Skeptics and Parapsychologists Have Something in Common

A new paper published in Frontiers in Psychology examines the similarities and differences between skeptics, parapsychologists, (scientists who study psychic ability), and believers in psychic ability. It challenges the idea that skeptics somehow possess different or superior thinking skills in evaluating the evidence for psychic ability. Here’s the introduction:

Introduction: Belief in psi, which includes psychic phenomena such as extra-sensory perception and post-mortem survival, is widespread yet controversial. According to one of the leading and perhaps most tested hypotheses, high belief in psi can be explained by differences in various aspects of cognition, including cognitive styles. Most of this research has been conducted with lay individuals. Here, we tested the hypothesis that academic researchers who investigate psi may exhibit different cognitive styles than lay individuals interested in psi, and are more similar to skeptics.

And this was their overall conclusion:

Discussion: Our research shows that academics who work with psi differ from lay psi individuals, but not from skeptics, in actively open-minded thinking. In other words, despite their high belief in psi phenomena, psi researchers demonstrate a commitment to sound reasoning about evidence that is no different from that of skeptics.

One of the myths that this research dispels is that skeptics are somehow superior critical thinkers when it comes to psychic research. This is certainly consistent with my own observations over the years. I have personally never seen any case where skeptics demonstrated superior skills at evaluating parapsychological research, or indeed, anything related to the paranormal or psychic ability at all. At best, they are equal in their critical thinking and at worst, they demonstrate obvious biases in their evaluations.

A very important aspect of this discussion is the idea of objective vs. subjective experience. This line isn’t clear cut and there is a lot of ambiguity on the table. What this means is that people who rely on their subjective experiences to create their worldview aren’t necessarily worse thinkers, only different in what they rely on. Objectivity itself relies ultimately on choosing what data to believe.

Better Informed Equals better at Being Objective

Also, lay individuals, whether skeptics or experiencers, were generally worse at critical thinking. No surprise there either. Objective evaluation is a scholarly skill that has to be learned. In general, lay skeptics and experiencers tend more towards knee jerk reactions to data that they don’t like and both exhibit more defensiveness over their positions.

A lot of bias comes from having an emotional attachment to a particular position. Spending more time with a subject includes careful considerations of contrary positions, which in turn will slowly erode strong emotions surrounding a subject and introduce more objectivity.

So these study results shouldn’t be very surprising. Informed people are better at evaluating a subject than uninformed people. Having said that, my long history with the controversies in parapsychology tells me that the situation is decidedly more complicated. This has less to do with logic and rational thinking and more to do with the nature of psychic ability. Believers are not really believers and skeptics aren’t really skeptics. There are deeper layers to this situation.

Who is Really the Believer?

Belief implies a reliance on faith without evidence and skepticism implies objectively examining evidence and not drawing unsupported conclusions. Yet “believers” often rely on evidence, it’s merely a question of interpretation and how much evidence they think that they need. And skeptics often begin from their own sets of beliefs before they examine evidence.

One complication comes from the self reporting nature of the study. It can only measure people’s view of themselves, not the accuracy of their self reflection.

For example, when examining beliefs about psychic ability, it is important to establish the reality of psychic ability first. If, for example, we were examining a discussion about whether trees exist, we would immediately divide that group into rational people who know that trees exist and irrational people who did not believe in trees.

The believers in trees would not be criticized for being inflexible about the reality of trees nor would their critical thinking skills be questioned for refusing to entertain any discussion about it, rather the tree skeptics would be criticized as tree deniers. The entire narrative completely flips depending on what we agree is real.

Who is the Rational One?

So if it’s assumed that psychic ability is real, then of course people are not going to be open to changing their minds about it. Doubt about whether a particular experience is real is weighed against whether it is within the boundaries of ordinary psychic experiences. If psychic experiences are not considered to be exceptional, then the bar for acceptance is not very high. In this case the classification of “believer” is grossly misleading because they are operating on knowledge based on experience, not on personal beliefs.

The other thing to consider is that skeptics tend to talk big about being open minded, and often sincerely believe this to be true about themselves, but in practice most of them demonstrate just the opposite to be true. What passes for careful rationality and critical thinking is often just pride and stubbornness with a lot of ego mixed in. So a skeptic might claim that their mind can be changed by evidence, but when push comes to shove, it gradually becomes obvious that no evidence will ever be enough. In the study, this was somewhat acknowledged by measuring a “need for closure.” While this is certainly related to stubbornness, there may still be a gap between what a person thinks about themselves and what they actually do.

Measuring Skeptical Stubbornness

Skeptical stubbornness is difficult to uncover because it requires repeatedly probing the skeptic to see whether they will change their mind in the face of contrary evidence, but revealing this trait is extremely important in evaluating their critical thinking skills. Part of stubbornness is the belief that one isn’t being stubborn, merely holding steadfast to the truth, so a survey or a psych test that is not designed to specifically uncover this is probably insufficient.

For example, if you asked a skeptic if sufficient evidence would change their mind, they would say that yes, it would. If you instead forced them to quantify exactly what evidence would definitively change their mind, (a successful telepathy test? A personal experience?) they would likely refuse to commit to a concrete answer that would force them to concede, or choose an answer that will always be out of reach. Either path demonstrates stubbornness and a deficiency in critical thinking.

When it comes to these two things: sorting out whether belief is actually experience or whether claims of being open minded and objective are just lip service, it’s very hard for academic studies to sort these two things out, but they have huge ramifications for the conclusions. The flaky believer magically transforms into an open minded holistic thinker and the critically thinking skeptic becomes a stubborn fool.

Know Your Universe Before Passing Judgment

This is an important point because evidence is mounting that we live in a universe where consciousness, not the material world, is fundamental to reality. In that case, reality itself is relative to the observer, which must necessarily change our perception about what constitutes belief vs. reality. It no longer becomes a question of whether someone is correctly viewing reality, but about how far off they are from what is often referred to as “consensus reality.”

The takeaway here is that I think that we have to be careful in our assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of “believers” and “skeptics.” It is a question with far more depth and nuance than first appears. If we don’t question our underlying assumptions, we may lose sight of thinking processes that are far more complex than first appears.