https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/gho...al-belief/
EXCERPT: A YouGov poll in 2019 found that 45 per cent of Americans believe in ghosts, whereas in 2016 another YouGov poll showed that British people are more likely to have faith in spooky spirits than the existence of God. With the release this month of nostalgic sequel Ghostbusters: Afterlife, there seems no better time to ask: why are we still haunted by our belief in ghosts?
“It tends to be driven by two things,” says Richard Wiseman, Professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire. “One is personal experience – lots of people claim to have had a paranormal experience after the loss of a loved one.
“The other is popular media. Most experiences aren’t that difficult to rationalise away. With photographs, for example, there used to be many double exposures but not so many today. Those sorts of ghosts have gone away with the arrival of camera phones.”
According to Wiseman, both drivers take advantage of various psychological traits – some of which are universal, while others are specific to certain people. “Humans have open, imaginative minds,” he says. “And we want to imagine a world that doesn’t have pain or suffering, where our loved ones are still with us. We’re pattern-searching creatures. And the price we pay for seeing patterns that are there, is occasionally going into overdrive and seeing patterns that aren’t there.”
More specifically, Wiseman links a belief in ghosts to creativity. In 2013, for example, a study performed at the University of British Columbia concluded that people with a higher tendency to attribute human traits to non-human objects (anthropomorphising) were also more likely to believe in ghosts... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPT: A YouGov poll in 2019 found that 45 per cent of Americans believe in ghosts, whereas in 2016 another YouGov poll showed that British people are more likely to have faith in spooky spirits than the existence of God. With the release this month of nostalgic sequel Ghostbusters: Afterlife, there seems no better time to ask: why are we still haunted by our belief in ghosts?
“It tends to be driven by two things,” says Richard Wiseman, Professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire. “One is personal experience – lots of people claim to have had a paranormal experience after the loss of a loved one.
“The other is popular media. Most experiences aren’t that difficult to rationalise away. With photographs, for example, there used to be many double exposures but not so many today. Those sorts of ghosts have gone away with the arrival of camera phones.”
According to Wiseman, both drivers take advantage of various psychological traits – some of which are universal, while others are specific to certain people. “Humans have open, imaginative minds,” he says. “And we want to imagine a world that doesn’t have pain or suffering, where our loved ones are still with us. We’re pattern-searching creatures. And the price we pay for seeing patterns that are there, is occasionally going into overdrive and seeing patterns that aren’t there.”
More specifically, Wiseman links a belief in ghosts to creativity. In 2013, for example, a study performed at the University of British Columbia concluded that people with a higher tendency to attribute human traits to non-human objects (anthropomorphising) were also more likely to believe in ghosts... (MORE - missing details)