This study investigated the relationship between reported out-of-body experiences, certain psychological variables and personality characteristics. One hundred and sixtyseven participants completed a series of questionnaires to investigate differences amongst those participants reporting out-of-body experiences and those who were classified as believers or non-believers on: fantasy proneness, p...

The present investigation tested the hypothesis that, as an aspect of schizotypal thinking, the formation of paranormal beliefs was related to spreading activation characteristics within semantic networks. From a larger student population (n = 117) prescreened for paranormal belief, 12 strong believers and 12 strong disbelievers (all women) were invited for a lateralized semantic priming task w...

Psychological change is difficult to assess, in part because self-reported beliefs and attitudes may be biased or distorted. The present study probed belief change, in an educational context, by using the hindsight bias to counter another bias that generally plagues assessment of subjective change. Although research has indicated that skepticism courses reduce paranormal beliefs, those findings...

Near-death experiences, profound subjective events experienced on the threshold of death, have been extensively studied over the past decade. These near-death experiences (NDEs) often include events with apparently paranormal features. In one study (Greyson & Stevenson, 1980), 75% of subjects reported out-of-body experiences, 49% reported an apparitional experience, 39% reported apparent extras...

This paper considers two main questions: (1) What is the relationship between paranormal experience and transpersonal experience? (2) What is the relationship between transpersonal psychology and parapsychology? I look at examples of experiences that may be considered both paranormal and transpersonal and at how these two realms of experience have been associated throughout history and across c...

The relationships among paranormal beliefs\ locus of control and psychiatric symptomatology were investigated in a Turkish college sample of 249 participants "122 females and 006 males#[ The data were collected with the Turkish version of Tobacyk|s revised Paranormal Belief Scale "PBS!R#\ Rotter|s Internal! External Locus of Control Scale "IELOC#\ and Symptom Check List!89!Revised "SCL!89!R#[ S...

This study investigated the potential for comics to promote skepticism about paranormal. Participants rated their interest in comics, read a skeptical account of alleged paranormal phenomena one three mediums (text, comic, and comic containing an interactive magic trick), then engagement, recall. The text was as more interesting entertaining than participants' prior positively correlated with e...

Since its introduction, the Revised Paranormal Belief Scale (RPBS) has developed into a principal measure of belief in the paranormal. Accordingly, the RPBS regularly appears within parapsychological research. Despite common usage, academic debates continue to focus on the factorial structure of the RPBS and its psychometric integrity. Using an aggregated heterogeneous sample (N = 3,764), the p...