Magical Ideation and Faulty Memory Correlate with Misbelief

Research into people who believe they have had paranormal experiences (such as alien abduction) reveals that certain personality traits and cognitive tendencies are more pronounced in these individuals compared to the general population. These traits can make people more susceptible to forming and holding misbeliefs.

Key Correlated Traits:

Faulty Memory (False Recall & Recognition):
- Some individuals have a greater tendency to "remember" events that never happened.
- In memory tests, they are more likely to falsely recall words that were not on a list but were thematically related, and to falsely recognize new words as ones they have seen before.
- This suggests a difficulty in distinguishing between genuine memories of an experience and details that were imagined or inferred later. This can lead to the construction of vivid but inaccurate memories of an event.
Magical Ideation:
- This is a tendency to believe in forms of causation that are not accepted by mainstream science.
- It includes beliefs in things like horoscopes, good-luck charms, telepathy, or the idea that thoughts can directly influence the physical world.
Perceptual Aberration & Openness to Absorbing:
- This involves a tendency to have unusual sensory experiences (e.g., sensing a presence, feeling energy from others) and a high capacity for becoming absorbed in fantasy and mental imagery.

Individuals who score high on these traits are more likely to interpret ambiguous or unusual experiences (like Sleep Paralysis Can Be Misinterpreted as a Paranormal Experience) through a paranormal or conspiratorial lens, and to construct and believe in detailed, but false, narratives about those experiences.

Tags: #psychology #personality #misbelief #memory #magical-thinking #cognition #paranormal