SPR Study Day - The Psychology of the Sceptic

[Limbo]

The Polarization of Psi Beliefs: Rational, Controlling, Masculine Skepticism versus Interconnected, Spiritual, Feminine Belief

ABSTRACT: Anecdotal observations suggest that the extreme skeptics of paranormal phenomena tend to be males who place great value on rational thinking and control, and often feel threatened by and hostile toward those with different beliefs and values. These characteristics are consistent with the emerging evidence that males have genetic tendencies for social dominance and rational thinking. Research on the relationship between religion and belief in psi has given mixed results but suggests that belief may be more related to personal spirituality than to institutionalized religion. As a first step in understanding the polarization of psi beliefs, gender and spirituality were examined for extreme skeptics and extreme believers in psi from a Canadian representative national survey. For the extreme skeptics, 72% were male and 62% did not consider spirituality important. For the extreme believers, 64% were females and 86% considered spirituality important. These and other findings suggest that skepticism and belief in psi may be associated with genetic, sex-related personality factors. Research on paranormal beliefs may be hindered by the failure to distinguish belief in psi as a human ability versus as divine intervention.

 

[godless dave]

Valuing rational thinking is hardly a negative trait. If that study says most skeptics are skeptics because they value rational thinking, then I'd be inclined to agree. I am not at all convinced that any gender disparity is due to biology rather than social pressure, but I suppose it is possible.

 

[godless dave]

Has anyone read this:

Parapsychology and the Skeptics

Here are some excerpts:

http://www.parapsychologyandtheskeptics.com/P&Ssamples.pdf

An interview with the author:

http://www.skeptiko.com/get.php?web=skeptiko-2008-05-01-65144.mp3

Transcript of the interview:

http://www.skeptiko.com/blog/?p=8

I skimmed both. The book excerpt is full of appeals to authority, without any actual evidence. In the interview, the author claims that skeptics are ignoring the evidence because of their preconceived notions - but doesn't present any of the evidence he claims they're ignoring. He does allude to a video in what he calls his "Dogs that know" project (which I thought was Sheldrake's, but I could be mistaken). Apparently, it shows a dog waiting for its owner to return home in a particular spot. Why this is supposed to be evidence for anything is beyond me. My cats do the same thing at 6 pm and at 8 pm - because they know about what time of day my girlfriend (6 pm) and I (8 pm) usually get home. I'm sure most dog owners are familiar with this behavior, so I'm not sure what it's supposed to demonstrate.

 

[Beth]

Thank you Limbo and Ersby. That was quite interesting!

 

[Limbo]

Valuing rational thinking is hardly a negative trait. If that study says most skeptics are skeptics because they value rational thinking, then I'd be inclined to agree. I am not at all convinced that any gender disparity is due to biology rather than social pressure, but I suppose it is possible.

Do you value spirituality? Do you consider spirituality important? Are you hostile toward those with different beliefs and values?

 

[godless dave]

Do you value spirituality? Do you consider spirituality important? Are you hostile toward those with different beliefs and values?

No to all three.

 

[Limbo]

No to all three.

I believe you're not being honest...I think deep down your hidden answer to #3 is yes.

You seem to fit the bill of a threatened, hostile, control freak pseudo-skeptic. I wouldn't expect someone like you to evaluate parapsychological research fairly...you're too threatened by it and hostile toward it to be fair and rational about it. I would side with Interconnected, Spiritual, Feminine Belief instead of people like you as a matter of principle.

Do not insult other posters. Remember, attack the argument not the arguer.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Cuddles

 

[godless dave]

I believe you're not being honest...I think deep down your hidden answer to #3 is yes.

And you believe this why? I invite you to do a search of my forum posts and point out any that reveal such hostility. I've only been here 18 months so it shouldn't bog down the search engine too much.

 

[tyr_13]

I believe you're not being honest...I think deep down your hidden answer to #3 is yes.

You seem to fit the bill of a threatened, hostile, control freak pseudo-skeptic. I wouldn't expect someone like you to evaluate parapsychological research fairly...you're too threatened by it and hostile toward it to be fair and rational about it. I would side with Interconnected, Spiritual, Feminine Belief instead of people like you as a matter of principle.

Um, what? So are you just going to claim that anyone who disagrees with the literature you posted is just hostile?

GD didn't get hostile. Here, as an example, I'll show you. Hostile is, "You're a ****ing moron, because those studies are ****." Not hostile is, "The book excerpt is full of appeals to authority, without any actual evidence."

 

[Ersby]

I've read both the Chris Carter (not the X-Files guy) thing and the JE Kennedy paper. I thought about talking about Kennedy's findings, but it was based on a subset (just three questions) of a Canadian survey so I thought it's findings were fairly limited.

Chris Carter's book is one that gets quoted quite a lot these days. It doesn't talk about the psychology of belief at all, as far as I can see. Plus, does anyone have a reference for the claim that museums across Europe chucked out their collection of meteorites? I've read up on this subject fairly extensively in academic books and no one else - not even those books with a cynical attitude towards the estblishment - mentions this.

 

[Ersby]

I believe you're not being honest...I think deep down your hidden answer to #3 is yes.

If you're going to make up the answer, there's no point in asking the question.

 

[Ersby]

I would side with Interconnected, Spiritual, Feminine Belief instead of people like you as a matter of principle.

And way back on page two I wrote...

It seems to me that people have become distracted by the inclusive nature of parapsychology (inter-connectedness, vague talk about energies, field consciousness) and assume that sceptics are against that rather than against what they see as shoddy science and a waste of resources.

Take faith-healing (an extreme example, but it serves as an illustration). Some people see that as a manifestation of God’s love, and to be against it, you must be against God’s love. Similarly I often get the impression that people think to be against parapsychology, you must be against feelings and empathy and intuition. And to be against psychic mediums, you must be against family love and relationships.

Certainly, before WW2, when pseudoscience was trying it’s best to be divisive (phrenology, physiognomy) the shoe was on the other foot and it was the sceptics who must’ve seemed like the lovely inclusive friendly ones.

 

[plumjam]

And you believe this why? I invite you to do a search of my forum posts and point out any that reveal such hostility. I've only been here 18 months so it shouldn't bog down the search engine too much.

Just to save Limbo the trouble, in this very interesting thread of his, here's a link to a post you made in my Catholics/Evolutionists thread in which you quoted a post of mine, but changed my wording in order to accuse me of being a liar.
You did this, I can only assume, as an act of hostility due to your beliefs in the area of evolution being questioned / made fun of.
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4194989&postcount=42

Maybe Limbo has greater psi ability than he's been letting on.

 

[godless dave]

Just to save Limbo the trouble, in this very interesting thread of his, here's a link to a post you made in my Catholics/Evolutionists thread in which you quoted a post of mine, but changed my wording in order to accuse me of being a liar.
You did this, I can only assume, as an act of hostility due to your beliefs in the area of evolution being questioned / made fun of.
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4194989&postcount=42

No, I did that as an act of hostility toward people who tell lies. I proudly admit to being hostile to dishonesty.

 

[Cuddles]

Um, what? So are you just going to claim that anyone who disagrees with the literature you posted is just hostile?

I'd only read a couple of pages of this thread when I made my last post. I must be psychic:

In this case, Limbo is taking the usual dishonest position of saying, to paraphrase, "Skeptics doubted X and it turned out to be true, therefore all skeptics are big meanies who dismiss everything out of hand.".

 

[plumjam]

No, I did that as an act of hostility toward people who tell lies. I proudly admit to being hostile to dishonesty.

Hmm.. what you did was accuse me of being a liar. Yet neither in that original post or any following ones did you attempt to substantiate the claim.
Also, if you're so 'hostile to dishonesty' why would you have used the dishonest tactic of quoting me while changing my words to make it appear I wrote something of a contrary meaning to that which I intended?
If your purpose is to combat what you personally interpret as dishonesty, then using tactics which everyone else will easily acknowledge as dishonest is very unlikely to work out.

It seems like you're gonna try to get out of your current bind by simply labeling whatever challenges your own most dearly held beliefs about reality as examples of dishonesty.
You're really playing into Limbo's hands, can't you see?

Anyway, end of derail.

 

[cj.23]

Actually presumably scepticism as a subset of human behaviour has a distinct psychology - I'm wondering what marks it now. I recall using Michaeal Thalbourne's New Australian Sheep/Goat scale a few times - I may actually still have it on my pc. Some years ago I administered it to my ghosthunting group of 14 individuals, and only two of us came out as "sheep" believers, with a mean far in to goatland. This was a group who was drawn from folks I met through the Most Haunted forum as well! Surprisingly, I was actually a strong believer, which makes me wonder where the average lies on it. Oh well!

cj x

 

[fls]

Has anyone read this:

Parapsychology and the Skeptics

Here are some excerpts:

http://www.parapsychologyandtheskeptics.com/P&Ssamples.pdf

Since this author continues the fairly odd practice of considering only examples that were originally doubtful and later became established, I guess it's probably not happenstance. This seems to suggest that believers have a way to tell beforehand whether or not something will turn out to be true, or that what they believe and what is true they consider to be the same. I'm very skeptical of the first claim, since humans have a terrible track record of figuring out what is real before the careful collection of evidence helps to clarify the issue, and I have yet to see any information that supports the idea that believers are immune to the same errors in thinking that plague everyone else. Which leaves me with the second claim. Limbo very helpfully followed up her/his post with an example of that second claim. "Skeptics are hostile to those with different beliefs" remains true regardless of whether she/he is given conflicting information. This makes it doubtful that believers' statements about evidence are reliable and valid on their face (please note that I used Limbo as an illustrative example, not as the source for this idea).

If parapsychologists sincerely wish to persuade scientists and other skeptics that their evaluations are reliable and valid, they should provide examples of beliefs that they discarded and how they discovered that they weren't true.

Linda

 

[fls]

Actually presumably scepticism as a subset of human behaviour has a distinct psychology - I'm wondering what marks it now. I recall using Michaeal Thalbourne's New Australian Sheep/Goat scale a few times - I may actually still have it on my pc. Some years ago I administered it to my ghosthunting group of 14 individuals, and only two of us came out as "sheep" believers, with a mean far in to goatland. This was a group who was drawn from folks I met through the Most Haunted forum as well! Surprisingly, I was actually a strong believer, which makes me wonder where the average lies on it. Oh well!

cj x

Did you expect most everyone to be a sheep and for you to be one of the least sheep-like?

Linda

 

[cj.23]

Did you expect most everyone to be a sheep and for you to be one of the least sheep-like?

Linda

Yep. The Sheep/Goat scale of Thalbourne's replaced included religious beliefs, and some other stuff. Given my sample was ghosthunters who watch some pretty dire paranormal TV and who were willing to stump up good money to go on ghost investigations, I rather expected them to have noticiebale higher paranormal beliefs than the average. I'd assumed the test was calibrated so a 0, neither sheep not goat, was roughly what the national average would be. Instead they all scored negative, well in to goat territory except one lady who was a "posychic medium" who scored marginally higher than me. As I regard myself as intensely sceptical, and am not convinced by most "paranormal" claims i was amazed to find my score so much higher then the average. As one of them said, "given that most of us do not actually believe in the possibility of a genuine ghost I do wonder why we bother to som on these events!"

It could be that there has been a major shift in public attitudes since the scale was created, around 1983 I believe off the top of my head. The sample was too small to say much - but a major study was conducted with it in a British high school population around 1994 or 5 if I recall correctly, I'll have to see how they scored...

cj x

cj x