Believing is seeing: The link between paranormal beliefs and perceiving signal in noise

作     者：Seymour, Kiley Sterzer, Philipp Soto, Natalie 

作者机构：Western Sydney Univ Sch Psychol Locked Bag 1797 Penrith NSW 2751 Australia MARCS Inst Brain Behav & Dev Sydney NSW Australia Charite Univ Med Berlin Dept Psychiat & Psychotherapy Berlin Germany Humboldt Univ Berlin Sch Mind & Brain Berlin Germany Univ Psychiat Clin Basel Basel Switzerland 

出 版 物：《CONSCIOUSNESS AND COGNITION》 (Conscious. Cogn.)

年 卷 期：2022年第106卷

页      面：103418页

核心收录：

学科分类：0402[教育学-心理学(可授教育学、理学学位）] 04[教育学] 

主　　题：Paranormal beliefs Mooney faces Perceptual sensitivity Predictive coding Psychosis 

摘      要：Research suggests that at the core of paranormal belief formation is a tendency to attribute meaning to ambiguous stimuli. But it is unclear whether this tendency reflects a difference in perceptual sensitivity or a decision bias. Using a two-alternative forced choice task, we tested the relationship between paranormal belief and perceptual sensitivity. Participants were shown two stimuli presented in temporal succession. In one interval an ambiguous Mooney Face (i.e., signal) was presented, in the other interval a scrambled version of the image (i.e., noise) was presented. Participants chose in which of the two intervals the face appeared. Our results revealed that participants with stronger beliefs in paranormal phenomena were less sensitive to discriminating signal from noise. This finding builds on previous research using yes/no tasks, but importantly disentangles perceptual sensitivity from response bias and suggests paranormal believers perceive things differently.