The supernatural can turn super-neurotic if not taken care of. According to studies paranormal beliefs are big indicators of increasing stress levels. Researchers at Manchester Metropolitan University say they have a link between one group of beliefs and a reduced ability to cope with stressors. The study heavily relied on participants filling out a questionnaire known as the Revised Paranormal Belief Scale – which measures the degree of belief in each of these seven categories:
- Traditional religious belief
- PSI
- Witchcraft
- Superstition
- Spiritualism
- Extraordinary life forms
- Precognition
According to scientists, these beliefs are further broken down into dimensions – which include traditional paranormal beliefs like ghosts and other entities, religious beliefs, and witchcraft or black magic. The second is new age philosophy, which encompasses a range of issues like spiritualism, precognition, and extraordinary life forms. How do paranormal beliefs increase stress? Statistics say more than a quarter of adults in the US consider themselves superstitious, and recent trends reveal that younger people are more superstitious than the older population. A research team led by Dr. Kenneth Drinkwater and his colleagues had more than three thousand participants complete the questionnaire evaluating different facets of perceived stress. The answers were supplemented with a 10-item Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) questionnaire completed by the study volunteers. By comparing the two, the researchers were looking to see how the perceived sense of control within differing paranormal beliefs would affect the amount of stress a believer experiences and how much success they have coping with feelings of stress. As hoped, they saw a distinct pattern. Their findings, published in the journal
PLOS ONE, revealed that those who scored higher for traditional paranormal belief reported elevated distress levels and reduced ability to manage stress. These beliefs are also associated with feelings of anxiety about a lack of control over external forces. However, belief in new age philosophies, including psi, was not linked to increased distress and/or decreased ability to cope. Earlier research has suggested that, in general, belief in the paranormal is not linked to stress vulnerability. Yet studies on superstitious belief – a subset of paranormal belief say those who rely on superstitions in stressful situations to gain an illusion of control over outcomes. According to the authors, that analysis found that there was no recognized overall link between stress management and any form of paranormal beliefs. They did, however, find some studies linking different paranormal beliefs to varying stress management outcomes. “Recent research indicates that paranormal belief, in the absence of allied cognitive-perceptual and psychopathology-related factors, is not associated with negative well-being outcomes,” they wrote. “However, investigators have historically reported relationships between specific facets of belief (e.g., superstition) and stress vulnerability.”
