Paranormal beliefs are driving the bias seen in the classification of ambiguous stimuli in perceptual decision-making paradigm

Abstract

Abstract Previous studies showed that paranormal believers are more tendency to find meaningful patterns in noise. This study develops these results via examine the sensory biases correlated to paranormal beliefs by using a perceptual decision-making task. To investigate whether paranormal believers differ in their sensitivity to recognizing significant face and house patterns in visual noise levels (from 40–70%), we used a face/house categorization task. The results show that paranormal believers are less efficient at discrimination between face and house stimulus in visual noise levels. It reflects a correlation between paranormal beliefs and a tendency for ambiguous stimuli. Our results revealed that paranormal beliefs are effective in face/house categorization task in the perceptual decision-making paradigm. Also, these findings show the effects of prior beliefs on cognitive processes and emphasize the influence of personal characteristics such as gender, age, and education on paranormal beliefs.