currently is no Nobel Prize for psychology and there definitely is not one for parapsychology!). What would happen next?

Inevitably, scientists would then turn their attention to figuring out the mechanism by which telepathy operates. And if they were successful? Well, obviously there would be a few more Nobel Prizes to hand out. But then the prize committee need not give any more thought to introducing a Nobel Prize for parapsychology—because once telepathy could be explained by science, it would no longer be a paranormal phenomenon according to our definition. The same argument applies to all other paranormal phenomena. Parapsychology is an area of science that runs the theoretical risk of being so successful that it could annihilate itself.6 Few would argue that such annihilation is imminent.

Of course, not everyone restricts their usage of paranormal to the three core concepts of parapsychology. The mass media and, as you will see, anomalistic psychologists tend to adopt a much looser conception of the paranormal that covers pretty much everything “weird and wonderful” that is generally thought of as unexplained. In fact, as I hope to demonstrate in the pages of this book, many of those allegedly unexplained phenomena do in fact have plausible, empirically supported explanations, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Cryptozoology and Ufology

Two fields that are often covered in books on the paranormal as more loosely defined are cryptozoology and ufology. Cryptozoology is the name given to the investigation of creatures that are believed by some to exist yet whose existence is not recognized by mainstream science, such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster (figure 1.1). If it were ever proved that any of these so-called cryptids really did exist, this would come as quite a shock for most mainstream zoologists—but it would not require the revision or rejection of any currently accepted scientific theories.

Figure 1.1

Should the Loch Ness monster be considered a paranormal phenomenon? This famous photograph was first published by the Daily Mail in 1934 and is generally recognized as a hoax.

Ufology refers to the study of all aspects of UFOs. Typically, but not exclusively, ufologists tend to favor the so-called extraterrestrial hypothesis—that is to say, they believe that at least some of the evidence put forward is best explained in terms of aliens from other planets visiting the Earth. If it were ever proven that aliens really were visiting our planet, this would probably be a bit of a surprise for mainstream scientists but, again, it would be within the bounds of our current scientific understanding.7 The main reason that most claims within both cryptozoology and ufology are rejected by mainstream science is simply because there is no compelling evidence to support them. Strictly speaking, they are not paranormal claims if we accept the dictionary definition of paranormal.

Religious Claims

There are other problematic topics on our list. For example, many religious topics fit the dictionary definition very well, and yet most people would not apply the label paranormal to them. Angels, demons, prayer, glossolalia (“speaking in tongues”), possession and exorcism, and so on might all be seen, by believers at least, as being beyond scientific understanding. God certainly would be. Yet we often make a distinction between religious and paranormal concepts. Perhaps the concept of the supernatural provides a conceptual bridge between these two realms?

There are many examples of miracles in religious texts that clearly fit our idea of paranormal phenomena. For example, there are several stories of prophetic dreams in the Bible that allegedly provide nice examples of precognition in action. There are also several examples of what appears to be amazing psychokinetic ability. Moses is said to have parted the Red Sea. Jesus allegedly raised people from the dead, fed five thousand people with just five loaves and two fishes, and, my personal favorite, turned water into wine (plate 2). The list could go on. Yet I suspect that most people do not think of these as paranormal feats.

The distinction between religious and paranormal experiences becomes very blurred indeed when we consider phenomena such as near-death experiences (NDEs). NDEs are widely considered to be paranormal in nature, and yet they are often intrinsically religious, involving spirits, angels, Jesus, and even God Himself. NDEs are discussed in more depth in chapter 7.

Fairies, Vampires, and Zombies

You may have thought that some of the topics listed, such as fairies, vampires, and zombies, should not be considered paranormal at all because, as far as you are concerned, they are entirely fictional. This may be the view of the typical twenty-first century Westerner, but it most certainly is not a view that has been universally held across space and time. For long periods in humanity’s past, and even in some parts of the world today, millions of people believed in the physical reality of such creatures—and a host of others besides. Anomalistic psychologists should not make the mistake of only considering beliefs that are widely held within our own society in our own era.

One question I was fond of asking my students early on in my course was, “How many of you believe in fairies?” Usually, no hands went up, or perhaps a single hand, but I got the strong impression that this was being done more to get a laugh from fellow students than out of a sincere declaration of belief. After all, the only people who might sincerely believe in fairies in our own society—along with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny—are children, right? We all grow out of such childish beliefs by the time we reach puberty.

However, a century ago belief in the reality of fairies was widespread across much of Europe—including among well-educated adults.8 After all, if we consider folklore we can see that stories of such “little people” are common in most cultures down the centuries. Surely this must indicate some basis in fact? Not only that, but there were many actual sightings of fairies, often from sane, intelligent adults who were not under the influence of alcohol or any other mind-altering substance. There was even photographic evidence.

Famously (or notoriously, depending on your point of view), Elsie Wright, aged sixteen, and her ten-year-old cousin, Frances Griffith, managed to take several photographs of fairies near a little stream known as Cottingley Beck in July and August 1917. The photographs were pronounced to be genuine by photographic experts. The case of the Cottingley Fairies caught the attention of none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of arguably the most famous fictional detective ever, Sherlock Holmes.9 Sir Arthur was convinced that it constituted strong proof of the existence of fairies, as recounted in his book The Coming of the Fairies.

There were, not surprisingly, those skeptical of this case from the beginning. However, right up until the mid-1970s there were still some who defended the authenticity of the photographs. Then the case began to fall apart. Computerized enhancement of the photographs revealed a string holding up one of the fairies, as well as strongly suggesting that the figures were simply paper cutouts. Further investigation continued to undermine the claim, including the discovery of a book, Princess Mary’s Gift Book, containing identical illustrations. Eventually, Elsie and Frances confessed that the photographs had been taken as a practical joke.

Although the story of the Cottingley Fairies is, to my mind, a fascinating and still rather magical one, the most important point in the present context is simply that the considerable percentage of the population who believed in fairies one hundred years ago believed they had very good reasons to do so. There were eyewitness accounts from reputable sources. There were even photographs, pronounced as genuine by experts. On reflection, the parallels with the kind of evidence put forward by modern-day believers in flying saucers is striking.

Traditional Superstitions and Personal Superstitions

Lucky charms and unlucky 13 are two traditional superstitions to be found on our list but clearly it would have been easy to include dozens more (plate 3).10 Is it really unlucky to walk under ladders or to break a mirror? Will crossing your fingers bring you good luck—or at least ward off bad luck? Will a black cat crossing your path bring you good luck (if you live in the United Kingdom or Japan) or bad luck (if you live elsewhere in Europe)?11 And how does that work when you go on holiday?

In addition to the dozens of traditional superstitions that we are all familiar with, many people have their own personal and idiosyncratic superstitious beliefs. Such beliefs may arise when a particular object becomes associated in our minds with a particularly favorable outcome. For example, a student may do particularly well in an exam and henceforth insist on taking that “lucky pen” into all future exams. A tennis player may put in a particularly impressive performance in a tournament and from that point on insist on wearing that particular pair of shoes in future important matches.12

Athletes are notoriously superstitious and often feel compelled to carry out quite elaborate rituals prior to stepping out to perform. More generally, it is those professions in which success or failure is not entirely under the performer’s control that are known to be associated with rich superstitious beliefs and practices. In addition to athletes, soldiers, sailors, actors, and gamblers are all known to be generally superstitious, whereas accountants rarely engage in complex rituals prior to starting work.

Now the chances are that most readers of this book are not especially superstitious and would probably reject claims based on such superstitious thinking. Yes, you may concede, belief in superstitions may have an indirect effect. If a performer is prevented from carrying out their preferred ritual, this may make them nervous and actually lead to a poorer performance. Conversely, being allowed to carry out the ritual may help them to focus and “get in the zone” and result in a better performance. But the idea that carrying a lucky charm or engaging in a ritual could have a direct effect, independent of belief, would probably be rejected as childish and silly.13

The main question to ask is, should such superstitious beliefs be considered as paranormal beliefs? The fact that you personally may not believe in them is irrelevant. If any of them did actually work, they would work by means unknown to science and therefore should rightly be thought of as paranormal. However, as with religious claims, I suspect most people would not naturally label them as such.

Divination

Different forms of divination have been used for centuries, and many of them are still popular today. Our list above includes astrology, crystal balls, I Ching, palm reading, reading tea leaves, and tarot cards, all techniques with ancient origins that are still popular today (plate 4). In the past, fortunes were also told by looking at the patterns made by smoke, the flight of birds, or the entrails of sacrificed animals. The latter is as valid as, say, astrology, but considerably messier.

Even though these techniques may have no validity whatsoever, they can still arguably be considered to be paranormal on the grounds that, if they did work, there would be no known scientific explanation for how they did so. Arguably, they do not, however, fall within the remit of the three core concepts of parapsychology. None of the techniques are generally thought to involve the application of alleged paranormal abilities. Instead, each provides a means to interpret supposedly meaningful patterns as a way to provide guidance. These systems of interpretation could be, and indeed often have been, computerized to allow automated generation of readings. If any of them did actually work, it would be possible in theory for a believer in the paranormal to argue that they did so via clairvoyance and precognition, but this is not a widely held view. The truth is, however, they simply have no validity whatsoever.

Complementary and Alternative Medicine

One important aspect of the New Age movement is faith in complementary and alternative medicines (CAM).14 CAM covers a very wide range of different practices, and not all of them claim that their alleged effectiveness is based on paranormal forces, but some do. The most obvious example of this is psychic healing, which involves the practitioner passing their hands over the patient’s body, either lightly touching it or simply moving near it. Some psychic healers claim that they can work their magic from afar, a practice known as distance healing. It is claimed that psychic healing is capable, by means unknown to science, of “rebalancing subtle energies” and returning the body to health. Some CAM practitioners claim that they are able to diagnose health problems by examining the patient’s aura, an alleged energy field that is said to surround all living things. Some claim that their forms of treatment, such as the use of crystals, can lead to not only improved physical health but also the attainment of psychic powers, such as ESP. All forms of CAM have this in common: they have either never been proved to work or they have been proved not to work. In the words of comedian Tim Minchin, “You know what they call alternative medicine that has been proved to work? Medicine.”

Belief in Conspiracies

Many supporters of CAM believe that Big Pharma is engaged in a massive conspiracy to suppress their allegedly safe and effective forms of treatment in order to ensure that they can make massive profits by manufacturing and selling unsafe forms of conventional treatment. Some go even further and claim that scientists deliberately manufacture deadly diseases in order to then sell us the treatments for those very diseases. While there is no doubt that drug companies are far from being paragons of virtue, and also that conventional medicine is far from perfect, most of these claims are without foundation.15

The idea that Big Pharma, in collaboration with medical scientists around the world, is engaged in a massive conspiracy is as unlikely as the idea that the international community of climate scientists are similarly involved in promoting a hoax and that climate change is not really happening or, if it is, it is not due to our use of fossil fuels. Neither of these particular conspiracies involve any paranormal aspects, but there are certainly some that do. For example, many ufologists believe that governments and intelligence services around the world are fully aware of extraterrestrials visiting our planet and abducting humans. The aliens are often reported as communicating with humans telepathically.

Interestingly, belief in conspiracies reliably correlates with belief in the paranormal, and many of the psychological factors that correlate with the former also correlate with the latter. Furthermore, there is little doubt that many of the more bizarre conspiracy theories (e.g., David Icke’s claim that the world is run by shape-shifting lizards) are weird and wonderful. For reasons such as these, belief in conspiracies in general has become a topic of great interest to anomalistic psychologists and indeed the wider world.16

The Relationship between Parapsychology and Anomalistic Psychology

The online Cambridge Dictionary provides the following definition of parapsychology: “the study of mental abilities, such as knowing the future or telepathy, that seem to go against or be outside the known laws of nature and science.”17

Elsewhere, I have stated that anomalistic psychology

attempts to explain paranormal and related beliefs and ostensibly paranormal experiences in terms of known (or knowable) psychological and physical factors. It is directed at understanding bizarre experiences that many people have, without assuming that there is anything paranormal involved. While psychology, neurology and other scientific disciplines are rich with explanatory models for human experiences of many kinds, these models are rarely extrapolated to attempt to explain strange and unusual experiences.18

There is clearly a high degree of overlap between the two subdisciplines of parapsychology and anomalistic psychology, but one important difference is that anomalistic psychologists are typically interested in a wider range of topics—that is to say, anything considered weird—compared to parapsychologists. The reason for this is that the underlying psychological explanations for many topics within the strict remit of parapsychology are often the same as those for topics that fall outside that remit.

For example, mediumship clearly falls within the strict definition of parapsychological. Mediums claim to be able to communicate with the spirits of people who have died. If they truly do have this ability, that would clearly constitute irrefutable evidence of postmortem survival. A typical reading from a medium will consist not only of personal messages from the deceased to the client but often also more general information and advice regarding the client’s current and future life. In fact, the reading will be quite similar to a reading from an astrologer, a palm reader, or a tarot card reader. However, as already stated, these forms of divination fall outside the strict definition of parapsychological as they do not obviously relate to the core concepts of the paranormal. From the point of view of the anomalistic psychologist, however, it seems likely that readings from both mediums and users of other forms of divination are based on the same psychological processes (see chapter 4 for further details). It would therefore make little sense to focus only on readings from mediums and to ignore those of other diviners.

Another phenomenon that is sometimes presented as providing evidence in support of life after death is apparent past-life memories. Such memories can arise either spontaneously or as a result of hypnotic regression (for more detail, see chapter 6). Empirical evidence very strongly supports the claim that, in many of these cases, the memories concerned are actually false memories; that is, they are not based on events that really took place in objective reality. Chapter 5 will present evidence in support of the claim that many reports of alien abduction are also based on false memories. Once again, we have an example of one phenomenon, that of claimed past-life memories, that fits the strict definition of parapsychological but is probably based on the same psychological processes as one that does not. Clearly, both phenomena should be considered within the wider context of false memory research.

In general, anomalistic psychologists approach their topics of interest on the basis of the working hypothesis that paranormal forces do not exist. Wherever possible, they design experiments and investigations aimed at putting their nonparanormal explanations to the empirical test. To that extent, their approach is more skeptical than that of many parapsychologists, who are typically more focused on directly testing paranormal claims rather than considering possible nonparanormal explanations. However, it would be a mistake to see anomalistic psychology as being in opposition to parapsychology. Instead, the two disciplines should be seen as complementing each other. If ever parapsychologists are able to provide a demonstration of a paranormal phenomenon that is robust and replicable enough to convince the wider scientific community that it is genuinely beyond explanation in terms of currently accepted scientific theories, then anomalistic psychologists will have provided a valuable service in helping them to sort what is genuinely paranormal from what only appears to be so.

It should also be kept in mind that it is logically possible that some examples of an allegedly paranormal phenomenon may, in principle, be genuinely paranormal while other examples of that same phenomenon are explicable in nonparanormal terms. The two approaches are not mutually exclusive. In fact, parapsychologists have one big rhetorical advantage over their generally more skeptical anomalistic colleagues. They can quite happily concede that not all ostensibly paranormal phenomena are genuinely paranormal but still argue that some are. This may appear to be a more reasonable position to adopt than the skeptical position of arguing that all ostensibly paranormal phenomena can be explained in nonparanormal terms, the working hypothesis of the anomalistic psychologist. However, it may just be that the wider scientific community is correct in rejecting all paranormal claims. Until relatively recently, there have been few attempts to develop and test alternative, nonparanormal explanations for ostensibly paranormal phenomena. Only time will tell how successful this approach will be.

It is sometimes claimed that you cannot prove a negative. This is not true (and, indeed, the first four words of this sentence are collectively an example of a negative statement that I intend to prove in the next couple of sentences). Some negative statements are easy to prove. For example, if I claimed that there was always a fully grown, perfectly normal tiger in my bath, you could easily prove that there was no tiger in my bath by simply having a look (but be careful—just saying!). However, the less extreme claim that some negative statements cannot be proved is true—and the claim that psi does not exist is one of them.19 No matter how many paranormal claims are conclusively debunked, and no matter how many nonparanormal explanations are supported by compelling evidence, it will always be possible to argue that proof of psi is just around the next corner. However, in the absence of any compelling evidence for the existence of psi after well over a century of systematic research, the growing evidence for plausible nonparanormal explanations of ostensibly paranormal phenomena must surely increase the probability that psi simply does not exist.

Why Study Anomalistic Psychology?

As mentioned previously, when I first started getting seriously interested in the psychology of weird stuff, I sometimes came across people who did not understand the value of such research. Because they themselves did not believe in the paranormal, they would insist that any such research was simply a waste of time and effort. I can see how someone who is 100 percent certain that all paranormal claims are without foundation might indeed hold such a view of attempts to establish psi (even though I feel that their 100 percent certainty is not a scientifically defensible position to take). However, that was not primarily what anomalistic psychologists are trying to do. Instead, the main focus is on attempting to understand the psychology of paranormal belief and experience.

Opinion polls repeatedly show that a large proportion of the general population does indeed believe in the paranormal. For example, a poll of a representative sample of 1,347 British adults in 2017 by BMG Research found that one-third responded affirmatively to the question, “Do you believe in ghosts, ghouls, spirits or other types of paranormal activity?”20 Forty-six percent responded negatively, and 21 percent had yet to make up their minds. In 2019, a YouGov survey of 1,293 American adults found that 45 percent believe that ghosts definitely or probably exist, with a similar figure obtained for both belief in demons and belief in “other supernatural beings” (only 13 percent believed in vampires).21 Such figures are fairly typical of surveys in Europe and the United States, although some variation is to be expected based on factors such as the precise wording of the question, what is popular in the media at the time, and so on. There is also considerable variation across cultures. For example, levels of belief in psychic healing and communication with the dead are considerably higher in Latin America than in Europe.22

Not surprisingly, a major factor contributing to belief in the paranormal is personal experience. After all, it would be a bit weird to report that you had had a paranormal experience but that you did not believe in the paranormal, wouldn’t it? Several studies show that personal experience is indeed the single biggest reason given for believing in the paranormal, although other factors, such as testimony from trusted others, can also play a part.23

There is no known society, either historically or geographically, where paranormal beliefs are not held and ostensibly paranormal experiences are not reported. Clearly, such beliefs and experiences are an important part of what it means to be human. On first consideration, such pervasiveness may appear to offer strong support for the existence of psi—and yet compelling scientific evidence in support of this idea still eludes us. Is it possible, then, that this pervasiveness is actually due to the fact that human brains are generally pretty similar from one culture to the next and thus prone to the same glitches that might lead us to conclude that we have had a paranormal experience when in fact we have not? If so, we can learn a great deal about human psychology by taking such experiences seriously.

Why Weird Stuff Matters

I hope that by now I have convinced you, if you didn’t believe it already, that a full understanding of the human condition must include consideration of the psychological roots of paranormal belief and experiences. But in addition to that fundamental, if rather abstract, aspect of anomalistic psychology, there are also important practical reasons for taking weird stuff seriously. Skeptics are sometimes portrayed as being miserable killjoys, out to spoil everyone else’s harmless fun. Does it really matter if your best friend is convinced that knowing someone’s star sign provides genuine insight into their personality? Does it matter that much if your neighbor is convinced that the moon landings were faked? So what if your aunt insists that homeopathic remedies are to be preferred to medically approved painkillers in treating her arthritis?

On first glance, none of those examples are really anything to worry about that much, are they? However, on reflection, there are real causes for concern even here. If you believe in astrology, you’d probably think it was quite reasonable for companies to sometimes take astrological data into account when selecting applicants to fill posts, as does sometimes happen. A reasonable argument can be made that this is a totally unjustified form of discrimination given the complete lack of validity of astrology as demonstrated by literally hundreds of well-conducted tests.24 Your neighbor’s belief that the moon landings were faked is not in itself harmful—but research shows that belief in any one conspiracy is usually a very good predictor of belief in others, many of which, such as those embraced by the anti-vaccination movement, do cause serious harm. If your aunt insists on taking homeopathic remedies for her arthritis, she is certainly not taking advantage of the most effective treatments available. But, more importantly, should she take the same approach toward life-threatening conditions such as cancer, the consequences could be much more serious.

The general point here is that those three claims are all indicative of a lack of critical thinking. When a particular claim is based on good empirical evidence and sound reasoning, it obviously makes sense to accept it. However, many beliefs are based on weak evidence (or even no evidence at all) and very poor reasoning. This does not prevent people from making important decisions based on those beliefs. There will be many examples of such cases throughout this book, but for a more comprehensive list, visit Tim Farley’s excellent website, What’s the Harm?25

Tim’s website provides a fascinating, if somewhat depressing, catalog of documented instances in which a lack of critical thinking has led to unfortunate consequences, including embarrassment, financial loss, and even death. Thus, we can see that the danger inherent in believing ostensibly harmless paranormal and pseudoscientific claims is the potential such beliefs have for making it easier to accept more dangerous beliefs. What is required is the application of critical thinking to all of our beliefs. Anomalistic psychology provides an excellent vehicle for the teaching of critical thinking by demonstrating the limits of our cognitive systems, with respect to such aspects as perception, memory, interpretation, and reasoning. We are all susceptible to a host of cognitive biases without even realizing it.

It is, of course, impossible to come up with precise figures to tally the harm done by the failure to apply critical thinking. On the basis of the documented cases listed on his What’s the Harm? website, Tim Farley has proposed the following minimum figures: “368,379 people killed, 306,096 injured and over $2,815,931,000 in economic damages.”26 These are minimum figures because they only relate to the cases documented on his website. It is certain that there are many more cases that go undocumented. Clearly, no one should dismiss such claims as “harmless.”

Much of this book was written while the world was going through the (ongoing) COVID-19 pandemic that has already cost around seven million lives and will cost many more before it ends. Misinformation and disinformation regarding the pandemic are rife, including many wild and unfounded conspiracy theories regarding the coronavirus. Despite the fact that effective vaccines have been developed and deployed, there is little doubt that belief in such theories led to a substantial proportion of the population refusing to be vaccinated, thus prolonging the pandemic and causing further unnecessary suffering and death.

There is an issue of consumer protection here. It is difficult to state the total value of the “paranormal industry,” as it obviously depends on exactly what we include under that heading. However, some indicative estimates are available. For example, a 2018 report from IBISWorld claimed that Americans spend $2.2 billion annually on “psychic services,” including astrology, aura reading, palmistry, tarot card reading, and mediumship.27 A report from the National Center for Health Statistics reported that Americans spent a staggering $30.2 billion on complementary and alternative medicine in 2012.28 It has been estimated that the global “wellness industry,” riddled as it is with pseudoscientific claims, was a mind-blowing $4.9 trillion market in 2019.29 If, as seems to be the case, the services being provided here are actually ineffective over and above placebo effects, the public has a right to know that.

Measuring Paranormal Belief

One of the central themes of this book is that our prior beliefs have a strong influence on how we perceive, make sense of, and recall events in the world around us. Many of the studies that I describe in later chapters compare paranormal believers and skeptics under controlled conditions in terms of such factors. It is, therefore, important to consider how exactly we measure paranormal beliefs.

One approach has already been mentioned. Opinion polls on levels of paranormal belief are regularly reported in newspapers and magazines, especially in the run-up to Halloween. Properly conducted surveys do indeed provide useful information, but it is typically at a rather crude level. Often respondents will simply be asked whether or not they believe in this or that paranormal phenomenon and given the response options of yes, no, and don’t know. A properly conducted survey will collect data from a large sample that is intended to be representative of the population from which it came, in terms of such demographic factors as age, socioeconomic class, gender, political preference, and so on. Such data allow researchers to compare demographic groups in terms of belief levels, providing the opportunity to test some interesting hypotheses or to generate some new ones.

For example, the 2019 YouGov survey of American adults referred to previously showed that Republicans were more likely than Democrats to believe in supernatural beings.30 This difference was most pronounced with respect to belief in demons, with 54 percent of Republicans reporting belief compared to 37 percent of Democrats. This almost certainly reflects the greater alignment of Republican views with those of fundamentalist Christians compared to Democrats, but this is an explanation that could be empirically tested in future studies.

One interesting general explanation that has been put forward in an attempt to explain differences in levels of paranormal belief between different demographic groups is the social marginality hypothesis. This hypothesis is based on the idea that those with relatively less influence and power within society will be more likely to adopt paranormal beliefs, presumably on the assumption that such magical thinking brings some sort of psychological compensation to believers. Thus, it would be predicted that, in general, lower socioeconomic class, female gender, ethnic minority status, younger age, and unemployment would all be associated with higher levels of paranormal belief. In fact, this hypothesis has not fared well in the face of empirical data. One possible exception is the consistent finding that females tend to report higher levels of paranormal belief than males (except for belief in aliens and cryptids, where males show higher levels of belief). Even here, there are alternative explanations for the findings. So it’s a case of “nice idea, shame about the data.”31

The astute reader may well by now have spotted a rather glaring oversimplification in some of the discussion of paranormal belief so far. It simply is not the case that paranormal belief is unidimensional. In fact, it is complex and multidimensional. For example, it is, of course, perfectly possible to believe in telepathy without believing in ghosts. Psychologists often use standardized questionnaires to measure psychological dimensions such as belief because, among other things, this allows for easier comparison of results between different studies. Furthermore, such scales have known psychometric properties, such as reliability and validity. A reliable test of a stable trait will give similar results on different occasions of testing. We can have confidence that a valid scale really is measuring what it is intended to measure.

Two of the most commonly used scales in the field reflect the different conceptions of the paranormal that were discussed earlier. The first of these, Thalbourne’s Australian Sheep-Goat Scale (ASGS), is reproduced in Box 1. As can be seen, the items on the scale focus solely on belief in and experience of the three core concepts of interest to parapsychologists: ESP, psychokinesis, and life after death. It is a very easy scale to administer and score. If you complete the questionnaire yourself, award yourself zero points for every response of False, one point for every response of Uncertain, and two points for every response of True. The most extreme skeptic would end up with a score of zero; the most extreme believer would have a score of 36. A group of 247 psychology students tested by Michael Thalbourne had an average score of 14.90 (standard deviation = 7.61).32 How did you do? Are you, relatively speaking, a believer or a skeptic?

You may be wondering about the somewhat unusual title of the scale. Within parapsychology, believers in the paranormal are referred to as sheep whereas skeptics are referred to as goats (based on a biblical reference).

Whereas Thalbourne’s scale is based on a strict definition of paranormal, the other most commonly used scale is based on a much looser definition. Jerome J. Tobacyk’s Revised Paranormal Belief Scale (RPBS) is reproduced in Box 2. As you can see, the items cover a much wider range than the ASGS. Furthermore, the scale provides both a global paranormal belief score as well as scores on different subscales. If you completed the scale, you may like to compare your scores to the mean scores (with standard deviation in parentheses) of 217 university students tested by Tobacyk. Their scores were as follows: Traditional Religious Belief: 6.3 (1.2); Psi: 3.1 (1.5); Witchcraft: 3.4 (1.7); Superstition: 1.6 (1.2); Spiritualism: 2.8 (1.4); Extraordinary Life Forms: 3.3 (1.3); Precognition: 3.0 (1.3). The students had a mean full-scale score of 89.1 (standard deviation = 21.9; note that the full-scale score is simply the grand total of the scores across all items).

This scale can be used to provide a profile of an individual’s paranormal belief in addition to an overall global score. Thus, two people with the same global scores may have very different profiles, highlighting the fact that paranormal belief is multidimensional. It should be noted that although the RPBS has been the subject of various criticisms, it continues to be widely used.33 It has proved itself to be a useful tool within the field. The fact that paranormal belief is multidimensional should always be kept in mind. It is likely that the psychological factors that lead to belief in ghosts may be very different from those that lead to belief in, say, telepathy.

Insights from Psychology

Psychology is often defined as “the study of mind and behavior.” As already stated, it is divided into subdisciplines, each of which is typically presented as a separate chapter in introductory textbooks. To a large extent, this is simply a matter of presentational convenience. In practice, there are few, if any, psychological topics that are exclusively within the remit of a single subdiscipline. To give but one example, a memory researcher is likely to be interested in how information is encoded, retained, accessed, and lost (cognitive psychology) as well as the underlying neural processes involved (neuropsychology), how memory changes across the life span (developmental psychology), and the influence of others on memory performance (social psychology).

The rest of this chapter will outline in general terms some of the ways anomalistic psychology gains insights from the various major subdisciplines of psychology. Some of these have already been touched on. For example, in investigating why people’s level of belief varies, we might consider individual differences in demographic and personality factors. As we’ve seen, the social marginality hypothesis, despite being intuitively appealing, did not stand up well in the face of empirical evidence. On the other hand, there are several personality variables, such as fantasy-proneness, absorption, dissociativity, and hypnotic susceptibility, that reliably correlate with paranormal belief and the tendency to report ostensibly paranormal experiences.

It was also pointed out previously that there exist a number of measures of psychopathological tendencies that reliably, albeit moderately, correlate with paranormal belief. Furthermore, it is widely accepted that sometimes serious psychopathology, such as certain types of schizophrenia, does involve delusions regarding paranormal beliefs (for example, that one is able to read other people’s minds or that one is broadcasting one’s thoughts to others). However, correlations between psychopathological tendencies and paranormal belief and experience within the general population are nowhere near strong enough to justify any simplistic claim that everyone reporting ostensibly paranormal experiences is suffering from serious psychopathology. But they do need to be taken into consideration in any comprehensive account of paranormal belief. Thus, clinical psychology may provide important insights. As we will see in later chapters, these associations with personality and psychopathological tendencies may provide a clue in explaining some accounts of paranormal experiences.

The psychobiological (or neuropsychological) perspective within psychology focuses primarily on the underlying neural substrate of mind and behavior. Most scientifically minded psychologists assume that ultimately all psychological phenomena are potentially explicable at this level of analysis. Although detailed and comprehensive accounts of psychological phenomena at this level are rare, insights from neuropsychology certainly help us to understand in broad terms such phenomena as sleep paralysis (chapter 2) and out-of-body and near-death experiences (chapter 7).

Chapters 8 and 9 consider insights that cognitive psychology can provide in understanding anomalous experiences and beliefs. The term cognition covers all aspects of information processing, including perception, memory, reasoning, language, and so on. The human cognitive system is amazing. During every second of your waking life, you are likely to be simultaneously engaged in several higher-order cognitive processes that, at the time of writing, even the world’s most powerful and sophisticated computers could not match (it is only a matter of time, though). Nevertheless, cognitive psychologists have identified a large number of cognitive biases that can reliably lead us to misperceive, misremember, and misinterpret events under certain circumstances. As we shall see, some of these biases can lead us to conclude that we have had a paranormal experience when, in fact, we have not.

One might have expected that evolutionary pressures would have eliminated such biases in favor of cognitive systems that unerringly produce accurate mental representations of the world around us. Evolutionary psychologists have provided a plausible account of why this has not happened. Essentially, their argument boils down to this: in evolutionary terms, it makes more sense to have cognitive systems that are quick and usually accurate rather than those that are slower and slightly more accurate. This line of argument and the evidence supporting it will be discussed further in chapter 9.

Social psychologists are interested in how we might be influenced by our interactions with others. It is undoubtedly the case that many people believe in paranormal phenomena not because they believe that they themselves have directly experienced the paranormal but because trusted others, such as friends and family, have told them of their experiences. The media’s role in promoting paranormal claims would also be a topic of interest to social psychologists. Techniques of persuasion would also come within the remit of social psychology. One particular example of this will be discussed in more detail in chapter 4: that is, the technique of cold reading, which you could use to convince complete strangers that you know all about them. Should you wish to convince people that you have psychic powers, this is a very useful skill to have.

Developmental psychologists are interested in changes and consistencies in our mental lives and behavior across the life span, from birth to old age.34 It is a commonly held view that, subjectively at least, children live in a more magical world than adults. This was certainly the view of the influential Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (1896–1980). He argued that it was not until around the age of twelve that children could reliably distinguish between reality and magic. Adults, by contrast, have outgrown childish magical thinking and instead think rationally about the world around them—or so it was once believed.

There is certainly no shortage of evidence that children do often engage in magical thinking. Most young children believe in such fantasy figures as Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy, not to mention scarier entities such as ghosts, monsters, and witches. Most believe that wishes made when blowing out the candles on a birthday cake are likely to come true. Many children take superstitious beliefs very seriously, such as avoiding stepping on cracks in the pavement or wishing on the first star seen in the evening.

Psychologists, such as Jacqueline Woolley and colleagues at the University of Texas in Austin, have reviewed the evidence relating to children’s magical thinking and carried out numerous investigations of children’s belief in fantastical beings (such as Santa and the Easter Bunny), the power of wishing (and praying), and so on.35 Summarizing a vast amount of empirical evidence, we can conclude that belief in magic is prevalent between the ages of three and eight years and peaks around five or six years. It is during this period that children engage in the highest levels of pretend play and are most likely to believe in imaginary playmates and other fantastical beings.

So, was Piaget right to view young children as being unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy? It turns out that the situation is a little more complicated than that. Even very young children do understand that there is a difference between the two. However, there are factors that might sometimes lead them to draw the wrong conclusion regarding the reality status of certain concepts. In addition to the fact that children have less knowledge and direct personal experience of the world around them, it turns out that most adults, especially parents, are engaged in a dastardly conspiracy to convince children that magic is indeed real. Films, books, and plays for children almost always include magic in the form of talking animals, fantastical creatures, and superhuman powers. We typically provide physical evidence for the existence of Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy. It makes sense for children to believe what their parents and other carers tell them, as they are more likely to avoid coming to harm that way—but that means they will also be likely to fall for blatant lies when adults tell them.

Having said that, even very young children do their best to establish the reality status of objects, whether they are contrasting real objects with toys, imagination, or pictures. They know that real objects have different properties to those in the latter categories and behave accordingly. Not surprisingly, children are very good at correctly judging that things that they have directly experienced, such as teachers, chocolate, and cars, are indeed real. But they sometimes struggle to make accurate judgments regarding objects that they have not directly experienced—such as dinosaurs, knights, and germs. As a result, children sometimes dismiss such real objects as being fictitious unless given specific evidence to the contrary. It is possible to be too skeptical!

It is also the case that adults sometimes attribute more magical thinking to children than is actually justified. This is nicely illustrated by an event that took place when my eldest daughter, Lucy, was little. Lucy, in common with an estimated 65 percent of children in general, had an imaginary playmate. Both my wife and I are psychologists, and we were well aware that this was perfectly normal and not a cause for concern. Lucy’s imaginary friend was called Gunda, and we were quite used to Lucy telling us what Gunda was up to and what Gunda had done or said that day.36 At the time, Lucy was an only child, and Gunda was pretty much just one of the family—albeit one that happened to be invisible and of unspecified gender. One day, when she was around six years old, Lucy told me something. I cannot now remember what it was, but I do recall that, as a joke, I replied, “I already know that. Gunda told me.” Lucy looked at me as if I was crazy and declared, “Gunda’s not real, you know!”

It is now thought that Piaget was somewhat overstating the case for children being unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy. So, was he at least right in claiming that adults generally live in a world of rational thought and rarely fall prey to magical thinking? Sadly, it turns out that he was mistaken in this view as well. Although adults are sometimes capable of rational thought, this book will amply demonstrate that adults also routinely engage in magical thinking. In fact, a team led by Christine Legare of the University of Texas at Austin has presented convincing evidence that supernatural explanations sometimes actually increase from childhood to adulthood.37

Legare and colleagues go further in that they point out that both natural and supernatural explanations are sometimes used simultaneously to explain the very same event. For example, the Azande people of Central Africa sometimes shelter from the heat of the sun in the shade beneath their grain silos. Every so often, a silo will collapse, killing the unfortunate person below. The Azande are perfectly happy to explain the collapse in terms of physical damage caused by termites. However, at the same time, they might claim that it collapsed at that precise moment in time, killing that particular individual, in terms of witchcraft. Similarly, in some South African communities, the scientific explanation of contracting AIDS (i.e., it is caused by a virus) was generally accepted. However, it was also believed that witchcraft could be involved, as witches might influence an individual to make an unwise choice of sexual partner.

Having considered in general terms the nature of anomalistic psychology, we are now ready to consider in more detail some of the specific topics of interest—beginning, in the next chapter, with the often terrifying experience of sleep paralysis.