International Journal of Education and Psychological Research

(Print and Online Peer Reviewed Journal)


Print - ISSN: 2349 - 0853
e - ISSN: 2279 - 0179

VOLUME 5 - ISSUE 2

(June 2016)

A Correlational Study of Religious and Paranormal Beliefs among Indians


Authors: Dr. Malik Roshan Ara

Pages: 84-95

Abstract:

Beliefs happen to be the most significant indicators of a person’s overall personality and provide us a window on his mental constructs. The study of the paranormal activities and phenomena has been riddled with controversy since its conception and previous researches revealed mixed and contradictory findings. The present study focuses to study correlation between paranormal beliefs and the religious beliefs across different religious groups, among individuals of different age groups and socio-economic status. Significant positive correlation was found between religious beliefs and paranormal beliefs as well as between religious beliefs and the traditional religious beliefs, psi and witchcraft subscales of the paranormal beliefs scale. Muslims scored higher on the traditional religious beliefs subscale in comparison with the Hindus. On the other hand, among the Hindus a higher degree of endorsement of witch-craft was observed. However, so far as the Christians are concerned no significant differences were observed either on global paranormal beliefs or any of the subscales of the paranormal beliefs. Socially marginal groups were found to be more susceptible to paranormal beliefs. They scored higher on psi, witchcraft, superstition, spiritualism, precognition as well as the total- paranormal beliefs scale.