EXPLANATIONS FOR ANOMALOUS EXPERIENCE

LEARNING OBJECTIVES Refer to research findings into personality factors underlying anomalous experience in order to discuss them.

RESEARCH FINDINGS TOBACYK ET AL. (1988 ) Found a link between locus of control, superstitious behaviour and paranormal belief KUMAR ET AL. (1993) Found that sensation- seeking personality scores were related to both a greater paranormal belief and a greater number of reported paranormal experiences.

GIANOTTI ET AL (2001) Found a high positive correlation between belief in the paranormal and creative personality (people with high paranormal belief generated more original words in a word task than others.

Lynn and Rhue (1988) suggest some individuals are more prone to fantasising than others and that these fantasies become very real. Irwin (1991) found a correlation between fanatasy proneness and belief. FANTASY PRONENESS

PERSONALITY FACTORS Ramakrishna (2001) tested a group of early adolescent high-school students in India for a correlation between personality traits and performance on ESP tasks. Psi hitters = good performance Psi missers = poor performance

Warm, sociable Good natured, easy going Assertive, self-assured Tough Enthusiastic Talkative Cheerful Quick, alert Adventuresome, impulsive Emotional Carefree Realistic, practical Relaxed composed Tense Excitable Frustrated Demanding Impatient Dependent Sensitive Timid Threat-sensitive Shy Withdrawn Submissive Suspicious Depression-prone FINDINGS

HOWEVER When the ESP tests were administered to a group of people at once, the findings change. Why might this be? Deindividuation? What do we conclude from this? Anomalistic research is prone to confounding variables that need to be controlled before firm conclusions can be drawn?

EXTROVERTS AND INTROVERTS In many studies, extroverts score better on ESP tasks than introverts (Palmer 1978, Palmer and Carpenter, 1998).

Honorton et al (1998) did a meta analysis of 38 experiments. Extroverts scored higher in 77% of them. But can the results be generalised? Experimental situations are very artificial. There might be other variables causing the effect.

THE TENDENCY TO FIND LINKS (WHERE THERE ARE NONE) Brugger and Graves (1997) Participants were presented with random dot pattern images and asked to identify the images within them. Believers were more able than non- believers to find non-existent images.

CAN YOU SEE THE PICTURE? There is an animal in the following slide, but not everyone will see it… Can you?

Research in the 1980s and 90s found a link between psychic ability and the ability to be hypnotised. However, these findings are hard to replicate.

SCHIZOTYPY

SCHIZOTYPAL PERSONALITY Schizotypal personality disorder is characterized by someone who has great difficulty in establishing and maintaining close relationships with others. A person with schizotypal personality disorder may have extreme discomfort with such relationships, and therefore have less of a capacity for them. Someone with this disorder usually has cognitive or perceptual distortions as well as eccentricities in their everyday behavior. Individuals with Schizotypal Personality Disorder often have ideas of reference (e.g., they have incorrect interpretations of casual incidents and external events as having a particular and unusual meaning specifically for the person). People with this disorder may be unusually superstitious or preoccupied with paranormal phenomena that are outside the norms of their subculture.

ARGUMENT Schizotypy is a disorder and so it is questionable whether it can be regarded as a personality factor.