Not-So-Critical Masses

I read this in the Skeptical Inquirer a month or so ago, and was a tad concerned:

Contrary to researchers' expectations, a poll of 439 college students found seniors and grad students were more likely than freshmen to believe in haunted houses, psychics, telepathy, channeling and a host of other questionable ideas.

The results are detailed in the January-February issue of the Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

The survey was modeled after a nationwide Gallup Poll in 2001 that found younger Americans far more likely to believe in the paranormal than older respondents.

The new study was done by Bryan Farha at Oklahoma City University and Gary Steward Jr. of the University of Central Oklahoma.
...
More significantly, the new survey reveals college is not necessarily a path to skepticism in these realms.

While 23 percent of college freshmen expressed a general belief in paranormal concepts—from astrology to communicating with the dead—31 percent of seniors did so and the figure jumped to 34 percent among graduate students.

"As people attain higher college-education levels, the likelihood of believing in paranormal dimensions increases," Farha and Steward write.

The media are likely responsible for some people's beliefs in alien abductions and other paranormal concepts, the scientists write, based on their survey of existing studies. And some people tend to selectively confirm whatever ideas might be in their heads. Even smart people might believe in something offbeat because, in part, they're good at defending whatever they believe.

In general college students checked the "Believe" box less than the general population surveyed by Gallup. But the lack of "Don't Believe" responses among college students was lower for six of the 13 categories: psychic or spiritual healing, haunted houses, demonic possession, ghosts, clairvoyance and witches. That means a higher percentage of college students put themselves in the "Not Sure" column on these topics.

This isn't entirely surprising by itself; what I found particularly interesting--in the original SI article, not mentioned in the LiveScience article--was that they cross-tabbed the respondents by area of study, and those who were studying the sciences were not significantly lower in their tendency to be "believers" than other majors. Although, ironically, the smallest number of believers were studying the fine arts (although the article admits that there were few respondents to the questionnaire who were fine arts majors).

The researchers don't make any attempt to explain why this might be--and we need to be careful not to confuse "correlation" with "causation." But I think this is just a small piece of a larger societal tendency to not place a very high emphasis on critical thinking--whether it comes to the paranormal or anything else, for that matter. And even to articles in the Skeptical Inquirer. I'm reminded of the old gag:

PERSON 1: "Did you know the word 'gullible' isn't in the dictionary?"
PERSON 2: "Really? I didn't know that."

On a side note, and in the "everyone thinks they're a comedian" category, back in the late 90s when I lived in L.A., I went to the post office to mail some letters, one of which was a subscription renewal to the Skeptical Inquirer. The postal clerk read the address and said, "Skeptical Inquirer, huh? They're probably not going to believe this is from you." Boy was I happy when online bill paying was invented.