APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 23: 524542 (2009) Published online 8 June 2008 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/acp.1472

Paranormal Belief and Susceptibility to the Conjunction Fallacy

PAUL ROGERS*, TIFFANY DAVIS and JOHN FISK
School of Psychology, University of Central Lancashire, UK

SUMMARY Numerous studies have shown paranormal believers misperceive randomness and are poor at judging probability. Despite the obvious relevance to many types of alleged paranormal phenomena, no one has examined whether believers are more susceptible to the conjunction fallacy; that is to misperceiving co-occurring (conjunct) events as being more likely than singular (constituent) events alone. The present study examines believer vs. non-believer differences in conjunction errors for both paranormal and non-paranormal events presented as either a probability or a frequency estimation task. As expected, believers made more conjunction errors than non-believers. This was true for both event types, with both groups making fewer errors for paranormal than for non-paranormal events. Surprisingly, the response format (probability vs. frequency) had little impact. Results are discussed in relation to paranormal believers susceptibility to the conjunction fallacy and more generally, to their propensity for probabilistic reasoning biases. Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Despite limited scientic evidence for the validity of paranormal claims (Alcock, 1981, 2003; Hines, 2003; Irwin & Watt, 2007), belief in the existence of paranormal phenomena remains prevalent the world over (e.g. Haraldsson, 1985; Rhine-Feather & Schmicker, 2005). Psychologists have become increasingly interested in understanding why such beliefs are maintained with various ideas, including the notion that paranormal believers have certain cognitive decits, being proposed (for reviews see French, 1992; French & Wilson, 2007; Irwin, 1993, 2008; Irwin & Watt, 2007; Wiseman & Watt, 2006). Because many seemingly extraordinary coincidences are actually quite common (Gilovich, 1991; Martin, 1998; Watt, 1990/1991), one suggestion is that paranormal believers are especially prone to misunderstanding probability and thus that a misunderstanding of probability (chance) underlies the formation and maintenance of belief in the paranormal. Paranormal belief and probabilistic reasoning biases It is widely recognised that most people are poor at judging probability and that under conditions of uncertainty, will rely on heuristicscognitive rules of thumbto simplify the reasoning process so as to make quick, easy and proximate, but ultimately awed, judgments (e.g. Gilovich, Grifn, & Kahneman, 2002; Kahneman, Slovic, & Tversky, 1982; Shai, 2004; Sutherland, 1992). Further research suggests a persons pre-existing or
*Correspondence to: Dr Paul Rogers, School of Psychology, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, Lancashire PR1 2HE, UK. E-mail: progers@uclan.ac.uk

Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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a priori beliefs can have a signicant inuence on these heuristical judgements (e.g. Watt, 1990/1991). Blackmore and Troscianko (1985) were rst to test whether paranormal believers were especially prone to probabilistic reasoning biases. They had paranormal believers and non-believers answer questions relating to the generation of random strings (i.e. list 20 numbers as if drawn from a hat), randomness judging (i.e. indicate whether various boy/ girl mixes were biased or unbiased), coin tossing outcomes (i.e. indicate whether the number of heads scored from 20 throws was biased or unbiased) and sampling decisions (e.g. indicate which is more likely to be drawn from a given number of red and blue sweets). Whilst no group differences were found for the random string generation or randomness judging tasks, Blackmore and Troscianko found that those who believed in the possibility of extrasensory perception1 made more coin tossing and sampling errors than non-believers. These data suggest paranormal believers underestimate the likelihood of a chance outcome and look beyond coincidence in search of causalusually supernaturalexplanations. According to Blackmore and Troscianko (1985), this underestimating of chance expectationstermed the chance baseline shiftmay strengthen ones belief in psi even when there is no evidence that psi actually exists. Subsequent work examining believers tendency to misunderstand chance offers mixed results. Henry (1993) found most people believe intuition (71%) and psi (64%) are the best explanations for everyday coincidence experiences (see also Henry, 2005) whilst Bressan (2002; Study 1) found paranormal believers reported having more frequent meaningful coincidences than non-believers. Likewise, Tobacyk and Wilkinson (1991) found those with a more pronounced belief in the paranormal (specically, in superstition, psi and precognition) had a higher preference for games of chance and were more prone to developing illusory correlations between statistically unrelated events (see also Vyse, 1997). Marks (2002) goes further by suggesting believers misperceive chance events as somehow being related because their a priori beliefs in the paranormal demand such a relationship and thus, that they are especially prone to making subjective validations. But other ndings fail to support the chance baseline shift hypothesis (cf. Blackmore & Troscianko, 1985). Blackmore (1997) found paranormal believers and sceptics were equally likely to underestimate the odds that statements such as I have a scar on my left knee and I once broke my arm would apply to most people. Similarly, Roberts and Seager (1999) found belief in the paranormal correlated with conditionalbut not probabilisticreasoning ability. More recently, Bressan (2002) gave believers and non-believers the same four probability tasks rst used by Blackmore and Troscianko (1985), plus Kahneman and Tverskys (1972) classic maternity ward problem (i.e. indicate whether a larger or smaller hospital is more likely to have a higher proportion of male births over the next year; Study 1) and a modied version of Bar-Hillels (1982) pollster problem (i.e. indicate whether you have more condence in a larger or smaller sample of voters; Study 2). Overall, Bressan found believers and sceptics were equally prone to errors on the sampling, maternity ward and pollster problems, implying that the two groups were equally insensitive to sample size differentials. Interestingly, Musch and Ehrenberg (2002) found that believers initial biases in probabilistic reasoning disappeared once general cognitive
1 Extrasensory perception (ESP) is dened as the alleged ability to obtain information via non-sensory means and comprises three sub-components, namely the non-sensory awareness of distant individuals (telepathy), of distant objects or events (clairvoyance) and of future events (precognition). Due to a philosophical overlap between these three concepts, the term psi is often used to denote the unknown paranormal element underlying all ostensibly psychic experiences (Beloff & Henry, 2005; Irwin & Watt, 2007).

Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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ability (measured by nal exam grades) was controlled for. Finally Blagrove, French, and Jones (2006) asked participants to solve sampling problems relating to dice throwing (i.e. indicate the best way to throw 10 sixes) and lottery play (i.e. indicate how someone else picking your lottery ticket would inuence your chances of winning). Blagrove and colleagues found that those with a more pronounced belief in paranormal phenomena (specically precognition) made more probabilistic reasoning errors for the lottery task although not the dice throwing taskthan did those with a lower level of belief. Additional evidence that both types of error correlated positively with the reported number of (allegedly) precognitive dreams suggests these results are more indicative of believers greater susceptibility to probabilistic reasoning biases than to a stronger illusion of control (c.f. Langer, 1975). Evidence that paranormal believers are especially prone to misperceiving randomness is also mixed. Contrary to earlier claims (Blackmore & Troscianko, 1985), Brugger, Landis, and Regard (1990) found paranormal believers were less normative and predicted fewer number repetitions from a sequence of dice throws than paranormal sceptics. Brugger, Regard, Landis, Krebs and Niederberger (1991; Study 1) later found that within in customised die throwing task, believers predicted fewer repetitions for both conceptually identical outcomes (e.g. carrot-carrot) and conceptually related outcomes (e.g. carrotrabbit) than would be expected by chance. The same authors also found that belief in ESP was positively associated with misperceiving semantic relatedness in both pairs of drawings (Study 2) and in random dot patterns (Study 3). Bressan (2002) reports similar trends regardless of whether previously generated strings were visible or hidden from participants. According to Bressan, paranormal believers are not especially prone to underestimating the likelihood of chance events per se but instead, are more susceptible to misperceiving patterns in randomness (i.e. the absence of meaning). This suggests believers and non-believers have different internal representations of what constitutes randomness, with believers requiring less subjective evidence of relatedness before they misattribute a cause-and-effect relationship to objectively (i.e., statistically) unrelated events. This lowered threshold of subjective chance may explain why believers often see coincidences as more meaningful (Brugger & Taylor, 2003). Finally, Dagnall, Parker, and Munley (2007) found that only perceptions of randomness predicted scores on a global paranormal measure which, according to the authors, implies believers general weakness in probabilistic reasoning stems from a specic decit relating to the misrepresentation of randomness (chance).

Paranormal belief, representativeness and the conjunction fallacy According to Bressan (2002) paranormal believers generally require less objective evidence of causal relatedness before they perceive a cause-and-effect relationship between events. That is, they are more prone to misperceiving meaning (relatedness) in random noise (see also Marks, 2002). The implication here is that believers employ a more relaxed internal representation of what constitutes a random event and that their perceptions of chance are unduly inuenced by factors such as the salience or observability of possible causes (Bressan, 2002). This, in turn, suggests paranormal believers base their probability judgements on the representativeness heuristic. The representativeness heuristic is a cognitive rule of thumb in which the subjective probability of an event is judged by the extent to which that event resemblesis
Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 23: 524542 (2009) DOI: 10.1002/acp

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representative ofeither the salient features of its parent population or alternatively, the process by which that particular event is generated (Kahneman & Tversky, 1972; Tversky & Kahneman, 1982). In the rst instance, representativeness implies people believe a given category exemplar ought to resemble the category prototype. In the second, it implies people (mis)perceive a given outcome as being associated with, or caused by, a particular process. Representativeness biases are robust and can be applied to people, objects, situations and even abstract concepts such as chance and randomness (Tversky & Kahneman, 1982, 1983). In lottery play for example, random looking number combinations (e.g. 08, 15, 21, 30, 39, 46) are deemed more likely to win than numbers which appear sequentially related (e.g. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21), with regular lottery players more prone to these misperceptions than non-players (Rogers, 1999; Rogers & Webley, 2001). Gilovich & Savitsky (1996) describe how similar biases underlie pseudoscientic beliefs in astrology, graphology and dream interpretation. For instance, the personality characteristics associated with each astrological sun sign appear to be anthropomorphised representations of the sign itself. Thus, people born under the sign of Libra (the scales) are often stereotypically described as being well-balanced and fair-minded (see also Eysenck & Nias, 1982; Groome, 2001). Ironically, Irwin (2008) criticises Blackmore and Trosciankos (1985) studyand by implication many subsequent studiesfor not being representative of real-life situations. Representativeness biases are prevalent when people are asked to judge co-occurring or conjunct events. Tversky and Kahneman (1982) famously gave participants a ctitious personality sketch in which the central character (Linda) is described as 31 years old, single, outspoken and very bright who majored in philosophy and who, as a student, had been deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice and who had participated in antinuclear demonstrations (p. 92). Thus, Lindas character was constructed so as to be representative (typical) of an active feminist and unrepresentative (atypical) of a bank teller. Participants had to rank order eight possible conclusions including a representative outcome (Linda is an active feminist), an unrepresentative outcome (Linda is a bank teller) and a conjunction of the two (Linda is a bank teller and an active feminist).2 Tversky and Kahneman found that regardless of their level of statistical sophistication, between 85 and 90% of participants ranked the co-occurring (conjunctive) outcome as being more likely than the singular (constituent), representative outcome of Linda being a bank teller. According to the laws of normative probability this is not possible. Since being a feminist bank teller was more representative of Lindas description than simply being a bank teller, it seems the vast majority of participants ignored normative statistics and erroneously judged the former possibility (feminist bank teller) more likely than the latter (bank teller) thereby succumbing to the conjunction fallacy (Tversky & Kahneman, 1982). Fisk (2004) argues that representativeness accounts of the conjunction fallacy are invalid. Following his review of several alternative models Fisk (2004) concludes that despite some limitations, the best explanation of the conjunction fallacy is one that highlights the potential surprise value of constituent events. According to surprise theory (cf. Shackle, 1969) potential surprise determines subjective likelihood estimations with
2 Italic were not in the original text but are added here to emphasis the conjunction. For the record, the remaining ve outcomes in Tversky and Kahnemans (1982) original study were that Linda was an elementary school teacher, a bookstore worker who took yoga classes, a psychiatric social worker, a member of the League of Women voters or an insurance salesperson (Tversky & Kahneman, 1982; within subjects version).

Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 23: 524542 (2009) DOI: 10.1002/acp

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more surprising events seen as less probable and less surprising events deemed more probable (Fisk, 2004). In terms of conjunctive events it is the surprise value of the more surprising and less likely constituent which alone is key in determining the probability assigned to the conjunction (Fisk, 2004; Fisk & Pidgeon, 1996). Conjunction biases have been demonstrated in a wide variety of hypothetical contexts where, in most cases, the proportion of individuals violating the conjunction rule ranges from between 50 and 90% (Fisk, 2004; Tversky & Kahneman, 1983). Given previous claims that paranormal believers susceptibly to reasoning biases may be context or domain specic (e.g. Gray & Mills, 1990; Merla-Ramos, 2000; Wierzbicki, 1985; although see Lawrence & Peters, 2004; Roe, 1999), it seems reasonable to expect believers will be more prone to the conjunction fallacy, particularly when conjunctive events appear to reect paranormal phenomena. Take the common example of when one is thinking about an old friend just at the moment he/she unexpectedly calls (e.g. Rhine-Feather & Schmicker, 2005). Here, the two constituent eventsnamely (a) thinking about the friend and (b) that friend unexpectedly callingmay not be unusual in their own right. One may have thought about the same friend many times before or alternatively, many other friends may have unexpectedly called in the past; neither would be particularly surprising (cf. Fisk, 2004). It is only when these two constituent events co-occur in close temporal proximity that this conjunction is deemed too unlikely to be a simple coincidence. In such cases, many experients will dismiss chance and look for a causal, often paranormal, explanation (cf. Blackmore & Troscianko, 1985; Bressan, 2002; Marks, 2002). Similar logic can be applied to other aspects of the paranormal including the apparent accuracy of psychic predictions where the co-occurrence of two constituent eventsnamely (a) the prediction and (b) the predicted outcomeseems too unlikely to be just a coincidence. Given previous claims that paranormal believers often misunderstand chance and randomness (e.g. Bressan, 2002), it seems reasonable to suggest believers may be especially prone to the conjunction fallacy. Evidence that believers tend to adopt an intuitive (heuristical) as opposed to an analytic thinking style (Aarnio & Lindeman, 2005; Irwin & Young, 2002; Lester, Thinschimdt, & Trautman, 1987), which in turn is associated with more conjunction errors (Fisk, 2004; Toyosawa & Karasawa, 2004), adds further support to this assertion. Moreover, given that personal experience of alleged paranormal phenomena is the single biggest predictor of paranormal belief (Blackmore, 1984), a tendency to misjudge conjunctive events as having some underlying causal relationship may help explain the maintenance, and perhaps even the development, of such beliefs. To date, the only study to examine the relationship between paranormal belief and susceptibility to the conjunction fallacy is that by Dagnall et al. (2007). They had university students complete a series of probabilistic reasoning tasks including one asking whether in a local football match it was more likely for (a) Team A to score rst, (b) Team A to score rst and win, (c) Team A to score rst and lose or (d) Team A to score rst and the game is drawn. Contrary to expectations, Dagnell and colleagues found susceptibility to the conjunction fallacy was unrelated to paranormal belief ratings and that believers and non-believers performed equally well in solving the conjunction task. One problem with this study, as the authors note, is that the sample comprised psychology students who presumably had some basic understanding of probability theory. In addition, the study employed a global measure of paranormal beliefTobacyks (1988) Revised Paranormal Belief Scale (RPBS)which has been criticised on both content and psychometric grounds (see Holden & French, 2000; Irwin, 2008). Finally, Dagnall et al. presented just
Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 23: 524542 (2009) DOI: 10.1002/acp

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one conjunction problem relating to a football match and it may be that non-signicant results were an artefact of this particular event type. As such, the present study controls for previous training in maths, statistics and psychology, employs a narrower and arguably more appropriate measure of paranormal belief, and presents a series of 16 conjunctive events incorporating both paranormal and non-paranormal contexts. In addition, the current study also investigates whether believers are unduly inuenced by the formatting of conjunction problems. Fisk (2004) argues that the formatting of questions is an important factor underlying conjunction biases. Whereas the original Linda Problem (Tversky & Kahneman, 1982) asked participants to rank order the likelihood of each outcome, some researchers (e.g. Fisk & Pidgeon, 1996) have asked participants to estimate the probability (i.e. chances between 0 and 100) of each constituent and conjunct outcome occurring. Others (e.g. Fielder, 1988) have presented conjunction problems as absolute frequency estimates (i.e. if 100 people t Lindas description, how many would be feminists, how many would be bank tellers and how many would be both?). According to Fisk (2004), more people succumb to the conjunction fallacy when asked either to rank order the statements or to produce probability estimates for them. In contrast, few people commit the fallacy when asked to produce frequency estimates. With this formatting bias in mind, one might also expect paranormal believers to make more conjunction errors for probabilistic over frequency estimations (cf. Blackmore & Troscianko, 1985). The present study explores this possibility.

Study overview and hypotheses The present study is the rst to explore paranormal believers susceptibility to the conjunction fallacy for both paranormal and non-paranormal events. Using 16 newly created vignettes, participants were asked to rank order the likelihood of two constituent and one conjunct event occurring.3 Of these, eight vignettes described an ostensibly paranormal event such as dreaming of a future house re which later happened, whilst eight described an everyday, non-paranormal event such as having a mild case of food poisoning. In line with Fisk (2004), half of these were formatted as a probability, and half as a frequency, estimation task. Finally, the present study also controls for participants level of qualication in mathematics, statistics and/or psychology. Several hypotheses are proposed. First, given their potential proneness to representativeness biases, paranormal believers should make more conjunction errors than non-believers. Second, if such biases are domain-specic, believers should make more conjunction errors for paranormal than for non-paranormal events. Third, both groups should make more conjunction errors when problems require probabilityrather than frequencyestimates. Further, this formatting bias should be more pronounced amongst believers and/or for paranormal events. Finally, individuals who report having a greater number of paranormal experiences should make more conjunction errors than those who report having fewer paranormal experiences.

3 The number of response outcomes was limited to three (i.e. two constituent events plus one conjunctive event) due to space and participants time considerations. A full copy of the Scenario judgements questionnaire (SJQ) is available from the rst author (PR).

Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 23: 524542 (2009) DOI: 10.1002/acp

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METHOD Participants An opportunity sample of 200 participants (82 males, 118 females) was recruited from the main campus of a large university in the North West of England. Participant age ranged from 18 to 56 years (mean 22.2 years; SD 5.3 years) with the majority of either Caucasian (67.5%) or Asian (24.0%) ethnicity. Most respondents were either full or part-time university students (90.0%) and educated to at least A Level or equivalent (85.0%). A sizeable proportion (19.5%) had obtained at least A Level qualications or equivalent in maths, statistics and/or psychology. Design A 2 paranormal belief group (believer vs. non-believer) 2 event type (paranormal vs. non-paranormal) 2 conjunction response format (probability vs. frequency) mixed factorial design was employed. Materials Paranormal belief Paranormal belief was assessed via the Australian SheepGoat Scale (ASGS: Thalbourne & Delin, 1993), a psychometrically sound measure of paranormal belief comprising 18 statements assessing peoples acceptance of extrasensory perception, psychokinesis and life after death as genuine phenomena. The ASGS has a narrower focus and was deemed more suitable for assessing probabilistic reasoning biases than other, broader measures of paranormal belief (e.g. see Irwin, 2008; Tobacyk, 1988). Traditionally, the ASGS utilises either a visual analogue or a trichotomous (true/do not know/false) scale (Holden & French, 2000). But following methodological debate over the former (Roe, 1998, 2002; Thalbourne, 1998, 2003), and in order to obtain a broader range of paranormal belief scores afforded by the latter, all ASGS items in the present study were rated on a 7-point Likert scale from 1 strongly disagree to 7 strongly agree. Paranormal experiences questionnaire (PEQ) The PEQ comprised six items assessing participants personal experiences of events which could be termed paranormal. Specically, items asked if they had ever dreamt of something they later witnessed (precognitive dream), had an intuitive feeling about something which was later conrmed as accurate (precognitive intuition), had a fortune teller either accurately predict their future (fortune teller prediction) or accurately describe their personality (fortune teller prole), inexplicably imagined an event just before it happens (waking precognition) or nally, if they had ever experienced an effective spiritual healing (healing). All six PEQ items were rated along a 7-point Likert scale from 1 strongly disagree to 7 strongly agree. Scenario judgements questionnaire (SJQ) The SJQ comprised 16 conjunction vignettes of approximately 40 words in length (mean 43.8; SD 9.3) which describes either an ostensibly paranormal or a non-paranormal event (eight of each). The former included descriptions of an apparent
Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 23: 524542 (2009) DOI: 10.1002/acp

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spiritual healing, various forms of alleged precognition, an apparitional experience, a seemingly accurate horoscope prediction and a near-death experience (cf. Irwin & Watt, 2007). In each case, only one of the two constituent events referred to these paranormal concepts. By comparison non-paranormal scenarios incorporated more mundane events such as getting food poisoning, queuing for airport coffee and a womens rights protest. In line with previous work (De Neys, 2006; Fisk, 2004; see footnote 3) participants were asked to indicate which of three different response optionsthe conjunction or either of the two constituent eventsthey felt was most likely for each of the 16 scenarios. For example one paranormal SJQ item states: Billy has a long lost friend who he has not seen in years. They were good friends in school but drifted apart when they went away to different colleges. Billy comes home from work one evening and sits down to eat his dinner. Here, participants were asked to indicate the likelihood of the following three statements: (a) Billy thinks about his long lost friend, (b) Billys long lost friend unexpectedly phones him or (c) Billy thinks about his long lost friend and suddenly his long lost friend unexpectedly phones him. Following Fisk (2004), participants gave their responses in one of two formats; either as a probability (i.e. chances in 100) or as a frequency estimate (i.e. the number out of 100 occurrences). In each case, a conjunction error was made whenever the third (conjunct) option was rated more likely than one or both of the singular (constituent) options. To counterbalance potential order effects a second version of the SJQ with item order reversed was also created. Finally, a practice scenario was included at the start of the SJQ to ensure participants understood task instructions. Demographics Participants were also asked to indicate their gender, age, ethnicity, highest qualication generally and highest qualication in mathematics, statistics and/or psychology to date. Ethnicity was coded as one of 16 standard response options covering Caucasian, Asian, Afro-Caribbean, Chinese and mixed race backgrounds. Both general qualications and qualications in maths, statistics and/or psychology were rated on a 6-point ordinal scale from 1 no qualications through to 5 professional/postgraduate degree, plus 6 other level of qualication.4 Procedure Volunteer participants were recruited via the main campus library at the University of Central Lancashire; a large university in the North West of England. Those who agreed to take part in this study of beliefs and judgements were given a questionnaire pack containing a brief sheet, the ASGS, the SJQ and the demographics questionnaires. To control for potential order effects still further, the order of the ASGS and SJQ questionnaires was reversed in half of the packs before these were randomly distributed to volunteers. Participants were instructed to complete all questionnaires as quickly as possible without conferring. No time limit was given. Completed questionnaires were returned to the second author (TD) in person who then handed each participant a full debrief sheet. No form of payment was made to any participant.
4 No respondents reported having other qualications either generally or specically in maths, statistics and/or psychology. As such, this sixth response level was dropped from both qualication items.

Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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RESULTS Belief in the paranormal ASGS ratings were (re)coded such that high scores reected a greater paranormal belief (potential range 17; actual range 1.006.61; median 3.58). No outliers were revealed. Median split analysis5 reclassied participants as either paranormal believers (mean 4.50; SD 0.68; n 98) or sceptics (mean 2.48; SD 0.69; n 102). Whilst no group differences were found in participant age, gender, ethnicity or general educational attainment, believers were less well qualied in maths, statistics and/or psychology compared to non-believers (U 4374.5; z 2.04; p .041). Future analyses will control for this difference. Conjunction fallacies As noted above, a conjunction error was made whenever participants rated the conjunctive event to be more likely that either of the two constituent events. Inspection of individual SJQ items conrmed that some proportion of the sample made conjunction errors for each of the 16 scenarios (range 11.562.5%). Thus, all SJQ items were deemed suitable for inclusion. The total number of conjunction errors made by each participant was then computed separately for paranormal vs. non-paranormal event types (range 08). Over half (53.5%) the sample made at least one conjunction error for paranormal events (range 17; median 1) with a much larger proportion (91.5%) making at least one conjunction error for non-paranormal events (range 18; median 4). A 2 paranormal belief group (believer vs. sceptic) 2 event type (paranormal vs. non-paranormal) 2 conjunction response format (probability vs. frequency) mixed Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA)controlling for participants level of qualication in maths, statistics and/or psychologywas performed on the number of conjunction errors made. Mean and standard deviation scores (adjusted following ANCOVA) are given in Table 1. ANCOVA revealed qualications in maths, statistics and/or psychology to be a signicant covariate (F1,195 27.02; p < .001; h2 .12) with more qualied participants making fewer conjunction errors. This trend was reinforced by a signicant qualication event type interaction (F1,195 14.69; p < .001; h2 .07) such that those with higher qualications made fewer conjunction errors for paranormal events than they did for non-paranormal events (r 0 .18 and r 0 .40, respectively; z 2.19; p .014; n 200). Having controlled for these qualication levels, ANCOVA also revealed highly signicant main effects for both paranormal belief group (F1,195 53.89; p < .001; h2 .22)with believers making more conjunction errors than non-believersand event type (F1,195 55.44; p < .001; h2 .22), with participants generally making fewer conjunction errors for paranormal events than they did for non-paranormal events. In
5 Median split analysis of paranormal belief measures is a valid way of differentiating between believers vs. sceptics (e.g. Dagnall et al., 2007; Wiseman & Morris, 1995). Whilst technically, it would have been more appropriate to refer to low vs. moderate paranormal believers here, the original terms believers and non-believers/sceptics are retained for the sake of convenience. For further discussion of methodological issues surrounding the measurement of paranormal belief, see Irwin (2008). Interestingly, many parapsychologists argue that there is sufcient empirical evidence to suggest certain phenomena such as ESP and PK do exist and as such, challenge the entire notion of a belief (aka. faith) in the paranormal (Delanoy, Personal Communication).

Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 23: 524542 (2009) DOI: 10.1002/acp

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Table 1. Mean no. of conjunction errors across paranormal belief group, event type & conjunction format (controlling for participants maths/statistics/psychology qualications) Believers Event type Paranormal Format type Probability Frequency All Probability Frequency All Probability Frequency All M 2.69 1.94 2.31 4.43 4.51 4.47 7.12 6.45 6.78 (SD) (1.92) (1.85) (1.91) (2.17) (1.99) (2.08) (3.44) (3.24) (3.34) Nonbelievers M 0.61 0.29 0.45 2.73 3.51 3.12 3.35 3.80 3.57 (SD) (1.13) (0.68) (0.94) (2.24) (2.24) (2.26) (2.74) (2.49) (2.61) M 1.67 1.13 1.40 3.60 4.02 3.81 5.27 5.15 3.57 All (SD) (1.89) (1.62) (1.78) (2.36) (2.16) (2.27) (3.63) (3.18) (2.61) Sig. effects B E B E B Fa E F

Non-paranormal

Ally

Note: Range 08 errors except yrange 016 errors: Adjusted means following ANCOVA. Signicant paranormal belief group (B), event type (E), conjunction format (F) and subsequent interaction effects found at the: p < .05, p < .01 and p < .001 levels; a, approaches sig. (two-tailed).

contrast, format type had no impact on the number of conjunction errors made (F1,195 .22; p .643; ns; h2 .00). ANCOVA also revealed three signicant or near-signicant interaction effects. First, a signicant paranormal belief group event type interaction (F1,195 4.76; p .030; h2 .02) was found. Subsequent inspection of CI graphs suggested the need for four post-hoc comparisons. Simple effects analyses via mixed ANCOVAcontrolling for maths, statistics and/or psychology qualication and with a adjusted to .0125conrmed that believers made more conjunction errors than non-believers for both paranormal (F1,197 71.28; p < .001; h2 .27) and non-paranormal events (F1,197 16.01; p < .001; h2 .08). In addition, believers made fewer errors for paranormal than for non-paranormal events (F1,100 22.19; p < .001; h2 .18). Similar trends were also found for non-believers who made relatively few conjunction errors for paranormal compared to non-paranormal events (F1,96 32.73; p < .001; h2 .25). In sum, most conjunction errors were made by paranormal believers for non-paranormal events, with fewest made by non-believers for paranormal events. These data are illustrated in Figure 1. Second, analyses also revealed a signicant event type format type interaction (F1,195 9.43; p .002; h2 .05). Inspection of CI graphs again suggested the need for four post-hoc comparisons. Simple effectsalso controlling for maths, statistics and/or psychology qualication and with a adjusted to .0125conrmed that participants made fewer conjunction errors when paranormal events were formatted as a probability (F1,98 18.03; p < .001; h2 .16) or a frequency (F1,98 34.24; p < .001; h2 .26) estimation task than they did for corresponding non-paranormal events. No other differences were found. Finally, the hypothesised paranormal belief group format type interaction was just short of signicance (F1,195 3.57; p .060; h2 .02). Since the effect approached signicance, it was deemed worthwhile to perform post-hoc simple effects comparisons to explore the basis of the interaction. Analysis revealed that paranormal believers made more conjunction errors than non-believers for both the probability (F1,97 43.77; p < .001; h2 .31) and frequency (F1,97 16.10; p < .001; h2 .14) formatted questions. In
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8 7 6 5 Errors 4 3 2 1 0

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Paranormal Non-Paranormal

Non-believers

Believers

Figure 1. Number of conjunction errors across paranormal belief group event type (with 5% condence intervals)

contrast, neither believers nor non-believers differed in the number of errors they made across the two format types. These data are summarised in Figure 2. No other signicant differences were found.

Personal experiences of ostensibly paranormal events Table 2 presents the mean number of reported paranormal experiences. Overall, participants claimed to have experienced a moderate number of accurate dream, intuitive and waking precognitions but fewer accurate fortune teller predictions, fortune teller prole or spiritual healing successes. Correlations (rho) between the six personal experiences items and the number of conjunction fallacies made are also given in Table 2. In general, participants who reported having more ostensibly paranormal experiences also
8 7 6 5 Errors 4 3 2 1 0 Non-believers Believers Probability Frequency

Figure 2. Number of conjunction errors across paranormal belief group format type (with 5% condence intervals)
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Table 2. Frequency of reported paranormal experiences and correlations (rho) with number of conjunction errors Frequency Reported paranormal experience Accurate dream precognitions Accurate intuitions Accurate waking precognitions Accurate fortune teller predictions Accurate fortune teller proles Successful spiritual healing M 4.64 5.19 4.64 2.42 2.31 1.89 (SD) (1.68) (1.60) (1.68) (1.64) (1.56) (1.40)

Correlation (rho) with no. of conjunction errors .39 .35 .32 .33 .31 .13

Range: From 1 strongly disagree to 7 strongly agree; sig. at

p < .001 level (two-tailed) (n 200).

made more conjunction errors. This was true of all experience types except spiritual healing successes.

DISCUSSION Contrary to previous claims that the conjunction fallacy is largely unaffected by peoples level of statistical awareness (Tversky & Kahneman, 1983), current ndings suggest participants who were less qualied in maths, statistics and/or psychology made more conjunction errors than those who were more qualied in these subjects. With these qualications controlled for, participants still made a sizeable number of conjunction errors (mean 3.57), further highlighting the general the robustness of the conjunction fallacy (Fisk, 2004; Kahneman & Tversky, 1972, Tversky & Kahneman, 1983). All subsequent discussion relates to data in which levels of maths, statistics and/or psychology qualication have already been controlled for. The aim of the present study was to test the notion that paranormal believers are more susceptible to the conjunction fallacy, in particular, for paranormal events and/or those requiring probability estimates. Partial support for these hypotheses was found. First, as predicted, believers made more conjunction errors than non-believers. This suggests believers are more susceptible to the conjunction fallacy and thus, that they are especially prone to erroneously judging the conjunctive event to be more likely than one or both of the constituents events alone (cf. Kahneman & Tversky, 1972; Tversky & Kahneman, 1982, 1983). Thus, current ndings contradict those of Dagnall et al. (2007). As noted earlier, this misperception contravenes the laws of normative probability (Tversky & Kahneman, 1982). One possibility is that paranormal believers base these judgements on what they see as being representative of a typical coincidence (i.e. on their own internal representation of chance and/or randomness) which differs from that of paranormal sceptics (Blackmore & Troscianko, 1985; Bressan, 2002; Gilovich & Savitsky, 1996; Marks, 2002; Tversky & Kahneman, 1982). Another is that believers are somehow more sensitive to the potential surprise value of the less surprising constituent event (cf. Fisk, 2004). Either way, believers greater susceptibility to the conjunction fallacy is consistent with previous claims that they are especially prone to misperceiving randomness (Bressan, 2002; Brugger et al., 1990; Brugger & Taylor, 2003; Regard et al., 1990), to poor probabilistic reasoning (cf. Blackmore & Troscianko, 1985; Blagrove et al., 2006; Dagnall et al., 2007; Marks, 2002; Tobacyk & Wilkinson, 1991) and ultimately, to decits in
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cognitive processing (French, 1992; French & Wilson, 2007; Irwin, 1993, 2008; Irwin & Watt, 2007). It also supports the view that believers are more likely to adopt an intuitive or heuristical, rather than analytic, style of thinking (Aarnio & Lindeman, 2005; Irwin & Young, 2002; Lester et al., 1987). As yet, it is still unclear whether believers heightened susceptibility to the conjunction fallacy leads to, or conversely is caused by, their endorsement of the paranormal. Given that the single biggest predictor of belief in the paranormal is the reported experience of paranormal phenomena (Blackmore, 1984), the latter seems more plausible. Either way, the generality of believers conjunction errors (see below) renders it likely that conjunction biases will help maintain and reinforce their paranormal beliefs. Second, participants generally made fewer conjunction errors for paranormal than for non-paranormal events. This illustrates that at least some contextual factors will inuence the strength of conjunction biases. Moreover, while believers produced some conjunction errors for paranormal events this tendency was much less evident among non-believers. At rst glance, current ndings seem to suggest believers are even more prone to violating the conjunction rule for ostensibly paranormal phenomena and thus, as with other cognitive biases (Alcock & Otis, 1980; Gray & Mill, 1990; Merla-Ramos, 2000; Wierzbicki, 1985), that their susceptibility to the conjunction fallacy is domain specic. This apparent context specicity supports the view that paranormal believers maintain a different internal representation of paranormality and thus that they require less subjective evidence of (temporal) relatedness before they misattribute causal relationships to objectively (statistically) unrelated, constituent events (cf. Bressan, 2002; Brugger & Taylor, 2003; Wiseman & Watt, 2006). But compared to sceptics, paranormal believers also made more errors for non-paranormal conjunctions too, thereby weakening this argument (cf. Lawrence & Peters, 2004; Roe, 1999). In sum, it seems that paranormal believers are especially susceptible to the conjunction fallacy. Further, whilst non-believers commit few errors when conjunctions relate to ostensibly paranormal experiences, believers continue to commit the conjunction fallacy given either context. Third, contrary to expectations, paranormal believers made fewer conjunction errors for paranormal events than they did for non-paranormal events. Interestingly, identical trends were also found for non-believers. A possible explanation for this unexpected nding is that the two constituent events within paranormal conjunctions differed markedly in terms of their surprise values. Generally, the conjunction fallacy is highly prevalent in contexts where a very surprising constituent event is combined with a non-surprising one; that is, where the surprise differential is large (Fisk, 2004; Shackle, 1969). Thus, the nding that participants susceptibility to the conjunction fallacy differed across the two scenario types may reect the fact that the paranormal scenarios had large surprise differentials whereas non-paranormal scenarios contained two constituent events that were similar in terms of their surprise value. But subsequent analysis of individual SJQ items offers only limited support for this notion.6 Thus, it seems participants heightened
6 Specically, a series of 16 separate 2 constituent events 2 paranormal beliefs 2 format type mixed ANCOVA (controlling for maths, statistics and/or psychology qualication) revealed signicant differences in mean judgement ratings across rst vs. second constituent events in four of the eight paranormal items (signicant F1,195 values ranged from 8.36 to 18.98; all p < .005; all h2 ! .04). However, similar signicant, albeit smaller, main effects were also found also for three of the eight non-paranormal items (signicant F1,195 values ranged from 3.95 to 10.55; all p < .05; all h2 ! .02). In sum, overall trends offer little indication that paranormal constituents had a greater potential surprise value (cf. Fisk, 2004) than corresponding non-paranormal constituents. Further details of these data are available from the rst author (PR).

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tendency to violate normative rules for non-paranormal over paranormal conjunctions does not reect differential surprise values across these two types of event. Taken together these unexpected ndings suggest violation of the conjunction rule is less prominent for events with an obvious paranormal connotation and thus that all participants, regardless of their a priori beliefs, had their own internal representations of what constitutes a paranormal as opposed to chance experience (cf. Bressan, 2002; Marks, 2002; Watt, 1990/1991; Wiseman & Watt, 2006). The additional nding that compared to sceptics, believers also made more conjunction errors for non-paranormal events has two consequences. First, it further illustrates the generality and robustness of believers susceptibility to the conjunction fallacy (cf. Tversky & Kahneman, 1983). Second, by implication, it reinforces the claim that believers have particularly strong views on what represents paranormality which may, in turn, reect their own personal experiences of alleged paranormal phenomena (cf. Blackmore, 1984). Fourth, and contrary to expectations, the format with which conjunction events were presented had little impact on participants conjunction biases. Overall, paranormal believers made more conjunction errors given both probability and frequency formatted items than did non-believers. This was the case regardless of the type of event described and suggests that conjunction format may not be as important as previous suggested (Fielder, 1988; Fisk, 2004; Fisk & Pidgeon, 1996). Finally, current trends suggest individuals who reported a greater number of paranormal experiences (i.e. seemingly accurate dream, waking, intuitive and/or fortune telling predictions) also made more conjunction errors. These data reinforce previous claims that alleged paranormal, and in particular precognitive, experiences are more prevalent in individuals with a poorer understanding of probability (e.g. Blagrove et al., 2006). It seems this may be especially true for probabilistic reasoning biases relating to conjunction events. Such biases are likely to have a major impact on subjective perceptions of chance and randomness, and thus on peoples meaningful coincidence experiences (cf. Bressan, 2002; Henry, 1993, 2005). Methodological issues and general discussion Several methodological issues in the present study are worthy of note. First, the vast majority (90.0%) of participants were university students and of those that did have qualications in maths, statistics and/or psychology, only a tiny minority (2.0%) were qualied beyond A Level standard. This has two implications. First, the predominance of students within the sample, means the generalisability of current ndings are diminished (although see Farha & Steward, 2006). Second, it remains possible that those with a university level education in maths, statistics and/or psychology might have performed better than the current sample. It would be interesting to see whether current ndings extend to members of the general public and/or to those who have completed an undergraduate or higher degree in these subjects. A second methodological issue relates to the content of SJQ scenarios. As noted above, there was little difference in the total number of surprising constituents across paranormal (n 4) vs. non-paranormal (n 3) events. However, noticeable differences in magnitude were found, with surprise differentials generally larger for paranormal constituents (see footnote 6). This may have important consequences for conjunction estimates (Fisk, 2004). Based on participant response codes, the one very surprising non-paranormal constituent related to student vs. builder usage of a cafe at lunchtime, with the latter judged less likely
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(i.e., more surprising) than the former ( p .001). This may be a reection of participants own student status. By comparison, the four very surprising paranormal constituents related to feeling anxious when witnessing a ghostly image ( p .003), to a horoscope correctly predicting a job promotion ( p .004), to dreaming about a house re which later happens ( p .004) and to accurately intuiting a small lottery win ( p < .001). In each case, the second constituent was judged less likely (more surprising) than the rst. It is noticeable that ve of the eight paranormal events incorporated sequential rather than technically co-occurring constituents. In the dream precognition item for instance, the rst constituent described Leanne dreaming of a house re whereas the second described a re breaking out at her sisters home. Whilst the third conjunction statements described these events as co-occurring, participants may have inferred a temporal sequence, with the rst event presumed to have occurred before the second. By comparison, only two of the eight non-paranormal events incorporated this temporal element. It is possible this presumed sequential relationship between each pair of paranormal constituents inuenced ratings above and beyond their stated paranormality. Of course, this temporal relationship may instead reect the very essence of their paranormality. Nevertheless, future work should ensure such factors are consistent across all event types. One way to achieve this is to compare the precognitive (paranormal) vs. inferential (non-paranormal) prediction of the same future event (e.g. a job promotion). A similar criticism is that some paranormal events such as the near-death experience (SJQ item 14) may be highly surprising simply because participants are unfamiliar with such terms and/or concepts. Future work could test for this possibility via piloting scenario content beforehand. Finally, some paranormal events may be judged unsurprising because participants have a considerable personal experience of them. Whilst a PEQ was included in the current study, it failed to cover all paranormal events outlined in conjunction scenarios. Future versions of the PEQ should attempt to do this. So far, results from the present study have been framed within normative probability theory and as such, implies optimally correct probability judgements are at least possible (Baron, 1994; Fiske & Taylor, 1991). Some have debated whether probabilities can be applied to single events such as those included in the present study. Researchers adopting the frequentist perspectivewho dene probability as the proportion of actual occurrences relative to all possible occurrences of a given event (Manktelow, 1999) claim that probabilities cannot be meaningfully assigned in the absence of a reference class. As such, frequentists believe judgements about the conjunction of single events are not governed by the rules of normative probability theory (Gigerenzer, 1991). Whilst this suggestion has been strongly criticised (Kahneman & Tversky, 1996), others suggest that the conjunction rule is not necessarily the appropriate rule to apply for problems of the kind reported here. One alternative is to take a Bayesian perspective (e.g., Wolford, Taylor & Beck, 1990). According to this view, individuals faced with the aforementioned Linda problem (Tversky and Kahneman, 1982) do not estimate the probability that Linda is a feminist and a bank teller given her character description but instead, estimate the probability of Lindas description given the possibility she actually is a feminist and a bank teller. If individuals were indeed adopting this Bayseian approach then their judgements would not necessarily be fallacious (Wolford et al., 1990). Overall, evidence for this proposition is absent (e.g. Fisk, 1996). Nonetheless, whilst current ndings reveal some interesting group differences between paranormal believers vs. paranormal sceptics, it is possible that the kind of judgements they make about conjunctive events do not in fact
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violate the rules of probability theory. Future studies need to examine this possibility more closely.

Summary and conclusion Findings suggest paranormal believers are more susceptible to the conjunction fallacy and thus that they are especially prone to misperceiving the co-occurrence of two independent events as being more likely than either constituent event alone. Surprisingly, believers susceptibility to this fallacy is less pronounced when one constituent is portrayed as an ostensibly paranormal event implying such biases are, at least in part, context specic. In general, participants susceptibility was unaffected by the format of conjunction items. Taken together, current ndings add further weight to the claim that paranormal believers have a particularly poor understanding of probability and that they are prone to various decits in cognitive processing. Future research to overcome methodological limitations and extend this line of work is recommended.

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