Dr. Savant
New
Hi,
I'm new in this forum although I have been aware of Skeptiko for a number of years. It is great that Skeptiko is alive and well.
A Finnish dissertation on neuro-cognitive factors and paranormal beliefs will be defended this Friday. One can freely download the summary part of the dissertation which is based on six (!) peer-reviewed publications:
https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/136509/neurocog.pdf?sequence=1
You can get the main point in the abstract (the following is an excerpt):
"The present thesis consists of six studies that investigate different cognitive factors that contribute to believing and unbelieving in paranormal, superstitious, magical, and supernatural (commonly referred to as paranormal beliefs)....One explanation that takes into account the difference between paranormal beliefs and other beliefs is that paranormal beliefs stem from core knowledge confusions about the ontological properties of mental, physical, and biological phenomena. ....The results [based on brain imagining] suggest that core knowledge confusions are based on intuitive world knowledge and that this intuitive world knowledge is less categorized among paranormal believers than among skeptics. Cognitive inhibition was also found to contribute to paranormal beliefs: strong cognitive inhibition downplays paranormal beliefs. Social information processing was connected to paranormal beliefs in several ways...Finally, we found out that paranormal believers were more prone to illusory face perception than skeptics were. The results underline that if one seeks to understand believing and especially unbelieving, which both are complex phenomena, individual differences in cognitive processing must be taken into account."
It is not such a great surprise that there are differences in a believer's and skeptic's brains :-). As you can see, there are quite prominent skeptics in Finland as well.
Regards,
Dr. Savant
Finland
I'm new in this forum although I have been aware of Skeptiko for a number of years. It is great that Skeptiko is alive and well.
A Finnish dissertation on neuro-cognitive factors and paranormal beliefs will be defended this Friday. One can freely download the summary part of the dissertation which is based on six (!) peer-reviewed publications:
https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/136509/neurocog.pdf?sequence=1
You can get the main point in the abstract (the following is an excerpt):
"The present thesis consists of six studies that investigate different cognitive factors that contribute to believing and unbelieving in paranormal, superstitious, magical, and supernatural (commonly referred to as paranormal beliefs)....One explanation that takes into account the difference between paranormal beliefs and other beliefs is that paranormal beliefs stem from core knowledge confusions about the ontological properties of mental, physical, and biological phenomena. ....The results [based on brain imagining] suggest that core knowledge confusions are based on intuitive world knowledge and that this intuitive world knowledge is less categorized among paranormal believers than among skeptics. Cognitive inhibition was also found to contribute to paranormal beliefs: strong cognitive inhibition downplays paranormal beliefs. Social information processing was connected to paranormal beliefs in several ways...Finally, we found out that paranormal believers were more prone to illusory face perception than skeptics were. The results underline that if one seeks to understand believing and especially unbelieving, which both are complex phenomena, individual differences in cognitive processing must be taken into account."
It is not such a great surprise that there are differences in a believer's and skeptic's brains :-). As you can see, there are quite prominent skeptics in Finland as well.
Regards,
Dr. Savant
Finland