Higher education produces mystical belief

F

firecross

Scientist
Registered Senior Member
Believe it or not, higher education is linked to a greater tendency to believe in ghosts and other paranormal phenomena, according to a new study.

Contrary to researchers' expectations, a poll of 439 college students found seniors and grad students were more likely to believe in haunted houses, psychics, telepathy, channeling and a host of other questionable ideas.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060120/sc_space/highereducationfuelsstrongerbeliefinghosts
 
The study was done in Oklahoma. I wonder if the same results would have been obtained in California or Massachusetts...
 
If the poll was done centuries ago, you would of found people that only had the theatre as a form of entertainment (or book reading etc) potentially huddled in a palour doing a ouija board or something similar.

Quite simply to some its a "social" passtime, perhaps to "scare" a girlfriend, or have a laugh with friends etc. Thats what I would suggest accounts for the figures (And of course delusion set by "Parapsychology" being gratified as a real study.)
 
Perhaps those people who were in the study just happened to be more open minded and accepting of such ideas. Don't forget it's also more "cool" to believe in wicca etc today, look at all the media on such things, including the tv programmes like "most haunted".
 
errr, dont really dig tepoint of original poster's meanig. isyou saying one has to be highly educated to believein ghosts etc. i kno of many people considered UNeducated who believe in them, etc
 
No, the post just says that in that particular area it was found that a bigger proportion of educated people believed in these things than uneducated people.
 
Interesting, but the title of this thread is misleading.
Mystical belief is met in most humans from Argentina to Kamchatka,
among those living in jungle with no classical education at all and among the scientists of NASA as well.
Mystical belief is produced by the human brain and is hardwired in the way we tend to perceive and explain our environment.

People with higher education in general know more,
thus they have perceived more and have more information of which to make sense of.
 
Avatar said:
Interesting, but the title of this thread is misleading.
Mystical belief is met in most humans from Argentina to Kamchatka,
among those living in jungle with no classical education at all and among the scientists of NASA as well.
Mystical belief is produced by the human brain and is hardwired in the way we tend to perceive and explain our environment.

People with higher education in general know more,
thus they have perceived more and have more information of which to make sense of.
Click to expand...
I agree.

And the poll itself is actualy faulty because it assumes a cause/effect that is not in evidence. Just as you've said, the same poll could be conducted in some very remote and primitive area with absolutely NO access to formal education and the score would almost certainly be even higher.

And what if it it were conducted on a comparison basis, say between 10 and 14-year-olds. What would that prove? Probably nothing either.

I say the whole conclusion is bogus.
 
And the poll itself is actualy faulty because it assumes a cause/effect that is not in evidence.
Click to expand...

No. Actually, the poll doesn't make any claim of causation. All it does is point to an apparent correlation between greater education and greater propensity to believe in the paranormal.

Just as you've said, the same poll could be conducted in some very remote and primitive area with absolutely NO access to formal education and the score would almost certainly be even higher.
Click to expand...

You're missing the point. This poll compares uneducated Americans with educated ones. Under the same circumstances (apart from education), the more education there is, the more belief increases, according to the results.
 
Perhaps the more educated you are, the more you question current science and hold your own thoughts and beliefs, in fact I think anyone who doesn't question anything is less educated
 
But if being more educated makes you question more, then wouldn't you expect educated people to question paranormal ideas more, rather than accepting them without good evidence?
 
James R said:
But if being more educated makes you question more, then wouldn't you expect educated people to question paranormal ideas more, rather than accepting them without good evidence?
Click to expand...

This is a good call. I tend not to believe the results of the study as well.
 
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