{"id":9048,"date":"2006-02-27T16:34:48","date_gmt":"2006-02-27T23:34:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2006\/02\/27\/the-psychology-of-supernatural-belief.html"},"modified":"2006-02-27T16:34:48","modified_gmt":"2006-02-27T23:34:48","slug":"the_psychology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/02\/27\/the_psychology.html","title":{"rendered":"The psychology of supernatural belief"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An interesting set of studies into <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mindhacks.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/cognitive_psychology.html\" target=\"_blank\">what goes into belief in the supernatural<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The current issue of <em>American Scientist <\/em>has an excellent feature article on &#8216;The Cognitive Psychology of Belief in the Supernatural&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>It argues that our ability to reason about other people&#8217;s intentions underlies many common supernatural beliefs. In other words, we have a tendency to see intentions and consciousness even in mechanical aspects of the world.<\/p>\n<p>The author is psychologist Dr Jesse Bering who has been using cognitive psychology to try and understand areas that are traditionally tackled by philosophy, such as belief in souls, causation and existential meaning.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Tradition has it that the supernatural stemmed from an intellectual attempt to figure out reasons for natural events &#8212; why did the lighting strike, what does it mean if yesterday it was clear and today it&#8217;s raining?  This study indicates that interpreting <em>intent <\/em>is more fundamental than an intellectual exercise, and that might be tied into our ability to interpret intent and emotions from each other.<\/p>\n<p>Interesting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An interesting set of studies into what goes into belief in the supernatural: The current issue of American Scientist has an excellent feature article on &#8216;The Cognitive Psychology of Belief&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion","category-science"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3992,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/03\/03\/belief.html","url_meta":{"origin":9048,"position":0},"title":"Belief","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 3-Mar-03 10:01am","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's an interesting Harris Poll on The Religious and Other Beliefs of Americans 2003. Among some noteworthy items: 90% of adults believe in God. 51% believed in ghosts, but only...","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Potpourri&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Potpourri","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/potpourri"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":50152,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/04\/24\/more-sffantasysupernatural-tv-yay.html","url_meta":{"origin":9048,"position":1},"title":"More SF\/Fantasy\/Supernatural TV &#8230; yay?","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 24-Apr-15 5:01pm","format":false,"excerpt":"But ... but ... I was counting on the summer for stuff I've fallen behind on the other three seasons. That looks unlikely shows like Sense8, The Expanse, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Face Off, Killjoys, Dark Matter, and everything else not on hiatus continuing to suck up my life\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;~PlusPosts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11715,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/07\/09\/wild_about_harry_2.html","url_meta":{"origin":9048,"position":2},"title":"Wild about Harry","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 9-Jul-07 6:33pm","format":false,"excerpt":"You know -- Harry, the magician, pursued by a dark past, beset by supernatural villains, sometimes mistrusted both the councils of the mighty and his friends as well, just...","rel":"","context":"In &quot;TV&quot;","block_context":{"text":"TV","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/media-tv"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":25778,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/28\/the-three-men-i-admire-most-the-father-son-and-holy-ghost.html","url_meta":{"origin":9048,"position":3},"title":"&quot;The three men I admire most \/ The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost&quot;","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 28-Jan-12 11:54am","format":false,"excerpt":"\"The three men I admire most \/ The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost\"So here's an interesting one. There's apparently a big brouhaha in the Christian publishing world over some new resources (Bibles and Bible story collections) designed for missionary work among Muslims because they've changed the terms \"Father\" and \"Son\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;~PlusPosts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7885,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/07\/29\/a_howler.html","url_meta":{"origin":9048,"position":4},"title":"A howler","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 29-Jul-05 7:55pm","format":false,"excerpt":"From this month's Marvel solicitations: NICK FURY'S HOWLING COMMANDOS #1 Written by KEITH GIFFEN Pencils and Cover by EDU FRANCISCO When the supernatural proves too difficult and dangerous for SHIELD,...","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Comics &amp; Comic Books&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Comics &amp; Comic Books","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/media-comics"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9139,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/02\/11\/mini_reviews.html","url_meta":{"origin":9048,"position":5},"title":"Mini-reviews","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 11-Feb-06 8:15am","format":false,"excerpt":"Videos I've watched this week, in 50 words or less. Hellboy: Rough, tumbly, supernatural fun, faithfully adapated in tone and image if not tale. A bit disjointed in the plot...","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Movies&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Movies","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/media-movies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9048\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}