Paranormal Beliefs: Bias in Cause and Effect?
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Why do some people see patterns that aren't really there?
Paranormal believers unknowingly seek evidence that confirms their beliefs, creating self-fulfilling illusions.
In a psychology laboratory in Spain, 2015, researchers investigated why some people develop strong convictions about supernatural phenomena while others remain skeptical. They suspected the answer might lie not in what believers see, but in what they choose to look at.
Key Findings
- People with stronger paranormal beliefs fell for fake cause-and-effect patterns significantly more often than skeptics.
- This happened because believers actively chose to examine more 'hits' (cases where the potential cause was present) than 'misses' (cases where it was absent)—like only counting the times you dreamt about someone and they called, while ignoring all the times they called without you dreaming about them.
- However, this bias only emerged when the actual relationship between events was unclear or ambiguous.
What Is This About?
Participants first filled out questionnaires measuring their belief in paranormal phenomena like precognition or telepathy. Then they completed computerized tasks where they could choose which information to view—specifically, whether to see more examples of a potential 'cause' paired with an 'effect' or examples where the cause was absent. Some of the cause-effect relationships were real, while others were random coincidences designed to create false impressions of causality. The researchers tracked exactly which information participants chose to examine and how strongly they believed in the patterns afterward.
Participants completed paranormal belief questionnaires and contingency learning tasks where they could choose to sample cause-present versus cause-absent information to judge causal relationships.
Paranormal believers showed stronger causal illusions than non-believers, an effect entirely mediated by their biased sampling of confirmatory (cause-present) cases, but only when the underlying contingency was ambiguous.
How Good Is the Evidence?
The study found that the link between paranormal beliefs and false pattern recognition was 100% mediated by information sampling bias—meaning if believers hadn't chosen to view more confirming cases, the correlation would have disappeared entirely.
Supporters of paranormal phenomena might argue that this shows believers are more sensitive to subtle patterns in reality and less constrained by materialist assumptions. Skeptics counter that it confirms paranormal beliefs stem from cognitive biases and faulty reasoning—specifically, confirmation bias and a failure to consider disconfirming evidence—rather than actual supernatural abilities.
Mainstream: Paranormal beliefs are cognitive errors caused by biased information seeking and failure to consider base rates. Moderate: Some cognitive styles make people more prone to see connections, which explains both paranormal beliefs and certain creative insights, though not necessarily psychic powers. Frontier: Believers might be tapping into real but subtle patterns that materialist science misses, and their 'bias' is actually heightened sensitivity to meaningful coincidences.
This study does NOT prove that paranormal abilities are real; rather, it demonstrates that believers may be more skilled at fooling themselves through selective attention. The 'predictions' were statistical illusions created by the participants' own browsing behavior, not evidence of psychic power.
To determine whether paranormal beliefs reflect genuine abilities or merely cognitive biases, we would need experimental studies where believers predict specific future events under strictly controlled, pre-registered conditions significantly better than chance, while sampling information randomly rather than selectively. This study meets the criteria for identifying cognitive mechanisms behind belief formation, but does not test whether paranormal claims can be verified under controlled conditions.
this correlation was mediated entirely by the believers' tendency to expose themselves to more cause-present cases
Stance: Skeptical
What Does It Mean?
Like checking your horoscope only on days when something dramatic happens, then concluding astrology works because you only remember the 'hits' and forget all the days the prediction was wrong.
This study illustrates the importance of testing both 'hits' and 'misses' when evaluating claims—looking only at successful predictions while ignoring failures creates a distorted picture of reality.
Understanding Terms
What This Study Claims
Findings
The relationship between paranormal beliefs and causal illusions is entirely mediated by believers' tendency to expose themselves to more cause-present cases than cause-absent cases.
moderateParanormal beliefs correlate with the development of causal illusions in laboratory contingency learning tasks.
moderateThe association between paranormal beliefs and causal illusions only occurs when the materials are ambiguous (low contingency), not when the actual relationship is clear.
moderateInterpretations
Believers actively create their own illusion-reinforcing experience through biased information sampling strategies, rather than merely interpreting the same information differently.
moderateThis summary is for general information about current research. It does not constitute medical advice. The scientific interpretation of these results is debated among researchers. If personally affected, please consult qualified professionals.