Individuals Who Believe in the Paranormal Expose Themselves to Biased Information and develop More Causal Illusions than Nonbelievers in the Laboratory

In the reasoning literature, paranormal beliefs have been proposed to be linked to two related phenomena: a biased perception of causality and a biased information-sampling strategy (believers tend to test fewer hypotheses and prefer confirmatory information). In parallel, recent contingency learnin...

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Autores: Blanco, Fernando, Barberia, Itxaso, Matute Greño, Helena
Tipo de documento: artigo
Estado:Versão publicada
Data de publicação:2015
País:España
Recursos:Universidad de Barcelona
Repositório:Dipòsit Digital de la UB
OAI Identifier:oai:diposit.ub.edu:2445/104494
Acesso em linha:https://hdl.handle.net/2445/104494
Access Level:Acceso aberto
Palavra-chave:Parapsicologia
Al·lucinacions i il·lusions
Parapsychology
Hallucinations and illusions
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spelling Individuals Who Believe in the Paranormal Expose Themselves to Biased Information and develop More Causal Illusions than Nonbelievers in the LaboratoryBlanco, FernandoBarberia, ItxasoMatute Greño, HelenaParapsicologiaAl·lucinacions i il·lusionsParapsychologyHallucinations and illusionsIn the reasoning literature, paranormal beliefs have been proposed to be linked to two related phenomena: a biased perception of causality and a biased information-sampling strategy (believers tend to test fewer hypotheses and prefer confirmatory information). In parallel, recent contingency learning studies showed that, when two unrelated events coincide frequently, individuals interpret this ambiguous pattern as evidence of a causal relationship. Moreover, the latter studies indicate that sampling more cause-present cases than cause-absent cases strengthens the illusion. If paranormal believers actually exhibit a biased exposure to the available information, they should also show this bias in the contin- gency learning task: they would in fact expose themselves to more cause-present cases than cause-absent trials. Thus, by combining the two traditions, we predicted that believers in the paranormal would be more vulnerable to developing causal illusions in the laboratory than nonbelievers because there is a bias in the information they experience. In this study, we found that paranormal beliefs (measured using a questionnaire) correlated with causal illusions (assessed by using contingency judgments). As expected, this correlation was mediated entirely by the believers' tendency to expose themselves to more cause-present cases. The association between paranormal beliefs, biased exposure to information, and causal illusions was only observed for ambiguous materials (i.e., the noncontingent condition). In contrast, the participants' ability to detect causal relationships which did exist (i.e., the contingent condition) was unaffected by their susceptibility to believe in paranormal phenomenaPublic Library of Science (PLoS)2015info:eu-repo/semantics/articleinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersionapplication/pdfhttps://hdl.handle.net/2445/104494Articles publicats en revistes (Cognició, Desenvolupament i Psicologia de l'Educació)reponame:Dipòsit Digital de la UBinstname:Universidad de BarcelonaInglésReproducció del document publicat a: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0131378PLoS One, 2015, vol. 10, num. 7, p. e0131378https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0131378cc-by (c) Blanco, Fernando et al., 2015http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/esinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessoai:diposit.ub.edu:2445/1044942026-05-27T06:46:51Z
dc.title.none.fl_str_mv Individuals Who Believe in the Paranormal Expose Themselves to Biased Information and develop More Causal Illusions than Nonbelievers in the Laboratory
title Individuals Who Believe in the Paranormal Expose Themselves to Biased Information and develop More Causal Illusions than Nonbelievers in the Laboratory
spellingShingle Individuals Who Believe in the Paranormal Expose Themselves to Biased Information and develop More Causal Illusions than Nonbelievers in the Laboratory
Blanco, Fernando
Parapsicologia
Al·lucinacions i il·lusions
Parapsychology
Hallucinations and illusions
title_short Individuals Who Believe in the Paranormal Expose Themselves to Biased Information and develop More Causal Illusions than Nonbelievers in the Laboratory
title_full Individuals Who Believe in the Paranormal Expose Themselves to Biased Information and develop More Causal Illusions than Nonbelievers in the Laboratory
title_fullStr Individuals Who Believe in the Paranormal Expose Themselves to Biased Information and develop More Causal Illusions than Nonbelievers in the Laboratory
title_full_unstemmed Individuals Who Believe in the Paranormal Expose Themselves to Biased Information and develop More Causal Illusions than Nonbelievers in the Laboratory
title_sort Individuals Who Believe in the Paranormal Expose Themselves to Biased Information and develop More Causal Illusions than Nonbelievers in the Laboratory
dc.creator.none.fl_str_mv Blanco, Fernando
Barberia, Itxaso
Matute Greño, Helena
author Blanco, Fernando
author_facet Blanco, Fernando
Barberia, Itxaso
Matute Greño, Helena
author_role author
author2 Barberia, Itxaso
Matute Greño, Helena
author2_role author
author
dc.subject.none.fl_str_mv Parapsicologia
Al·lucinacions i il·lusions
Parapsychology
Hallucinations and illusions
topic Parapsicologia
Al·lucinacions i il·lusions
Parapsychology
Hallucinations and illusions
description In the reasoning literature, paranormal beliefs have been proposed to be linked to two related phenomena: a biased perception of causality and a biased information-sampling strategy (believers tend to test fewer hypotheses and prefer confirmatory information). In parallel, recent contingency learning studies showed that, when two unrelated events coincide frequently, individuals interpret this ambiguous pattern as evidence of a causal relationship. Moreover, the latter studies indicate that sampling more cause-present cases than cause-absent cases strengthens the illusion. If paranormal believers actually exhibit a biased exposure to the available information, they should also show this bias in the contin- gency learning task: they would in fact expose themselves to more cause-present cases than cause-absent trials. Thus, by combining the two traditions, we predicted that believers in the paranormal would be more vulnerable to developing causal illusions in the laboratory than nonbelievers because there is a bias in the information they experience. In this study, we found that paranormal beliefs (measured using a questionnaire) correlated with causal illusions (assessed by using contingency judgments). As expected, this correlation was mediated entirely by the believers' tendency to expose themselves to more cause-present cases. The association between paranormal beliefs, biased exposure to information, and causal illusions was only observed for ambiguous materials (i.e., the noncontingent condition). In contrast, the participants' ability to detect causal relationships which did exist (i.e., the contingent condition) was unaffected by their susceptibility to believe in paranormal phenomena
publishDate 2015
dc.date.none.fl_str_mv 2015
dc.type.none.fl_str_mv info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
format article
status_str publishedVersion
dc.identifier.none.fl_str_mv https://hdl.handle.net/2445/104494
url https://hdl.handle.net/2445/104494
dc.language.none.fl_str_mv Inglés
language_invalid_str_mv Inglés
dc.relation.none.fl_str_mv Reproducció del document publicat a: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0131378
PLoS One, 2015, vol. 10, num. 7, p. e0131378
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0131378
dc.rights.none.fl_str_mv cc-by (c) Blanco, Fernando et al., 2015
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
rights_invalid_str_mv cc-by (c) Blanco, Fernando et al., 2015
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es
eu_rights_str_mv openAccess
dc.format.none.fl_str_mv application/pdf
dc.publisher.none.fl_str_mv Public Library of Science (PLoS)
publisher.none.fl_str_mv Public Library of Science (PLoS)
dc.source.none.fl_str_mv Articles publicats en revistes (Cognició, Desenvolupament i Psicologia de l'Educació)
reponame:Dipòsit Digital de la UB
instname:Universidad de Barcelona
instname_str Universidad de Barcelona
reponame_str Dipòsit Digital de la UB
collection Dipòsit Digital de la UB
repository.name.fl_str_mv
repository.mail.fl_str_mv
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score 15,300719

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