Supernatural Experiences: Suggestibility Holds the Key?
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Why do some people sense ghosts while others never do?
Personality traits predict nearly one-fifth of who reports supernatural experiences.
In 2021, a team of psychologists sought to create a reliable way to measure who experiences the impossible. Working with 613 English adults—roughly split between men and women with an average age of 34—they adapted a Spanish psychological tool designed to separate genuine anomalous experiences from personality quirks. This matters because without good measurement, science cannot distinguish between someone who truly 'sensed' something unusual and someone who just has an active imagination.
Key Findings
- The questionnaire worked: it reliably sorted into five categories, including 'Anomalous Perceived Phenomena' (the weird stuff) and four personality-related factors like 'Altered States of Consciousness' and 'Clinical Personality Tendencies.' Most importantly, three psychological traits together explained 18.3% of why some people report more supernatural experiences than others.
- This suggests that while personality plays a real role in these reports, the vast majority of what makes someone experience the 'paranormal' remains unexplained by psychology alone.
What Is This About?
The researchers translated and tested a comprehensive questionnaire called the MMSI-2, which asks about things like seeing apparitions, feeling watched, or experiencing odd coincidences. They wanted to see if the questions clustered into meaningful groups—like separating 'actual weird experiences' from 'tendency to fantasize' or 'mental health symptoms.' They had participants take the survey twice (weeks apart) to check if answers stayed consistent. Then they used statistical techniques to see if personality traits could predict who reported the most anomalous experiences.
Adaptation and validation of the MMSI-2 questionnaire using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, omega reliability coefficients, and test-retest designs in 613 participants.
Confirmed five-factor structure; clinical personality, suggestibility, and altered consciousness predicted 18.3% of variance in anomalous experience reports.
How Good Is the Evidence?
18.3% of the variance explained—meaning personality factors account for roughly one-fifth of the differences between people in reporting supernatural experiences. In comparison, studies of anxiety or depression often find genetics explains 30-40% of variance, suggesting environmental factors, culture, or perhaps genuine unknown phenomena play larger roles in anomalous experiences.
Proponents argue this tool finally lets researchers identify 'high psi' individuals for experiments, separating genuine anomalies from noise. Skeptics counter that the 18% prediction rate actually demonstrates these experiences are primarily personality-driven artifacts, and that studying the believers rather than the phenomena themselves misses the point of paranormal research.
Mainstream psychology views this as evidence that supernatural reports are personality-based cognitive biases. Moderate parapsychologists see it as mapping the psychological profile of 'psi-sensitive' individuals. Frontier theorists might argue the personality traits are actually sensitivity to genuine but subtle environmental or quantum effects.
Many assume finding psychological predictors of supernatural experiences proves those experiences are 'just imagination.' In reality, this study only shows who reports them, not whether the experiences have objective reality—just as knowing anxious people report more headaches doesn't prove headaches are imaginary.
To determine whether these questionnaire scores reflect genuine psi sensitivity or merely suggestibility, researchers would need to test whether high scorers perform better than chance in blinded telepathy or precognition tasks. This study establishes that the tool measures something consistent, but not whether that 'something' is paranormal ability.
The authors concluded the English MMSI-2 was a valid and reliable test for the evaluation of anomalous phenomena but recommend that subsequent research reviews the predictive quality of the underlying model.
Stance: Mixed
What Does It Mean?
Like how some people are 'glass half full' optimists while others worry constantly, this study suggests some personalities are simply more prone to noticing—or interpreting as supernatural—the strange coincidences and odd sensations that everyone encounters occasionally.
A questionnaire is only useful if it produces consistent results (reliability) and actually measures the concept it targets (validity)—this study focused on proving both for supernatural experience surveys.
Understanding Terms
What This Study Claims
Findings
The MMSI-2 has a valid internal structure consisting of five macrofactors: Clinical Personality Tendencies (CPT), Anomalous Perceived Phenomena (APP), Incoherent Manipulations (IMA), Altered States of Consciousness (ASC), and Openness (OP).
moderateTest-retest reliability was excellent for all scales and factors, though omega coefficients for CPT and OP factors were low but acceptable.
moderatePsychological factors (CPT, IMA, and ASC) predicted 18.3% of the variance of anomalous experiences (APP).
moderateInterpretations
The English MMSI-2 is a valid and reliable test for the evaluation of anomalous phenomena.
moderateLimitations
Subsequent research should review the predictive quality of the underlying model.
strongThis 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.