According to this new study, higher education is associated with a stronger belief in ghosts. I read this and had to post a topic on it here at .



These results surprised me as well, and I know there are plenty of skeptics here. My questions for debate:

1) Do these results surprise you? Do you agree with them (offer evidence of conflicting studies if possible)?

2) If you answered yes above, why do you think higher education is associated with superstition?

Edited to add: The article above has expired. Here is a link that still works.

1) not really- in fact, i would have been suprised if it went the other direction- I think it is the idea that folks at that level of higher learning are willing to take intellectual risks- so much "conventional wisdom" at some point has been blow apart, that you tend to keep an open mind about anything until it is totally disproven. I have been looking for one study all over the internet that shows that post-graduate students are more likely to have used marijuana etc- and what I am saying is this- not that doing marijuana makes you smart or anything - but they are more willing to think outside societal norms and such.

2) I don't think they are really superstisious, I think that is a jump- I just think they are more willing to entertain the idea.

Oh- but I like the article that says "they are better at defending what they believe" - I found that interesting-

1) Do these results surprise you? Do you agree with them (offer evidence of conflicting studies if possible)?

No, I am not surprised with the results. I'll agree with them unless the results are proven wrong, then I won't.

2) If you answered yes above, why do you think higher education is associated with superstition?

Higher education is associated with opening the mind to possibilities. The expression "do you believe in" is misleading. I believe that it's possible that a lot of things happen or exist that I'm not aware of, which is different than believing in something.

Higher education also involves critical thinking, at least when I went to college and what I've see from a certain online university which will remain unnamed. The realm of metaphysics is in philosophy, and a basic proposal of metaphysics is that stuff can exist outside the physical and is therefore unmeasurable in the physical world. It's a bona fide abstraction, similar to the number zero or the concept of absolute nothingness, the absence of time, multiple dimensions and a whole slew of non-material thoughts. Thought itself is known only by its manifestations.

Phew, wow man, that was good ganja, eh? 'Cept I'm stone cold sober. Considering these way-out-there thoughts is a part of higher education. Some are useful, like the idea of zero. Some are potentially useful like multiple dimensions and the absence of time. Some are just the mind messing with concepts, which may or may not be useful. It depends on what's trying to be accomplished. Are you writing sci-fi or technical manuals?

My take is that it's a sign of low education to reject an idea off hand, like the existence of God or ghosts or psychic communications and so on. Along with this, taking unproven ideas and being absolutely certain about them indicates one of three things: lazy thinking, direct and personal experience, or hidden agenda. Earning a college degree doesn't necessarily eliminate lazy thinking and might lead to having hidden agendas. Direct and personal experience with any of this is impossible to prove to someone else, but it could solidify acceptance of the idea.

Here's another impossible thing to do: Design a questionnaire that incorporates all the above into a simple question. Besides, once you get some college under the belt, it's a lot of fun to mess with questionnaires.

AM also brought up a very good point- even at the second year of college you understand questionares very, very well, and how and what they are all about- so, you have to take this questionaire for extra credit- but there are no right or wrong answers- so why both with your actual feelings?


I have always thought that any questionaire where the sampling is 100% college students is automatically flawed.

1) Do these results surprise you? Do you agree with them (offer evidence of conflicting studies if possible)?

At first, the headline and article DID surprise me. So I read the source material, in particular the survey results itself.

The first thing to say is that the only poll statements where the majority result was "BELIEVE" (as opposed to "NOT SURE" or "DON'T BELIEVE") were Psychic or spiritual healing or the power of the human mind to heal the body and Ghosts or that spirits of dead people can come back in certain places and situations.

I consider myself a to be sceptic (skeptic if you prefer American spelling), and I think if I'd been responding to this survey, I'd probably have said "BELIEVE" to both of these statements, but not because I believe in any mumbo-jumbo.

The placebo effect is acknowledged by conventional, evidence-based medicine (and often used, both deliberately, and as part of doctors' "bedside manner" training to maximise trust and therefore maximise the placebo effect). Conventional drug trials, for example, aim to demonstrate not that a drug is effective, but that it is more effective than a placebo.

All objectives studies of things like homeopathy, spiritual healing, psychic surgery, chiropraxis, accupuncture, and all other "alternative" therapies* have consistently shown that the positive therapeutic effects that they do have are indistinguishable from the placebo effect. i.e. Sugar pills and plain water work just as well (which happen to be all you get in homeopathy anyway), but they do work in a significant number of cases.

* exept herbal medicine, which can have real therapeutic effects - hardly surprising given most modern drug treatments are based on plant chemicals. The worry with herbal medicine is the training of the herbalists is rarely up to scratch in diagnosis, and the herbal preparations are worryingly variable (even with the best herbalists, to plants themselves vary naturally).

This isn't because of psychic powers or calling up spirits; it's just the way the ordinary biological mechanisms of the mind work. So this first statement, by lumping together "the power of the human mind" with "psychic surgery" and "Spritiual healing" could be recording a false positive for mumbo-jumbo.

Similarly, by saying that "Ghosts or that spirits of dead people can come back in certain places and situations", the poll is (intentionally or not) ambiguous. I've posted about ghosts here a couple of times myself.

A British physicist and academic researcher demonstrated a couple of years ago that the phenomenon of "ghosts" - involuntary terror for no apparent reason, coupled with seeming to see indistinct shapes and figures that don't seem quite real - were the results of low frequency sound below the range of human hearing. The terror is thought to be an evolutionary adaptation to things like volcanic activity and earthquakes, where running away is a sensible precaution. (It's also taken advantage of by some predators e.g. tigers to panic and stun their prey and make them easier to catch.)

And the apparitions are caused by the eyeball itself physically resonating at these particular frequencies, causing the retina to fire more or less randomly (as it does when you rub your eyes with your knuckles as you yawn) so the brain gets signals that make you think there is something there when it isn't.

Such low frequency sounds can come from air vents, old windows, the shape of corridors or rooms, and so on. (This is why ghosts are more common in older buildings - they're usually more draughty.)

I firmly believe that ghosts DO exist, on this basis. They are a real phenomenon, but they are based on the fallibility of human perception, and have nothing whatsoever to do with the spirits of the dead, demons, pixies, etc. These are just folk aetiologies to "explain" the real phenomena, originating long before the invention of low frequency sound detection equipment. (Just like religious creation stories from around the world "explain" biodiversity - but that's another thread.)

So, by saying that "ghosts OR the spirits of dead people can come back in certain places or situations" I have to say that I believe that to be true, if I answer honestly.

Now, if they had said "ghosts ARE the spirits of dead people...", or Psychic or spiritual healing heal the body better than equivalent placebo treatment, I'd have disagreed with the statements like a shot - and perhaps many of the study respondents would have too, and we wouldn't be talking about it.

Imagine - "higher education students reject superstition in favour of rational analysis" - it's not really a grabber, is it?

So, I think the survey results themselves are open to question. That said, I also think that it's quite likely (and quite depressing) that most of the people who said they believe in these things really are of the astrology, fairies and goblins school of thought, so...

2) If you answered yes above, why do you think higher education is associated with superstition?

I think there are several and diverse factors applying here.

The first thing to say is that woman, generally, tend to believe more in these 'alternative' ideas than men do, and these days, women are much more likely to be in higher education than in the past. To the point that they are often in the majority there, especially in the arts & humanities. (They're still quite rare in the 'hard' sciences like physics, chemistry, etc.)

Then there's the idea that the expansion of higher education in the last 50 years or so (in the USA) and the last 10 (in the UK) has mostly been in these "softer" subjects, where scepticism and intellectual rigour are not the paramount themes. So most students aren't learning these ways of thinking.

Linked to this last issue has been the commodification of education at all levels. These days - and I make no value judgement either way - business needs are the main driver for what and how the education system works. Creative thinking is useful up to a point in business, but routine sceptical questioning is not - if all employees asked 'why' to every management directive (and if managers did the same within their chain of command), very little would ever get done. So people who want to use their education to further their careers (i.e. most of us) don't learn much about sceptical inquiry, so some of our obscurer beliefs never get talked about, let alone challenged.

This doesn't just apply in higher education, but in wider society too.

Another issue, which I think is especially acute in the US, is cultural aversion to interpersonal criticism. From the cradle, Americans are taught that "if they can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all", so the crackpot ideas of our friends generally don't get talked about. (Think about it - on TV talent shows, you have to import Brits to tell clearly tone-deaf people that they can't sing.) So all manner of daft ideas presist because everyone's too polite to shine daylight on them.

Then there's the general Western loss of faith in science and technology. Despite their very great advances, and our huge dependency on both, we seem to still be a bit disenchanted that the 50s and 60s optimism for science and progress hasn't delivered a world without problems. Put another way, even though most of us have personal communicators far beyond anything they had on Star Trek (could Capt Kirk's take photos, send text messages and emails, or do anything except help him talk over long distances? Mine can!) we're still disappointed that we haven't got flying cars and ray guns.

And compared to Europeans, Americans are more superstitious (or 'spiritually aware if you prefer something more complimentary') about these things. I don't think they're more superstitious flat out - Europeans, especially in the South, are way more worried about 'the evil eye' and all that stuff - so it evens out. But this side of the pond we're mouch less obsessed with the sorts of ideas being explored in this survey, I think. (Though if anyone has any international comparisons, I'd love to see them.)

In this context - where education isn't geared towards teaching people how to think, but towards teaching them to be productive workers and effective managers (there is an overlap, but thinking and productivity are not the same thing); where science has lost some of its kudos and also some of its own confidence; and where 'alternative' ideas are not only more common but less likely to be challenged - maybe these results aren't that much of a surprise.

It seems to me that, above a certain minimum level of education (not much beyond being able to read at all), there is very little correlation between education and belief in, well, weird things.

Link



The problem is not the level of education; not even the level of science education:



(Bold added for emphasis.)

It isn't enough to tell students that such-and-such is invalid; we must teach them to be able to test for themselves why something is invalid.

So, the study does not surprise me at all. Higher education (despite its many other benefits) does not lessen gullibility unless scientific skepticism is learned along with "plain facts."

This is very true. Indeed, many otherwise reputable scientists are among the easiest people to sucker into flummery - oops, sorry, I meant to say "alternative" ideas. Remember the fuss made of "cold fusion" and "psychic surgery" by the medical establishment? Scientists are often so intrigued by outlandish ideas that they immediately being hteorising on how such things might be possible, before they stop to ask themselves whether or not they are actually happening.

Most scientists are not just schooled in rational thinking. In academic circles, such things are usually the preserve of philosohpy classes. And, of course, phiolsophers are unused to the scientific method, so people who can do both are actually quite rare.

It was only when non-scientists but rational thinkers such as James Randi (my own favourite candidate for a Nobel prize for pretty much anything, but it'll never happen) get involved and demonstrate that such things are mere trickery that the ideas are debunked. (For this and more such wonderfulness, visit www.randi.org)

The trouble is, of course, that no matter how many times such things are debunked, disproved, or otherwise rubbished, they still survive. Hence these survey results.

It is not as simple as all this...

Skeptics often present questionable arguments that just don't match up with folks' common sense.

Now, I think common sense is not much of a measure of anything, but it is hard to convince somebody to accept an argument that goes against their common sense.


For example, skeptics typically believe there is no God. Their argument goes like this...

Everything can be explained without the existence of God.
The simpler explanation is most likely to be true.
Why invoke God, when you can choose the simpler non-God explanation?


But, this argument flies directly in the face of most people's common sense:

1) With most things in life, the simpler explanation does not appear to be correct. That is, on a day to day basis, with what most people experience, the more you analyze something, the more complex it appears to be.

2) People feel the presense of God. I mean, it is totally untestable, and quite explainable by physiological means, but that doesn't change the fact that people still feel it. Common sense is largely derived from personal experience.

3) People believe what they want to believe. This is true of athiests, theists, deists, etc... When a person changes belief, it is because they perceive a benefit to doing so. People who greatly value honesty might change their belief because of a change in the evidence, but they adhere to this because they greatly value honesty. In other words, they want to believe what they feel fits the facts. For many people, even those highly educated, fitting the facts is just not that important. They want to believe in continued existence, or in God, or whatever.


Personally, I am a deist. I also believe the evidence from near death experiences cannot be dismissed. The arguments for dismissing it just seem to fall apart upon close analysis.

I think there are two issues to consider here: 1) college students, despite receiving a so-called "education", are not necessarily any more rational than the rest of the human population; and 2) humans are basically irrational.

I submit that most students attending a college are not there because they are more rational than their peers, but rather because they grew up in more favorable socioeconomic circumstances than those peers not attending. While some may point to entrance qualifications as a filter of "intelligence", I would counter that possessing the skills to be judged highly by a college entrace examination board does not at all imply possessing the skills necessary to evaluate paranormal claims; and that the former skill is much more specific and proscribed than might be assumed from the purpose of a college entrance exam. As evidence of the intellectual mediocrity of most college students, I present to you the phenomenon of "Spring Break".

With regards to The Irrational Ape, allow me to observe that the nature of intelligence is not to provide a single consistent, coherent model of the universe. The nature of intelligence is to control a body within an environment. If computer science has taught us anything in the 60 or so years of its existence, it is simply this: Almost every interesting problem is very, very hard. What that means is that most "solutions" within the computational sphere are not general and abstract. Humans are very concrete and compartmentalized because that is the most efficient strategy for survival with limited computational resources in a dangerous world. Our brains contain problem solvers for attacking things, evading things, eating things, finding things, etc. Where these tasks overlap, there is often shared functionality neurobiologically. But where they do not overlap, the brain is more than happy to operate completely independent "modules" that solve specific problems well, rather than general problems poorly. Since humans have generally not needed to evaluate paranormal claims as a regular matter of course in the game of survival, it is not surprising to find that most of us lack a good solution for this problem in wetware. Instead, we must make do with other neural systems that were not designed for this esoteric, "modern" task.

That is to say, possessing some higher degree of what is called "general intelligence" does not at all imply superior faculty in assessing paranormal claims, because skepticism is a learned trait as much as writing or solving cube roots by hand. Especially since colleges and universities do not encourage skepticism, we should not be the least bit surprised that our sons and daughters do not automagically graduate with it. It might seem peculiar to claim that colleges do not promote skepticism, but I defy you to show me a plurality of professors that give high marks to students who challenge the ideas they present in class, even if done in a well-reasoned manner. College is as much about conformity as elementary school, and learning conformity is the diametrical opposite of learning skepticism. If anything, we generally teach students to be bad skeptics.

But why do we do this? Well, simply put, because it works best that way. Students who learn conformity integrate better with society. Radical skeptics might end up like Ted Kaczynski. And being bad at evaluating paranormal claims generally does not put one at a disadvantage in society. There are the marginal costs of horoscopes and palm readings, but even these tools may have some psychological benefit that is independent of of the veracity of the claims involved. Most people who believe in ghosts are not psychologically debilitated by the fear of hauntings. Most people who believe in psychic powers generally aren't crippled by a paranoia that psychics are reading their minds and stealing their thoughts. In short, most paranormal beliefs are harmless, despite what Michael Shermer would like you to believe.

The startling conclusion one can draw from this is perhaps the hardest lesson I ever had to learn: Truth is not always the highest human virtue. Sometimes humans prefer to believe lies. Why does over half the population think they are "above average"? Are we all pathological liars that never tell ourselves the truth? In a literal sense, probably so. In a moral sense, we don't lie because we're evil. We lie because it keeps us alive. We need to have purpose and value, and lying to ourselves about our place in society gives us that purpose. Lying to ourselves about the presence of forces we can't explain gives us mystery that is desperately lacking in our science-saturated world. Perhaps we have a deep-seated psychological need for mystery and wonder that is as basic as our need for companionship. And for that reason, we will probably always have believers who confound and annoy the skeptics, and maybe that isn't so bad, in the grand scheme of things.