The supersense we experience as adults is the remnant of the child’s intuitive reasoning system that incorrectly comes up with explanations that do not fit rational models of the world. One might assume that those prone to the supersense and belief in the paranormal are lacking in rational thought processes, but that would be too simplistic. Studies reveal that the two systems of thinking, the intuitive and the rational, coexist in the same individual. There are, in effect, two different ways of interpreting the world. In fact, when we measure reliance on intuition, no relationship has been found with intelligence. Intuitive people are not more stupid.55 They are, however, more prone to supernatural belief. One recent study found that mood is an important factor in triggering supernatural beliefs in those who score more highly on measures of intuition.56 For example, happy, intuitive adults are more likely to sit farther away from someone they believe is contaminated, a response that reflects the psychological contamination we described in chapter 7. They are also less able to throw darts at pictures of babies; this measure reflects the sympathetic magical law of similarity by which objects that resemble each other are believed to share a magical connection. Even though individuals may not be consciously aware of the thought processes guiding such behaviour, these effects reveal a deep-seated notion of sympathetic magical reasoning. The supersense lingers in the back of our minds, influencing our behaviours and thoughts, and our mood may play a triggering role. This explains why perfectly rational, highly educated individuals can still hold supernatural beliefs.
Marjaana Lindeman at the University of Helsinki has recently tested this dual model of belief and reason and the role of naive intuitive theories.57 She investigated intuitive reasoning and the supersense in more than three thousand Finnish adults. First, she asked them about their supernatural beliefs, both secular and religious. Then she assessed their intuitive misconceptions. She asked them questions about animism, teleological reasoning, anthropomorphism, vitalism, and core conceptual confusions they had about physical, biological, and psychological aspects of the world – all the sorts of areas that children naturally reason about by themselves that sometimes lead to misconceptions. She asked questions like. ‘When summer is warm, do flowers want to bloom?’ or ‘Does old furniture know something about the past?’ Finally, she asked them which style of thinking they preferred – intuitive gut reactions or well-thought-out analytical reasoning.
When she compared adults with a strong supersense with those who were more sceptical, Lindeman found that believers were more likely to misattribute properties of one conceptual category to another. For example, they were more likely to say that old chairs know something about the past (attributing mental property to inanimate objects) or that thoughts could be transferred to others (attributing physical properties to mental states). They were teleologically more promiscuous and inclined to animism as well as anthropomorphism. They were also more vitalist and had a sense that things are connected in the world. Were they less educated? No. These were university students. What’s more, they scored just as high as the sceptical students on other measures of rationality. Rationality and supernatural beliefs can coexist in the same individual. These students were SuperBrights who simply preferred, or were more inclined to rely on, their intuitive ways of thinking.
Finland may have one of the highest rates of atheism in the world, but this large study of adult students proves that educated people do not neatly divide into those with a supersense and those without one. When people rely on their fast, unlearned gut responses, they are inclined to use their supersense, and it’s something that is easily triggered in most of us.
WHAT NEXT?
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
– Corinthians 13:11
Throughout this book, I have been arguing that beliefs in the supernatural are a consequence of reasoning processes about natural properties and events in our world. This includes a mind design for detecting patterns and inferring structures where there may be none. Our naive theories form the basis of our supernatural beliefs, and culture and experience simply work to reinforce what we intuitively hold to be correct. This is why the sense of being stared at is such an interesting model for the origin and development of supernaturalism. Children are not told that humans can detect unseen gaze. In fact, it’s not something they readily report that they can do. Nevertheless, young children and many adults think that vision works by something leaving the eyes. So when they experience episodes of seeming to detect unseen gaze, this belief simply emerges naturally as an unquestioned ability. It is not even considered supernatural by most people. Children were not told to think this. This model shows how the combination of intuitive theories, pattern detecting, and eventual support from culture produces a universal supernatural belief.
I think that something very similar may be going on for other supernatural beliefs. The notion of psychological contamination we examined in earlier chapters emerges naturally out of psychological essentialism, which has its roots in our naive biological reasoning. Again, this way of thinking is not something that we teach our children. Intuitive dualism and the idea that the mind can exist independently of the body is another. All of these ways of thinking are both naturally emerging and yet supernatural in their explanations of the world.
As we noted earlier, some have argued that adult supernaturalism is a product of religious indoctrination of our children. However, I hope I have convinced you that the various secular supernatural beliefs we have examined throughout this book seem to arise spontaneously without necessarily being started by religion. Most importantly, some beliefs remain dormant, whereas others that are not regarded as supernatural grow in strength. This occurs even in highly educated adults. We can all entertain weird and wonderful beliefs about the world.
We may put away childish things, as Corinthians suggests, but we never entirely get rid of them. Education can give us a new understanding and even progress to a scientific viewpoint, but development, distress, damage, and disease show that we keep many skeletons in our mental closet. If those misconceptions involve our understanding of the properties and limits of the material world, the living world, and the mental world, there is a good chance that they can form the basis of adult supernatural beliefs.
As children discover more about the real world, they should progress to a more scientific view of the world. Clearly, this does not necessarily happen. Most adults hold supernatural beliefs. The supersense continues to influence and operate in our lives. It may even give us a sense of control over our behaviours. As we saw in the opening chapters, many of our actions, whether we are avoiding a cardigan, demolishing a house, touching a blanket, or engaging in exam rituals, give us a psychological way of dealing with things. Without these beliefs, we may feel vulnerable. We may not even be aware that a supersense is influencing our lives, and yet it clearly does.