Women and Superstitions - Part One

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It’s been a little while since I’ve gone in depth on this topic, so it’s probably a good opportunity for a recap! Especially after just having read Tall Tales About The Mind And Brain: Separating Fact From Fiction, edited by Sergio Della Sala.

I’m pulling together the literature review for my dissertation on beliefs of high school students in pseudoscience and the paranormal. I’d like to point out that I strongly avoid using the word/s ‘woo’ or ‘woo woo’ (even though I know that it’s sometimes popular when talking about belief in superstitions) because I’ve found too often that the judgmental elements inherent in it can detract from objectivism.

For my own part, nothing turns me off more than the ‘they’re just crazy!‘ attitude, especially calling the beliefs ‘crazy’ - as Dr Mark Henn wrote for my blog:

It is, in my opinion, quite possible to be an ardent believer in paranormal phenomena, even in one’s own paranormal abilities, through perfectly normal learning. If your own experience suggests psychic ability (say, you remember several dreams which, in retrospect, seem predictive of future events)… if you ask the best experts you know, and they verify it (say, your trusted school teachers and/or parents and/or members of your church or community)… if you have never been taught about confirmation bias, or about sensation, perception, memory, cognition… then your best explanation is a paranormal one.

To insist “there must be a mundane explanation” when your experience, your experts, and your learning all argue otherwise, is closed-minded (mind you, it would be correct… but for all the wrong reasons. And skepticism is a process, not an outcome).

It’s a struggle when particularly irked by some beliefs, but certainly something to keep in mind.

Recently a commentator on my blog entry about the recent discussion in the UK on legislating psychics, proposed the following theory: they’re a self-professed psychic who appears to claim that she provides a service that the police, psychologists, et al, don’t or cannot fulfill -

The reason that psychics use our gifts, is to help those in need who have been failed by other organizations, not to make FAST CASH! …Is it not possible that the services psychics and healers provide are not only helping with health issues, we are also helping people who are worrying themselves sick from having a nervous breakdown?… I hope there comes a day when people realize, that if they don’t want to consult a psychic…they shouldn’t make the call in the first place!!!

So, there’s several elements here that could be broken down as to why this sort of comment would be made, why people will choose to go to a psychic and why a ‘psychic’ would think that they can run a business with impunity. Much of it will take longer than one blog post… so here’s to the book reviews first!

Firstly my own study on paranormal beliefs isn’t particularly unique, but it will help me to sort out a few questions that have bugged me about particular published papers and books. The age range I’ve chosen is a little different to the majority of papers I’ve found (such as this one for a Masters of Science degree by Chad M. Lewis, using n=101 graduates and undergraduates; 36 males and 65 females between the ages of 18-25 - “There was no significant difference between males and females on whether they thought there was more to life than the physical world. An independent sample t-test indicated that females were significantly more spiritual than males on all other measures.“)

Oh, by the way - the picture is of me holding a Yorkie bar along with the books I’ll discuss. Yes, that is how they advertise that product: ‘Not for girls!’ Rather a sexist statement for a humble candy bar… but it does lead me to wonder if it’s as easy to call women ‘more superstitious’. Are females more superstitious or not?

Here’s a fairly well-known segment from Dr Michael Shermer’s book, Why People Believe Weird Things, on gender and belief:

In many ways the orthogonal relationship of intelligence and beliefs is not unlike that of gender and beliefs. With the surge of popularity of psychic mediums… at any given gathering (usually at large hotel conference rooms holding several hundred people, each of whom paid several hundred dollars to be there), that the vast majority (at least 75%) are women.

Little side note - do you remember Jon Ronson of the Guardian newspaper’s investigation of the Sylvia Browne ‘psychic sessions’ on a cruise ship tour? You’ll also see that the predominant accounts he gives are of female attendees too. So, to me that isn’t too much of an unreasonable statement to make initially. I do, however, urge more surveys of such psychic (and certainly skeptic) events for the benefit of further research.

Understandably, journalists inquire whether women, therefore, are more superstitious or less rational than men, who typically disdain such mediums and scoff at the notion of talking to the dead. Indeed, a number of studies have found that women hold more superstitious beliefs and accept more paranormal phenomena as real than men….The problem here is with limited sampling… For a variety of reasons related to the subject matter and style of reasoning, creationism, revisionism and UFOlogy are guy beliefs. [my emphasis]

I’d like to point out something here that might be overlooked: the publication date of this book. When Shermer was writing this text for the second time (the green-cover version you may know - oh, I discovered today there’s a new black-cover reprint out!) it was revised from its original 1997 publication and published in 2002. I have both copies here. In the first edition, gender is not mentioned when he discusses the Gallop poll of 1991 (p.26); in the 2002 edition, he discusses the 1974 study and a 1983 study (p.289).

Here’s where people might jump to the false conclusion that Shermer is talking about ‘guy beliefs’ on the basis of observations made about the conferences alone. After all, he did say ‘for a variety of reasons‘ - not ‘because I went to a conference and this is how I conclude about what I saw on that alone’!

For a start, Shermer’s already referenced two studies in that section (the previously mentioned Blum and Blum, 1974; Tobacyk and Milford, 1983) that do support that men tend towards one set of beliefs more than women. In addition, in the Bibliography, he references Alcock and Otis (1980); a 1991 Gallup poll; Hay and Morisy (1978 ) in the UK; McGarry and Newberry (1981) and the ever-popular Vyse’s ‘Believing in Magic‘ (1997).

So, although Shermer doesn’t expand on his point as to “guy beliefs” in detail, studies that would have been available prior to 2002 when he wrote the book include evidence that indeed indicate that women hold stronger beliefs in superstitions (Blum, 1976; Blum & Blum, 1974; Emme, 1940; Scheidt, 1973), astrology (Clarke, 1991; Emmons & Sobal, 1981; Salter & Routledge, 1971; Za’rour, 1972), hauntings (Haraldsson, 1985) psychic healing (Gray, 1990) and reincarnation (Gray, 1990).

In addition, research of that time period would also back up the assertion that men have relatively stronger beliefs in UFOs (Clarke, 1991; Gray, 1990) and in extraordinary life forms such as the Loch Ness monster (Tobacyk & Milford, 1983; Tobacyk & Pirttila-Backman, 1992); creationism and pro-centrist views (Harrold & Eve, 1987; Gallup 1991).

How much research he’s seen on the subject and studies done since 2002 might influence a possible future edition of this book - such as the 2005 Gallup poll which “shows no statistically significant differences among people by age, gender, education, race, and region of the country”. But certainly at this point I can see how the book would categorise certain beliefs as being more ‘female-friendly’. Certainly more female-friendly than the label on my Yorkie bar!

He then goes on:

… so while gender is related to the target of one’s beliefs, [e.g - it appears to be unrelated to the process of believing… There are no differences between men and women in the power of belief, only in what they choose to believe.

I could easily point out more anecdotal examples (sheesh!) to match Shermer’s and to join the earlier Ronson experience - because in Mary Roach’s ‘Spook‘ where her account in Chapter 7 (’Soul in a Dunce Cap - The Author Enrolls in a Medium School’) she primarily writes of the experiences of interacting with other male participants at the ‘Fundamentals of Mediumship’ course. Yet Dr Karen Stollznow, in the most recent Australian Skeptic Journal, writes in ‘How To Communicate With Murder Victims’ about attending the course of Nancy Bradley, mentions that there’s just a ’sole male psychic’ at the course.

‘The powerful belief/s’ is there regardless of gender - but I still wonder about what creates that belief which is discussed in a great variety of ways and and described quite differently at times in the papers I read. What makes ‘the choices’ happen in the first place?

As for limited sampling, I’d agree that a greater understanding as to why conferences apparently garner such enthusiasm with men and whether factors like child-rearing, female-orientated lectures, et al, play a part in whether or not women attend. But then better research into conferences held by non-believers in the paranormal is something I’ve discussed before too!

So, since I’ve gone into Shermer’s ‘Weird Things‘, which is clearly a useful reference text with several sites’ recommendations and college book-lists referring to it, I’d like to mention another older but just as useful reference text recommended to me by a friend - Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Extraordinary Phenomena of Behaviour and Experience by Leonard Zusne and Warren H. Jones.

Apparently (like Weird Things) it has been used as a reference text in a few courses that discuss elements of pseudoscience and the paranormal and is up to its second edition (I’m holding the first in the photo, but got the second - ‘…A Study of Magical Thinking’ - from the library… oddly, it’s much smaller the second time around!).

It’s got a wide range of topics and a great historical scope (about on par with Katz’s The Occult Tradition) - yet since I’m also seeking information on more contemporary ideas about beliefs and how newer technologies influence these… well, it was then I was pleased to discover what I think is a great modern addition to the ‘basics’ provided in Zusne and Jones’ work in Tall Tales About The Mind And Brain: Separating Fact From Fiction.

I first picked up ‘Tall Tales About the Mind and Brain’ because it featured an essay co-authored by Dr Krissie Wilson, who I interviewed for the TANK Vodcast at the Australian Skeptics Hobart Convention, ‘Cognitive factors underlying paranormal beliefs and experiences.’ This particular essay draws upon the elements that have been shown through various studies of beliefs that point towards ‘characteristics in general’ of believers in the paranormal.

‘Tall Tales…’ features a very cohesive and well-structured introduction to the studies on what contributing factors there could be. I was particularly impressed by the references - including Irwin’s research into correlations between paranormal belief and a deficit in syllogistic reasoning; Brugger and Graves’ use of a computer game in showing how believers of the paranormal jump too readily to conclusions; tendency to see patterns and meaning in noisy and random stimulus arrays by Pizzagalli et al.; French on false memory susceptibility in paranormal believers and the correlation between transliminality (Thalborne, 2003: ‘a hypothesised tendency for psychological material to cross - trans - the threshold - limen - into and out of consciousness’).

I was particularly interested in how the text mentions that ‘we are guilty of similar sins when we praise in skeptical publications ubsubstantiated claims solely because they come from our friends… cases in point are Susan Blackmore’s memes or Richard Wiseman’s Luck Factor’ - something that I had wondered about since I knew of some questions about the validity of ‘thinking lucky’ if you’re unable to achieve long-term residence in one location from the letters page of the Skeptical Inquirer, so I’ll have to ask more about that.

One of the highlights was the very informative chapter by the late Barry Beyerstein on ‘The neurology of the weird: brain states and anomalous experience’, with its emphasis on how the ‘study of anomalous subjective phenomena that are experienced by ostensibly normal individuals’ (no ‘crazy woo believers’ there!), fantasy prone-individuals, how rarely we consider dreams (’vivid hallucinations’) comprising one-twelfth of our lives and the role of brain composition. I wonder how he might have reacted to the February 2008 paper ‘Using Neuroimaging to Resolve the Psi Debate’ (Moulton & Kosslyn, 2008):

In the present study, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used in an effort ot document the existence of psi. … The researchers concluded: ‘These findings are the strongest evidence yet obtained against the existence of paranormal mental phenomena.‘

As you can probably guess, I just really enjoyed the variety in the book as a whole - bilingual minds, foreign accents, gay genes and the Mozart effect! I was particularly amused by the debunking of the ‘coma scene in Kill Bill’ that lead to Wijdicks’ paper in the journal Neurology. Very reminiscent of the studies that were presented at the 2007 World Science and Technology Education conference by Biotechnology Australia on the misrepresentation of cloning in movies!

Not surprisingly with a pedigree that includes articles previously published in the Skeptical Inquirer, I would suggest this as a very useful reference in terms of a contemporary look at many of the issues that have arisen from the traditional anomalistic beliefs discussed in Zusne and Jones’ book. I hope it reaches a few students doing college courses the same way Shermer’s and Zusne and Jones’ texts have.

Select References:

Blum, S. H. & Blum, L. H. (1974). Do’s and Don’ts: An Informal Study of some Prevailing Superstitions. Psychological Reports, 35, 567-571

Harrold, F.B & Eve, R. A. (1987) ‘Patterns of creationist belief among college students’ in Cult archaeology and creationism: Understanding pseudoscientific beliefs about the past. University of Iowa Press, Iowa. Sidman, M. (1960). Tactics of scientific research. New York: Basic Books.

Wolfradt, U. (1997). Dissociative Experiences, Trait Anxiety and Paranormal Beliefs. Personality and Individual Differences, 23, 15-19.

Wiseman, R. & Watt, C. (2004). Measuring superstitious belief: Why lucky charms matter. Personality and Individual Differences, 37, 1533-1541.

Zusne, L & W.H Jones. (1982). Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Extraordinary Phenomena of Behaviour and Experience. (1st ed.) Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Zusne, L. & W. H. Jones (1989). Anomalistic Psychology: A Study in Magical Thinking. (2d ed.) Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum.

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