Review of General Psychology © 2012 American Psychological Association

2012, Vol. 16, No. 3, 241–255 1089-2680/12/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0027158

What’s in a Term? Paranormal, Superstitious, Magical and Supernatural

Beliefs by Any Other Name Would Mean the Same

Marjaana Lindeman and Annika M. Svedholm

University of Helsinki

What are paranormal, superstitious, magical, and supernatural (PSMS) beliefs and what, if anything,
separates them? Currently, use of the concepts is ambiguous and agreement is weak. A literature search
for articles dealing with PSMS beliefs during the last two decades produced conceptual definitions that
we grouped into seven groups. Five groups consisted of definitions that were domain-general, namely
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

false beliefs, belief in scientifically impossible phenomena, and associative biases (covariation bias, laws
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of sympathetic magic, and irrational acts). Two sets of definitions were domain-specific (content-
dependent), namely counterintuitive and intuitive beliefs about physical, biological, and psychological
phenomena. Empirical methods were reviewed to show what kinds of beliefs have been examined under
the rubrics paranormal, supernatural, magical, or superstitious. We concluded that the concepts paranor-
mal, superstitious, magical, and supernatural denote the same thing and that domain-general definitions
are inadequately precise. Defining PSMS beliefs as category mistakes that confuse the distinctive
attributes of mental phenomena, material objects, living, and animate organisms, and the processes
these engage in, fared best in distinguishing PSMS beliefs from other beliefs and covering relevant
beliefs. We suggest researchers sharpen the content of the measures and strive to integrate lines of
research that have so far remained separate.

Keywords: magical, paranormal, supernatural, superstitious

Supplemental materials: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0027158.supp

Do children have paranormal beliefs? Is belief in God a super-
stition? Is the Devil a magical being? Are horoscopes supernatu-
ral? What exactly do these concepts stand for?
Psychologists have been interested in paranormal, superstitious,
magical and supernatural topics since the 1800’s, but in the re-
search literature, these terms are used inconsistently. For example,
the exact same beliefs might be filed under different constructs;
belief in witches, for example, has intermittently been labeled
paranormal (Tobacyk & Milford, 1983), supernatural (Landrine &
Klonoff, 1994), magical (Pronin, Wegner, McCarthy, & Rodri-
guez, 2006), and superstitious (Peltzer & Renner, 2003). Con-
versely, the same construct might be used to refer to very different
beliefs, as in the case of superstition, which has been exemplified
by fear of nonpoisonous snakes (Beck & Forstmeier, 2007) and
belief in an afterlife (Tykocinski, 2008), among others.
The main problem, however, is that conceptual agreement is
weak in the whole field: There appears to be no consensus what-
soever on the way the concepts of paranormal, superstitious,
This article was published Online First June 11, 2012.
Marjaana Lindeman and Annika M. Svedholm, Division of Cognitive
Psychology and Neuropsychology, Institute of Behavioural Sciences, Uni-
versity of Helsinki, Finland.
This study was supported by grants from Nylands Nation and the
Finnish Cultural Foundation awarded to Annika M. Svedholm.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Marjaana
Lindeman, Division of Cognitive Psychology and Neuropsychology, Insti-
tute of Behavioural Sciences, P. O. Box 9, 00014 University of Helsinki,
Helsinki, Finland. E-mail: marjaana.lindeman@helsinki.fi
magical, and supernatural should be defined. Consensus is lacking
for such basic questions as why belief in immortal souls should be
considered paranormal (supernatural, magical, superstitious) while
the belief that vitamin C prevents flu should not. As researchers,
we should also be able to specify the relationship between scien-
tific knowledge and claims that are, for instance, supernatural (lat.
super ⫽ above, natura ⫽ nature) or paranormal (gr. para ⫽
against; lat. para ⫽ contrary, outside). Can today’s knowledge be
delegated to the status of a supernatural claim tomorrow and vice
versa, or is there something inherently different in paranormal,
supernatural, magical, and superstitious beliefs that separates them
from scientific knowledge?
In recent years, some reviews of research findings have been
published (Irwin, 2009; Vyse, 1997) but we know of no previous
disquisitions of definitions and measures in this field. The aims of
this article are to review how paranormal, supernatural, magical
and superstitious (PSMS) beliefs have been (a) conceptually and
(b) operationally defined, to (c) evaluate the available conceptual
definitions and operationalizations, and (d) to offer a conceptual
definition that fills the requirements of good concept definition. In
particular, we examine two questions that have important im-
plications for the development of both theory and assessment:
(a) Are there reasons to differentiate the concepts paranormal,
supernatural, magical and superstitious from each other and if
there are, how do the constructs differ from each other? And,
(b) How have PSMS beliefs been understood to differ from
other beliefs?
We first briefly describe the etymological roots of the four
concepts. The following chapters present the criteria by which

241
 242 LINDEMAN AND SVEDHOLM
studies were included in the review, and give examples of the
different ways in which the concepts have been hierarchically
ordered. We then proceed to a review of conceptual definitions for
PSMS beliefs. The next section focuses on methods for measuring
the beliefs. We conclude the article with a synthesis and evaluation
of the available approaches and proposals for defining and assess-
ing PSMS beliefs.
A Short Etymology
The concept of magic (gr. magos ⫽ one of the members of the
learned and priestly class) is traced back to the Middle Ages when
some people were assumed to have exceptional characteristics,
such as an ability to control events in nature. In the course of time,
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anyone who for one reason or another was exceptional could be
considered a magician, including menstruating or pregnant
women, doctors, actors, blacksmiths, individuals with unusual
looks, or, prototypically, priests (Mauss, 1902/1972).
Superstition, also a medieval concept, has always denoted a
false belief, assumed to be held by ignorant lay people (lat.
superstitio ⫽ standing over a thing in amazement or awe). The
concept may have been brought up by Bishop Agobard around 820
in reference to pagans and non-Christians (Kieckhefer, 1989).
Consequently, whereas the concept of magic still carries an en-
chanting spell, the term superstition has a strongly pejorative
flavor (Jahoda, 1970): Few people like to self-identify as super-
stitious.
Supernatural is by origin a religious concept and it was intro-
duced after the Middle Ages to denote something that belongs to
a realm or system higher than that of nature (Supernatural, n.d.).
Durkheim (1912/1964) suspected that people in prescientific so-
cieties probably did not see anything as supernatural because only
in a scientific age can one have a conception of a natural order to
which the supernatural may be opposed.
As “supernatural” carried a religious nuance, the English spiri-
tual movement of the 19th century and the Society for Psychical
Research coined the concept of paranormal. The society was
established in 1882 to scientifically investigate events whose op-
eration is outside the scope of the known laws of nature: first,
survival after death, and later also phenomena such as telepathy
and precognition (Paranormal., n.d.). As Rice (2003) has noted,
many Christians differentiate supernatural from paranormal phe-
nomena because while some paranormal phenomena (e.g., psycho-
kinesis) are not officially endorsed by the church, other supernat-
ural phenomena (e.g., miracles, guardian angels, and God) are
accepted as real.
Conceptual Definitions
Search Criteria
The PsycINFO® electronic database was used to conduct a
literature search for articles that had full text available, concerned
human participants, were published in English in peer-reviewed
journals between 1990 and the third week of September 2011, and
had one of the main constructs (paranormal, supernatural, super-
stition/superstitious or magic/magical) in the title. We comple-
mented the selected articles with books and articles that we knew
of based on our earlier work in this field.
Work concerning childhood beliefs was included only if it
explicitly addressed even adult beliefs or if the definition held
particular relevance for adult beliefs. However, methods used to
assess beliefs in children were not included, as they were seldom
comparable to the methods used with adults.
Out of the four terms, the search on “magic” returned by far the
largest number of results, but the smallest number of articles to be
included in the review. The unselected articles used the word
“magic” as a metaphor, to refer to perceptual illusions or tricks, or
to something enchanting, surprising, or exceptional (e.g., the bas-
ketball player Earvin Johnson).
The difficulty of defining magical, superstitious, paranormal,
and supernatural beliefs was widely acknowledged. Many authors
chose not to attempt definition at all. It is possible that the
researchers assumed that people are often capable of identifying
the beliefs at a common sense level, as brought up in one definition
of superstitions: They are phenomena that most members of soci-
ety would identify and recognize as falling into this category
(Campbell, 1996). Many authors instead supplied examples of the
phenomena that the beliefs concern, especially in connection with
paranormal beliefs (e.g., witchcraft, spiritualism, astrology, and
precognition). Thus, many of the search results were left out of the
review. The present review focuses on those articles that included
a conceptual definition, either formulating one explicitly, or using
one in such a way that it could be identified.
To organize the text, we classified the definitions into seven, not
completely mutually exclusive groups based on similarity. Five of
the groups consisted of domain-general definitions in that the
beliefs were defined independently from their contents, namely (a)
false beliefs, (b) belief in scientifically impossible phenomena, and
associative biases, that is, (c) covariation bias, (d) laws of sympa-
thetic magic, and (e) irrational acts. Two sets of definitions were
domain-specific (content-dependent), namely (f) counterintuitive
and (g) intuitive beliefs about physical, biological, and psycholog-
ical phenomena.
In the course of collecting conceptual and operational defini-
tions of PSMS beliefs from the literature, we also surveyed dif-
ferent hierarchical orderings of the concepts. Often no explicit
assertions were made concerning the relations between concepts,
and many authors simply used two or more concepts in parallel or
stated that one concept is superordinate to another. Below we
present some examples of these orderings.
Hierarchical or Nonhierarchical Concepts?
Some authors used all four concepts synonymously without
making differences between them (e.g., King, Burton, Hicks, &
Drigotas, 2007; Lindeman & Aarnio, 2007). Some others con-
nected three of the four concepts together, be they paranormal,
superstitions, and supernatural (Otis & Alcock, 1982), paranormal,
superstitions, and magical (Schulter & Papousek, 2008), or super-
stitions, magical, and supernatural (Gbadamosi, 2005; Wiseman &
Watt, 2004). Suggested parallels between two of the four concepts
included supernatural and magical beliefs (Kurtz, 1992; McGarry
& Newberry, 1981), supernatural and superstitious beliefs (Tyko-
cinski, 2008), superstitious and magical beliefs (Case, Fitness,
Cairns, & Stevenson, 2004; Pronin et al., 2006), magical and
paranormal beliefs (Brugger & Graves, 1997), and paranormal
 DEFINING PSMS BELIEFS
beliefs and superstitions (Dudley, 1999; Kane, Core, & Hunt;
Wain & Spinella, 2007).
Other researchers, in turn, saw some of the concepts as more
general than others. For example, according to Subbotsky (2004),
magical events involve supernatural ones and according to Yo-
rulmaz, Inozu, and Gultepe (2010), magical thinking encompasses
paranormal beliefs. It was also argued that superstitions are rooted
in (Keinan, 2002) or derivatives of (Einstein & Menzies, 2004)
magical thinking. However, other researchers argued the opposite
and proposed that superstitions involve magical thinking (Zusne &
Jones, 1989) and that belief in magic is a consequence of super-
stition (Mowen & Carlson, 2003). At other times, paranormal
beliefs were suggested to include superstitions (Dudley, 2000;
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Tobacyk, 1983) and magical thinking (Peltzer, 2003), and super-
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natural beliefs to include superstitions (Johnson, 2005; Talmont-
Kaminski, 2009), magical beliefs (Legare & Gelman, 2008) and
paranormal beliefs (Weeks, Weeks, & Daniel, 2008). The ways
researchers described the actual meaning of these terms are de-
scribed next. Besides their current expressions, the review covers
the historical background of the seven approaches.
Domain-General Definitions
False beliefs. Sir Edward Tylor, one of the founders of
anthropology, delineated superstitions and magical thinking as
unfounded ideas and pernicious delusions (Tylor, 1871/1958,
1871/1974). Similarly, most authors whose work is included in this
review considered magical, superstitious, paranormal, or supernat-
ural beliefs to be mistakes.
Some defined the beliefs simply as errors, without specifying
how they are erroneous more than describing them as irrational,
illogical, or illusory. This type of definition was occasionally
evoked when discussing magical (e.g., Berenbaum, Boden, &
Baker, 2009) or paranormal (e.g., Marks, 1986; Sharps, Matthews,
& Asten, 2006) beliefs. Most often, this definition was used when
discussing superstitions. Characteristically, superstitions were con-
ceived of as tenets founded on ignorance (Jahoda, 1970), an
irrational attitude of mind (Parida, 1962) and wrong ideas about
external reality (Beck & Forstmeier, 2007). Superstitions were also
defined as beliefs that are barely articulated (Campbell, 1996), and
not based on reason or knowledge (Ng, Chong, & Du, 2010).
Belief in scientifically impossible phenomena. Following
Tylor’s (1871/1958) classification of magic as pseudoscience and
Broad’s (1953) conceptualization of paranormality as a phenom-
enon that violates the fundamental and scientifically founded prin-
ciples of nature, many current authors considered the beliefs false
in the specific sense of contradicting scientific knowledge. For
example, magical beliefs were defined as breaking scientific laws
of causality (Keinan, 1994) and superstitions were considered to be
groundless beliefs or practices that deviate from the enlightened
views adopted by scientists and the general public in the commu-
nity one lives in (Vyse, 1997).
This type of definition was most commonly evoked for beliefs
in paranormal phenomena (e.g., Dag, 1999; Darwin, Neave, &
Holmes, 2011; Dudley, 2000; Hergovich, 2003; MacDonald, 1995;
Peltzer, 2003; Roberts & Seager, 1999). For example, Irwin (2009)
recommended that the term paranormal belief should only apply to
belief in phenomena that are scientifically impossible, not only
scientifically unacceptable. Other variations on this theme in-
243
cluded that paranormal beliefs concern things outside the bounds
of established science (Hines, 1988) and that for paranormal be-
liefs to be explicable, major revisions would need to be made to the
basic limiting principles of science (Tobacyk & Milford, 1983).
Associative biases. In addition to thinking of magical beliefs
as false, Tylor considered magical beliefs to be based on biases in
associative thinking: “. . . Having come to associate in thought
those things which he found by experience to be connected in fact,
[man] proceeded erroneously to invert this action, and conclude
that association in thought must involve similar connexion in
reality” (Tylor, 1871/1958, p.116). According to Tylor, a “savage
mind” therefore believes, for instance, that because cocks crow
when the sun rises, the sun will rise if one makes the cock crow.
In the articles we reviewed, definitions that rested on the idea of
associative biases were abundant. These definitions are here cat-
egorized into three clusters: covariation bias, the laws of sympa-
thetic magic, and irrational acts carried out for positive outcomes.
Covariation bias. A number of researchers defined paranor-
mal, magical and superstitious (albeit not supernatural) beliefs as
erroneous perceptions of causality. Paranormal beliefs, for exam-
ple, were suggested to arise when remarkable coincidences are
wrongly attributed to paranormal causes rather than chance
(Musch & Ehrenberg, 2002), when two closely occurring events
are interpreted in a flawed way (Alcock, 1990), and in order to
bridge associative gaps between two temporally coinciding events
(Gianotti, Mohr, Pizzagalli, Lehmann, & Brugger, 2001).
In a similar way, superstitions were defined as resting on illu-
sory pattern perception; for example, on irrational illusory corre-
lations (Haselton & Nettle, 2006) or the identification of a coherent
and meaningful interrelationship among a set of random or unre-
lated stimuli (Whitson & Galinsky, 2008). Defined this way,
superstition was suggested to exist in all kinds of organisms
capable of associative learning (Beck & Forstmeier, 2007). Several
authors defined superstition in terms of the incorrect establishment
of cause and effect (Foster & Kokko, 2009; Matute, Yarritu, &
Vadillo, 2011; Zebb & Moore, 2003). Zebb and Moore (2003)
pointed out that superstitious presupposed causal links are not
founded on empirical evidence and people may, in fact, trust them
even despite evidence to the contrary.
Definitions of the covariation bias type were equally numerous
in the literature on magical beliefs. The classical sociologists
Hubert and Mauss described magical beliefs as gigantic variations
on the theme of the principle of causality (as cited in Lévi-Strauss,
1962/2004). Magical beliefs were also defined as judgments about
what goes with what in experience (Shweder, 1977), a defiance of
culturally accepted laws of causality (Einstein & Menzies, 2004;
Rees, Draper, & Davis, 2010), the incorrect establishment of cause
and effect (Parris, Kuhn, Mizon, Benattayallah, & Hodgson,
2009), precausal explanations (Subbotsky, 2004), forms of causal-
ity that violate basic limiting principles of science (Peltzer, 2003),
and the linking of thoughts and external events in a way that
cannot be rationally explained by physical laws or culturally
acceptable explanations (Bocci & Gordon, 2007).
Laws of sympathetic magic. In the late 19th century, the
social anthropologist Sir James Frazer elaborated Tylor’s ideas of
association into two laws of sympathetic magic: the law of simi-
larity (homeopathic or imitative magic) and the law of contact
(contagious magic).
 244 LINDEMAN AND SVEDHOLM
The law of similarity holds that an effect resembles its cause,
that like produces like, or more generally, that superficial resem-
blance indicates deep resemblance (Frazer, 1922/1963; Nemeroff
& Rozin, 2000). Magicians may thus infer that they can produce
any effect they desire, for example rain, merely by imitating it. The
law of contagion holds that things that have once been in contact
continue to influence each other. The alleged influence of the
source on the target may be negative (i.e., contamination) or
positive, and the influence is assumed to remain after the physical
contact has ceased because an essence has been transferred from
the source to the target (Frazer, 1922/1963; Rozin & Nemeroff,
2002). The French sociologist Marcel Mauss (1902/1972) added
that the law also expresses itself as the belief that a person’s
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essence is found in images, symbols and parts, such as teeth,
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saliva, sweat, nails, or hair. Current-day examples of the laws
include a reluctance to wear Hitler’s sweater because of the idea of
contagion and a reluctance to consume tasty food if it is fashioned
to look like a disgusting item, such as body excretions (Rozin &
Nemeroff, 1990).
Irrational acts. Writing on magic, Mauss (1902/1972) con-
cluded that referring to errors, associations, or sympathetic magic
does not produce a complete and satisfactory conceptualization of
magic. According to him, researchers should pay attention to
magical rites, because magic’s exclusive aim is to produce results.
In a similar way, anthropologist Malinowski (1948/1992; see also
Frazer, 1922/1963) underlined that magic should be defined as a
body of purely practical acts that are performed as a means to an
end.
In the reviewed articles, several authors likewise defined mag-
ical thinking and superstitions as irrational behaviors carried out to
promote positive outcomes or avoid negative ones. For example,
magical thinking was defined as an action directed toward the
achievement of a particular outcome with no logical relationships
between the action and the outcome (Albas & Albas, 1989) and as
a belief in the ability to influence events at a distance with no
known physical explanation (Pronin et al., 2006; Zusne & Jones,
1989).
Out of the four concepts, the one that authors most often used
when discussing irrational acts was superstition. Many referred to
Skinner’s (1948) famous experiments in which conditioned pi-
geons adopted baseless rituals, such as thrusting their heads into
one of the corners of their cage to get food from a food hopper.
According to Skinner, his experiments metaphorically demonstrate
superstition (in quotes in the title) because the birds behaved as if
there were a causal relation between their behavior and the pre-
sentation of food, although such a relation was lacking.
In a similar vein, other authors defined superstitions as irrational
practices (Jahoda, 1970), and behaviors carried out to promote
positive outcomes or avoid negative ones despite a lack of any
supporting scientific evidence (Ciborowski, 1997) and even when
the outcomes are in fact determined by chance (Rothbaum, Weisz,
& Snyder, 1982; Scheibe & Sarbin, 1965). An example of a more
thorough definition comes from sports psychology: Superstitious
rituals are actions that are repetitive, formal, sequential, nonordi-
nary, and potent in that the rituals are believed to be powerful in
controlling supernatural beings or force (Womack, 1992). Some
authors included not only actions but also objects (e.g., a lucky
charm) and circumstances not related to a course of events among
the factors that a superstitious person believes might influence the
outcome of a given course of events (e.g., Damisch, Stoberock, &
Mussweiler, 2010).
Domain-Specific Definitions
During recent years, PSMS beliefs have increasingly been de-
fined in terms of domain-specific knowledge. This perspective
draws from the view that the human mind contains fully or partly
independent modules specialized to process evolutionarily signif-
icant information (e.g., Chomsky, 1980; Fodor, 1983). The defi-
nitions in this category are guided by the premise that instead of
general reasoning processes, the beliefs derive from those domain-
specific mental processes that from early childhood onward make
us understand physical, biological and, in particular, psychological
phenomena. Two types of definitions, one focusing in counterin-
tuition and the other on intuition, have approached the beliefs from
the perspective of domain-specific cognition.
Counterintuitive beliefs. One of the few forums in which the
essence of supernatural beliefs has been deeply analyzed is the
modern cognitive science of religion (CSR). One prevalent per-
spective in CSR characterizes supernatural representations as on-
tological violations based on domain-specific cognitive processes
and considers these representations counterfactual and counterin-
tuitive (Atran & Norenzayan, 2005a; Barrett, 2000; Boyer, 2001;
Boyer, 2003; Pyysiäinen, 2004).
Supernatural beliefs are characterized as counterintuitive be-
cause they violate intuitive ontology about entities such as man-
made objects, a living thing (plants and animals), and especially, a
person (an intentional agent; Barrett, 2000; Boyer, 2003). Atran
and Norenzayan (2005b; see also Sperber, 1990) specified that in
CSR, “counterintuitiveness” refers to something that is contrary to
what common sense would suggest. Any reasonable statement
drawing on domain-specific knowledge—for example, a closing
door, a sleeping dog, and a confused student (Norenzayan, Atran,
Faulkner, & Schaller, 2006), is considered intuitive. In contrast, a
statement is defined as counterintuitive and supernatural if it
describes an entity in one ontological category with a property that
it according to common sense should not have or by denying it a
property it should have (Boyer, 2001; Norenzayan et al., 2006;
Pyysiäinen, 2004). A spirit is a special kind of person who never
dies and a magic wand is a special kind of artifact. Other examples
of supernatural concepts include a statue that listens to prayers, a
cursing frog, and a thirsty door (Atran & Norenzayan, 2005a;
Barrett & Nyhof, 2001; Boyer, 2001).
Intuitive beliefs. In contrast to the CSR tradition emphasiz-
ing the counterintuitiveness of supernatural concepts, other
domain-specific approaches consider PSMS beliefs intuitive, that
is, based on intuitive physics, biology and psychology. For exam-
ple, Bloom (2007, see also Bloom & Weisberg, 2007) maintained
that because people intuitively make sense of psychological enti-
ties in different terms than physical entities, people implicitly
come to think of souls and bodies as distinct; what runs counter to
one’s intuitions is scientific information.
Many definitions in this category echoed Piaget’s observations
about children’s magical thinking. Piaget (1929/1951) described
magical thinking as intuitive thinking that confuses mental and
physical, and living and lifeless phenomena. This confusion finds
expressions in nominal realism (names emanate from the objects
they name), artificialism (all things are manufactured for a pur-
 DEFINING PSMS BELIEFS
pose), and participation (all objects and entities in the natural
world are involved in a system of mystic participation).
Piaget’s notion of participation was rearticulated by many au-
thors in the current review (e.g., Subbotsky, 2001; Zusne & Jones,
1989), especially those studying thought-action fusion (TAF).
TAF, typically associated with obsessive– compulsive disorder,
refers to intrusive beliefs that certain thoughts cause particular
events (“If I think about an accident, then the accident will hap-
pen”). Many authors suggested that TAF is a specific type of
magical thinking (Amir, Freshman, Ramsey, Neary, & Brigidi,
2001; Einstein & Menzies, 2004; Rassin, Merckelbach, Muris, &
Schmidt, 2001) but it was also noted that inconsistent definitions
of magical thinking have hindered better understanding of the
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relationship between TAF and magical thinking (Berle &
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Starcevic, 2005).
Piaget’s ideas have been applied to supernatural beliefs as well.
For example, Kelemen (2004; Kelemen & Rosset, 2009) charac-
terized children’s tendency for “promiscuous” teleological reason-
ing in a similar way as Piaget described artificialism, that is, as an
intuitive tendency to explain all kinds of natural phenomena by
reference to a human-like purpose, such as assuming that clouds
are made for the purpose of bringing us rain.
In the same way, Guthrie (1993) suggested that the concept of
God is best understood as an expression of a general, spontaneous,
and unconscious interpretative tendency to attribute human char-
acteristics to nonhuman things and events, that is, by anthropo-
morphism. Anthropomorphism (gr. anthropo ⫽ human) is a term
closely linked with animism, the former deriving from theological
texts and the latter from (Tylor’s, 1871/1974) writings on magical
thinking. Anthropomorphism means ascription of human attributes
to anything nonhuman, whereas animism (lat. anima ⫽ soul, spirit,
breath) denotes belief in the existence of souls and attribution of a
soul, life and consciousness to inanimate objects and processes.
Some scholars brought up that mental-physical and living-
lifeless confusions are involved in supernatural and magical beliefs
more generally. Wellman and Gelman (1998) characterized chil-
dren’s magical thinking as ontological confusions in fundamental
knowledge about physical, biological, and psychological phenom-
ena, in which the attributes of one domain are stretched to inap-
propriate realms. Similarly, Nemeroff and Rozin (2000) defined
magic as an intuition or belief in the existence of imperceptible
forces or essences that transcend the usual boundary between the
mental/symbolic and physical/material. Several other authors also
espoused the idea of intuitive confusions between mental and
physical in supernatural beliefs, but many did not discuss the
meaning of the term in more detail (e.g., Bering, 2006; Bjorklund,
Blasi, & Periss, 2010; Bloom, 2007; Hood, 2009).
We have earlier argued that the idea of confused domain-
specific knowledge should be applied to both paranormal, super-
natural, magical, and superstitious beliefs among adults (Lindeman
& Aarnio, 2007; Lindeman et al., 2008; Lindeman & Saher, 2007).
We defined the beliefs as involving category mistakes, in which
the core ontological distinctions between the categories of physi-
cal, biological, and psychological phenomena are blurred. Thus,
we posed that the scope of PSMS beliefs should be limited to
confusions of those ontological distinctions that children learn
without explicit instruction irrespective of culture, that is, core
knowledge. These distinctions include, for example, understanding
the fundamentals of contamination and healing; that in contrast to
245
nonmaterial mental contents (e.g., thoughts, beliefs, and desires),
material objects have an independent existence in space; and that
intentional acts are committed by animate beings but physical
events take place through the transfer of unintentional force or
energy (for details, see Carey & Spelke, 1994; Kalish, 1999;
Wellman & Gelman, 1998).
We suggested that intuitively mixing up these properties lays the
ground for adopting PSMS beliefs found in one’s culture. Com-
mon examples include beliefs that thoughts can move external
objects, that force or energy can live (e.g., Feng shui, Chi), that
minds can exist independently of bodies and operate as animate
entities (e.g., angels, devils and ghosts), and that chance events
have a purpose and may be intentionally modified (e.g., rainmak-
ing rites, dice rolling rituals).
Operational Definitions
Table 1 offers a comprehensive list of the various belief objects
that researchers offered as instances of PSMS beliefs in the re-
viewed articles. Belief objects are on separate rows. The four
columns show the numbers of different measures used to assess
each belief object classified by the concept that the measure was
purported to assess (paranormal, magical, superstition, or super-
natural). While Table 1 shows the numbers of measures, an all-
inclusive table listing all the specific measures can be found in the
supplemental online material. In incongruous cases, measures
were categorized based on their names. For example, Eckblad and
Chapman’s (1983) Magical Ideation scale was counted as a mea-
sure of magical thinking even though some authors who utilized
the scale exclusively used some other concepts (e.g., paranormal
beliefs) in their texts. In cases where the measure had no name and
the authors discussed two concepts (e.g., paranormal and magical),
the measure was categorized according to the first mentioned
concept. Measures that were slight reformulations of an estab-
lished measure, that were insufficiently described, or that com-
prised only overall items (e.g., “Are you a superstitious person?”)
were excluded from the table.
The measures mainly comprised questionnaires (especially for
paranormal beliefs) and experiments (especially for superstitions),
although some other methods (e.g., interviews) were also used.
The most often used questionnaires turned out to be (in alphabet-
ical order) the Anomalous Experiences Inventory (Gallagher, Ku-
mar, & Pekala, 1994), the Australian Sheep-Goat scale (Thal-
bourne & Delin, 1993), the Magical Ideation scale (Eckblad &
Chapman, 1983), and the Paranormal Belief Scale (Tobacyk &
Milford, 1983) and its revision (Tobacyk, 2004).
In addition, several authors had constructed their own question-
naires, particularly for paranormal beliefs. This is manifested in
the great number of methods for measuring paranormal beliefs.
Conversely, most questionnaire studies on magical beliefs used the
Magical Ideation scale, resulting in a smaller number of methods
for magical beliefs. Measures for supernatural beliefs were fewer
as well, probably because these are more often assessed under the
rubric of religious beliefs, which were not included in our search
criteria.
Many of the belief objects in Table 1 are rather self-explanatory.
Others are in need of more explication, particularly the following:
the laws of similarity and contagion, luck-related rituals, control of
 246 LINDEMAN AND SVEDHOLM

Table 1
Number of Assessment Methods by Belief Object and Concept Being Measured (Paranormal, Superstitious, Magical, or Supernatural
Beliefs)

Concept being measured

Belief object Paranormal Superstition Magical Supernatural

Extrasensory perception (e.g., telepathy, precognition) 30 7 0 5

Card reading, palm reading 9 2 0 0
Precognitive dreams 13 0 1 1
Psychokinesis or levitation 14 0 0 1
Extraordinary life forms (e.g., the snowman of Tibet) 8 0 0 0
Extraterrestrial life (e.g., UFOs) 18 1 1 3
Omens (e.g., breaking a mirror, black cats) 5 7 1 0
Amulets and charms 2 10 3 0
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Lucky numbers, colors or days 6 11 0 0

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Luck-related rituals 2 10 4 1
Control of chance events by thoughts or behavior 0 3 5 2
Astrology, lunar effects and horoscopes 18 4 1 4
Feng shui 1 1 1 0
Plants’ ability to sense and communicate 3 0 0 1
Cosmic forces and energies (e.g., aura, pyramid power) 4 0 2 4
Law of contagion 0 0 16 1
Law of similarity 0 0 12 0
Spiritual healing 8 1 1 1
Alternative medicine 3 0 0 0
Gods 5 1 0 8
Spiritual beings other than gods (e.g., angels, devils) 9 0 1 7
Creationism 3 1 0 0
Prayer 0 1 0 2
Fate 0 2 0 1
Afterlife, reincarnation, karma 15 2 1 8
Communication with the dead 13 1 0 2
Hell and/or Heaven 5 0 0 0
Astral projection (spirit separated from the body) 9 0 0 1
Ghosts, haunting, poltergeist 13 2 0 1
Witches and bewitchment (incl. spells, curses, etc.) 11 1 8 3
Déjà vu 4 0 0 1
Illusory rule detection 0 8 1 0
Altered states of consciousness (e.g., hallucinations) 5 0 1 0

Note. More information about the assessment methods can be found in the online supplementary table. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0027158.supp]

miscellaneous chance events by thoughts or behavior, and illusory
rule detection.
First, belief in the law of contagion was often operationalized as
the degree of reluctance to touch or eat objects that have been in
contact with something unpleasant, or conversely, as the willing-
ness to choose things that have been in contact with something or
someone pleasant. Examples include the degree of reluctance to
drink juice if a sterilized, dead cockroach has been dropped in it for
5 seconds (Rozin, Millman, & Nemeroff, 1986) and the evaluation
of chocolate chip cookies depending on how closely they were
placed to a pack of sanitary towels (Morales & Fitzsimons, 2007).
Similarly, the law of similarity was typically operationalized as
the degree of reluctance to touch, eat, or do things considered
similar to something unpleasant, and conversely, as the willingness
to choose things that the participant associated with pleasant
things. For instance, Rozin et al. (1986) measured preferences for
chocolate fudge that was in the form of dog feces, and participants’
willingness to hold a fake rubber pool of vomit between their lips.
In addition, people’s reactions to throwing darts at a picture of a
baby (King et al., 2007) or Hitler versus John F. Kennedy (Rozin
et al., 1986) were examined.
The second object of belief in need of explanation are luck-
related rituals. The operational measures that we found included,
first, well-known habits such as keeping one’s fingers crossed
(Damisch et al., 2010) and knocking on wood in response to
hearing stressful questions (Keinan, 2002). Some studies used an
open question format and found many more private and idiosyn-
cratic rituals, such as cutting one’s hair short to permit knowledge
to flow freely around the head, and eating special food such as a
carrot muffin from a certain vendor for luck (Albas & Albas,
1989). Athletes’ rituals to guarantee their physical condition in
games were also often used as measures of belief in lucky rituals.
Examples include selecting the same golf ball after a successful
putt (Van Raalte, Brewer, Nemeroff, & Linder, 1991), batting
rituals among baseball players (Ciborowski, 1997), going to bed
early, doing things in a fixed order, checking one’s appearance in
the mirror, and wearing lucky items of clothing before a game
(Bleak & Frederick, 1998; Schippers & Van Lange, 2006).
Third, belief in the controllability of miscellaneous chance
events by thoughts or behavior was used as a belief object in
operationalizations of magical, superstitious, and supernatural be-
liefs. To illustrate, Wohl and Enzle (2002) assessed magical think-
 DEFINING PSMS BELIEFS
ing by asking participants to rate their prospects of winning in a
lottery depending on if they had chosen the lottery tickets them-
selves or if a computer program had randomly selected their ticket.
In Landrine and Klonoff’s (1994) study, participants’ supernatural
beliefs were operationalized, among others, as a belief that com-
mitting sinful acts causes illness.
Last, when “illusory rule detection” was the object of belief,
superstition was operationalized, for example, as participants’ il-
lusory beliefs that a stimulus forms a pair with another stimulus
(Freeman et al., 2009), or that by pressing specific buttons or keys
they would earn points (Rudski, Lischner, & Albert, 1999) or stop
an uncontrollable noise (Matute, 1995).
As a whole, Table 1 shows that operationalizations of paranor-
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mal, superstitious, magical, or supernatural beliefs were not sys-
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tematically different from each other, as most objects of belief
were studied under at least three of the concepts. The few weak but
observable trends that were found included that beliefs related to
positive or negative outcomes (i.e., luck) and illusory rule detec-
tion were often labeled as superstitions, and beliefs related to the
laws of contagion and similarity were exclusively labeled magical.
In addition to the belief objects in Table 1, even counterintuitive
representations and intuitive core knowledge confusions were em-
pirically assessed. Counterintuitive ideas were operationalized in
experiments by the evaluation of expressions such as a flying
healthy cow, a confused table, and an impatient fist (Norenzayan
et al., 2006; Upala, Gonce, Tweney, & Slone, 2007). Examples of
operationalizations of core knowledge confusions included ques-
tionnaire and EEG studies on processing statements such as “a
force lives in nature” and “the house knows its history” (Lindeman
& Aarnio, 2007; Lindeman et al., 2008). These studies were not
included in Table 1 because counterintuitiveness studies concen-
trated on the memorability of counterintuitive ideas and core
knowledge confusion studies addressed the confusions as corre-
lates of conventional PSMS beliefs, that is, neither type of state-
ment was intended as a measure of the PSMS beliefs per se.
Conclusions
The review showed that definitional and assessment foci vary
widely. Near full agreement was found only on the assumption that
the beliefs are unfounded. Even so, it was possible to find common
threads in how the beliefs have been conceptually defined, whether
separation of these four concepts is justified, how the beliefs have
been understood to differ from other beliefs, and how the beliefs
have been empirically assessed. We drew four major conclusions,
discussed next.
Paranormal, Supernatural, Magical, and Supernatural
Beliefs Are Not Fundamentally Different
The literature revealed no essential reasons to set the concepts
paranormal, magical, superstitious, and supernatural apart. Argu-
ments concerning which of the terms should be taken as synonyms
and which should not, were seldom presented. In cases where one
of the concepts was conceptually defined, its likeness or unlike-
nesss to the other concepts was not elaborated. Furthermore, no
consistent differences between the operationalizations of PSMS
beliefs were found.
247
Although some slight trends emerged in the usage of the four
concepts, the trends reflected the etymological histories of the
concepts more than any theoretical underpinnings. Researchers
who were influenced by anthropologists examining traditional
societies tended to use magic-related concepts in their work. In
turn, researchers such as Skinner (1948) and his followers, who
were interested in how false beliefs and irrational behaviors are
formed and maintained in the Western world, preferred the concept
of superstition.
Paranormal was a concept somewhat more characteristic of
studies addressing phenomena that once interested the scholars in
the Society for Psychical Research. Finally, whereas other re-
searchers equated the four concepts quite liberally, scientists who
were interested in religious-like beliefs (e.g., afterlife beliefs)
typically used the concept of supernatural exclusively. These his-
torical connotations may explain why it sometimes feels inappro-
priate to replace one concept with another, for example, to say that
belief in God is a superstition or that children have paranormal
beliefs.
It is thus probable that the interrelationship of the concepts
supernatural, magical, paranormal, and superstition is similar to
the interrelationship of the concepts of mind, spirit, and soul. That
is, they are concepts that have different connotations and yet
denote the same thing. Although it is not uncommon for different
origins and varying historical associations to give similar concepts
a distinct character (e.g., an atheist may be called just but not
righteous; Merriam-Webster’s dictionary of synonyms, n.d.), us-
age of scientific concepts should be more exact and empirically
justifiable. It would not be possible to have some researchers study
memory as a process of the soul, others study memory as a process
of the spirit and yet others, in isolation, as a process of the mind.
This review suggests that this may currently be the case in research
on paranormal, superstitious, magical, and supernatural beliefs.
Therefore, researchers concerned with the meaning of paranor-
mal, magical, superstitious, or supernatural should pay attention to
all four concepts. For the present, researchers on PSMS beliefs
only sporadically allude to studies conducted under another con-
struct, even when the objects of belief are similar. Ignoring the
similarities between the concepts has maintained conceptual con-
fusion and hindered us from advancing our understanding of the
psychology of the beliefs. Unless providing convincing arguments,
researchers working under one of the terms should not ignore
research results on the three other concepts, and arguments that
researchers put forward on one concept should also apply to the
three others.
Domain-General Definitions Do Not Work
Five of the seven definition types represented domain-general
views of the PSMS beliefs and two were expressions of domain-
specific definitions. In the concluding discussion, we focus on the
differences between domain-general and domain-specific views.
Domain-general definitions described the beliefs as false beliefs,
beliefs in scientifically impossible phenomena, beliefs building on
a covariation bias, biases following the laws of sympathetic magic,
or as irrational acts. Some of these definitions concerned only sets
of the beliefs or their manifestations. Identifying the beliefs as
irrational acts, e.g., excludes beliefs that allow the individual to be
passive, such as beliefs in omens, astrology, and telepathy. Con-
 248 LINDEMAN AND SVEDHOLM
sidering the beliefs to be the result of a covariation bias, in turn,
does not encompass beliefs in single phenomena such as devils or
an afterlife. Finally, although the laws of sympathetic magic have
wide applicability as they illustrate how magical thinking may turn
up in unexpected areas such as disgust, the laws confine only to a
subset of magical beliefs, as Rozin and Nemeroff (2002) them-
selves note.
Except for Rozin and Nemeroff, the literature search found no
other authors who explicitly addressed the scope of their defini-
tions. The other treatments leave open the question: How should
beliefs not covered by a particular definition be labeled? For
example, if one commits to the definition of superstition as cova-
riation bias, should belief in devils be considered nonsuperstitious?
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Despite these problems, domain-general definitions as a whole
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set out the characteristic and essential features of the beliefs in a
reasonably satisfying way: they are unfounded beliefs in scientif-
ically impossible phenomena that may manifest themselves as
associative biases either in thinking or in behavior. Although the
domain-general definitions thus make clear what the concepts
apply to, they have one important limitation. Because the defini-
tions do not distinguish PSMS beliefs from other unfounded be-
liefs, they are too broad in scope to be useful as such. From the
point of view of theory formulation, domain-general definitions
would imply that the same causal processes, mediators and mod-
erators that lie behind stereotypes about homosexuals (a covaria-
tion bias), living beyond one’s means (an irrational act), knowl-
edge about microbial contamination and vaccination (following
the laws of contagion and similarity), the belief that dolphins are
fish (a false belief), and the belief that colors are attributes of
things in themselves (a scientifically impossible claim) would also
account for superstitious, magical, paranormal, or supernatural
beliefs.
In Aristotle’s terminology, domain-general definitions define
PSMS beliefs only by genus, that is, by a wider category of beliefs
with which the beliefs share common characteristics but not by
differentia, that is, the attributes that set the beliefs apart from
other related beliefs. To be useful, a scientific definition should
satisfy both criteria. We argue that catching the differentia of the
beliefs by appeal to domain-general characteristics of the beliefs is
an impossible task. By definition, domain-general processes are
cognitive processes that apply to all thought, irrespective of its
content. Yet, it is expressly the content that differentiates PSMS
beliefs from other unfounded beliefs. For this reason, the domain-
specific definitions presently appear more promising.
Domain-Specific Definitions Catch The Genus and The
Differentia
An idea that we encountered in several articles was that PSMS
beliefs involve misunderstandings where the attributes of physical,
biological, and psychological are mixed. Few researchers intended
this to be an actual definition and mentioned it as more of a
sidenote, but we hold that this approach in fact catches the essence
of PSMS beliefs and argue that the idea of confused domain-
specific knowledge, after some specifications, applies to all para-
normal, supernatural, magical, and superstitious beliefs.
Two types of domain-specific definitions were found: research-
ers representing the cognitive science of religion most often em-
phasized the beliefs’ counterintuitiveness, while those with a back-
ground in psychology mostly emphasized their intuitiveness.
Researchers advocating the counterintuitive definitions sug-
gested that supernatural concepts, for example a being who never
dies, are counterintuitive because they violate intuitive ontology
about entities such as solid objects, lifeless organisms, living
things, animate beings, events, and abstract objects (Atran &
Norenzayan, 2005a; Boyer, 2001; Norenzayan et al., 2006). A
challenge for defining PSMS beliefs as counterintuitive is the
unusual way the words intuition and counterintuition are used,
making it difficult to integrate this work with other scientific work
on intuition where intuition stands for a conscious judgment based
on automatic and holistic processing of information, which might
be opposed to a concurrent judgment based on rational knowledge
(Evans, 2008; Hodgkinson, Langan-Fox, & Sadler-Smith, 2008).
Due to its weaknesses, criticism against reliance on the concept of
counterintuitiveness has been raised even within CSR. For exam-
ple, Barrett (2008) has brought up that difficulties in identifying
what are and are not counterintuitive concepts has made empirical
studies irregular and difficult to evaluate. Likewise, Boyer (2001)
has argued that the term counterintuitive may be misleading.
The other domain-specific approaches considered PSMS beliefs
intuitive. These approaches are characterized by the idea of early
and undeveloped intuitive conceptions of psychological, biologi-
cal, and physical phenomena that retain their autonomous power
into adulthood, making individuals susceptible to PSMS beliefs
(e.g., Bering, 2006; Bjorklund et al., 2010; Bloom, 2007; Hood,
2009; Kelemen, 2004). This approach is conceptually clear and
theoretically fruitful because it suggests links to cognitive devel-
opment and to dual-process theories of cognition that address two
information processing modes: intuitive and analytical reasoning.
Dual-process theories (for a review see Evans, 2008) offer a
framework for investigating PSMS beliefs at different levels of
consciousness. They also suggest plausible mechanisms for the
general observation that PSMS beliefs (e.g., belief in immortal
souls) may coexist side by side or even contravene later acquired
understanding and rational knowledge (e.g., “Death is final”).
However, arguing that the conceptions are intuitive (a domain-
general feature of cognitive processes) does not help to clarify the
nature of PSMS beliefs, nor how they differ from other beliefs or
intuitions. As PSMS beliefs may also transpire with much reflec-
tion and conscious thinking, we see no reason that intuitiveness
(or, counterintuitiveness) should be incorporated into the definition
of PSMS beliefs.
An important question is what kinds of ontological violations
make a belief a PSMS belief. In the cognitive science of religion,
the coverage of the term supernatural is extended to a wide set of
phenomena, encompassing not only familiar supernatural phenom-
ena like gods, immortal souls, and statues that listen to prayers, but
also occurrences such as a flying cow (Upala et al., 2007), a car
that can drip through a sieve (Barrett, 2000), and a melting grand-
father (Atran & Norenzayan, 2005a). While these are delightful
examples of ontological violations found, for example, in fairy
tales, they do not easily fit in with the prevailing views about what
a supernatural phenomenon is.
We, in turn, have earlier suggested that PSMS beliefs should be
limited to confusions of universally learned, early developing
understanding about the most fundamental distinctive properties of
psychological, biological, and physical objects and processes (Lin-
 DEFINING PSMS BELIEFS 249

deman & Aarnio, 2007; Lindeman et al., 2008). Although delim-
iting the scope of thinking about PSMS beliefs in important ways,
this definition is not entirely coherent either, as the term “psycho-
logical phenomena” taps two different classes of phenomena:
mental phenomena and animate organisms. These should be dis-
tinguished because animate organisms are material entities that can
exert causal force on external objects and events but mental
phenomena do not: although mental phenomena can affect the
body, they do not, as representations, have independent existence
and they cannot exert mechanical causal force directly on the
external world as material entities do. In addition, because psy-
chology, biology, and physics are labels of scientific fields and not
domains that serve as explanatory frames in everyday life, it may
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describes a physical event with properties from an ontologically
basic category it does not belong to, namely physical objects
(Carey, 1985; Chi & Hausmann, 2003). Categories such as mental
phenomena, material objects, living things, animate beings, and
intentional and unintentional events are all ontologically basic
categories, and their distinct properties cannot be borrowed to
characterize an entity in another ontological category without
making a category mistake (Carey, 1985; Keil, 1979; Ryle, 1949).
The definition thus provides a criterion for judging which
beliefs should be categorized PSMS beliefs and which should
not. It excludes not only other unfounded beliefs (e.g., vitamin
C prevents flu) but also all other beliefs that have the potential
to be true. Considered from this point of view, many phenom-

be appropriate to abandon these concepts from the definition. ena suggested to be paranormal (magical, supernatural) are not
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Based on these arguments, we suggest that paranormal, supernat-
ural, magical and superstitious beliefs are defined as category
errors confusing core knowledge about mental phenomena, mate-
rial objects, living and animate organisms, and the processes these
engage in (for examples, see Table 2). For the present, this defi-
nition seems more precise and parsimonious than the previous as
it answers the challenges brought up, as discussed below.
First, the definition has the most to say about the differences
between PSMS and other unsupported beliefs. Conceptualizing the
beliefs as category mistakes means that PSMS beliefs are not
ordinary mistakes. An example of an ordinary mistake is the
assumption that a car is broken. Even though this assumption
might be flawed (the car just ran out of gas), it has the potential to
be right. In contrast, the argument that a thunderstorm is broken is
not an ordinary mistake. It is a category mistake, because it
paranormal after all. For example, biological contagion beliefs
(even false ones such as the reluctance to wear clothes touched
by an individual with AIDS), similarity beliefs without a cate-
gory error (e.g., red drinks improve hemoglobin), the ideas that
there is life on other planets, that crop circles are caused by the
actions of extraterrestrials, that handwriting reveals one’s per-
sonality, and that there are mysterious disappearances in the
Bermuda triangle, should not be classified as PSMS beliefs as
they do not include category mistakes.
The definition also specifies why paranormal, supernatural,
and magical phenomena are scientifically impossible and out-
side the scope of the laws of nature, providing an explanation
for these oft-cited expressions. The criterion that paranormal
statements are empirically untestable does not suffice. For
example, the statement “Ants that weigh 100 kg exist” is

Table 2
Examples of Category Mistakes Involving Core Knowledge, The Resulting Paranormal, Superstitious, Magical, and Supernatural
Beliefs, and Related Concepts

Inappropriate attribute attached

Entities and processes to the entity or process Examples of beliefs Related concepts

MENTAL
Minds Independent existence, living Afterlife, gods, angels, demons (and Animism
demonical possession, e.g., witches),
ghosts, haunting, poltergeist
Mental states Contagiousness A person’s mentality residing in worn Law of contagiona
objects
Healing Spiritual healing
Thoughts (beliefs, desires) Moving external objects Psychokinesis, levitation
Ability to bring about external Thinking about an accident makes it Thought-action fusion, participation
events likely to happen between thought and things
Symbols Material (indexical) relation to The label poison means that the Law of similaritya, nominal realism
a material object contents of a bottle are poisoned
Temporal (indexical) relation Tarot cards, palm reading, omens, signs
to future events of the zodiac
Symbolic acts Ability to bring about external Rituals, spells, curses, voodoo, black Law of similaritya
events magic
MATERIAL WORLD
Sensation of objects in the world Mentally (internally) driven Clairvoyance, precognition,
retrocognition, telepathy
Plants Having a mind The spirit of trees Animism, antropomorphisma
Artifacts Having a mind, living Bleeding, weeping and listening statues Animism, antropomorphisma,
participation between objects
Force and energy Living, healing, goal-directed Chi, vital force, healing energy Animism, antropomorphisma
Random events Goal-directed, intentionally Purpose, fate, creationism, intelligent Artificialism, promiscuous
planned design teleological reasoning
a
Note. The concepts extend to nonparanormal phenomena as well (e.g., regarding a pet mouse as ambitious is anthropomorphism but not paranormal).
 250 LINDEMAN AND SVEDHOLM
empirically untestable, but not paranormal. Paranormal, magi-
cal, and supernatural phenomena are impossible phenomena
because they are described with a distinctive property of an
ontologically basic category that they do not belong to, and,
therefore, circumstances in which the arguments could be true
do not exist. This does not, however, mean that phenomena that
are viewed as supernatural today could never turn out to be real.
Schizophrenia was once considered to result from demon pos-
session, and dreams were taken as an indication of the soul
detaching itself from the body. Phenomena that have been
considered supernatural may thus turn out to be natural and
explicable by science, but this can only happen through con-
ceptual change about the ontological properties of the entities
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involved.
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While differentiating PSMS beliefs from other unsupported
beliefs, the suggested definition still covers a wide variety of
PSMS beliefs, as exemplified in Table 2. The table also shows that
other belief-related, more specific concepts can be incorporated
into this conceptualization. Animism, anthroporphism, various
forms of participation, nominal realism, TAF, artificialism, pro-
miscuous teleological reasoning, and the magical laws of conta-
gion and similarity— concepts that are currently restricted to use in
highly specialized lines of research and whose interrelationships
have seldom been analyzed—all refer to a particular type of core
knowledge confusion.
Analyzing PSMS beliefs in terms of inappropriate ontological
attributes attached to mental phenomena, material objects, and
living and animate organisms also helps us to identify what exactly
is paranormal in PSMS beliefs more accurately than defining the
beliefs merely as being generally against scientific knowledge. We
illustrate this by beliefs in ESP and omens and some examples of
pseudosciences (also see Table 2).
Belief in ESP (e.g., telepathy, precognition and clairvoyance)
includes the idea that it is possible to gain information about
objects, physical events, or other people’s thoughts without the
sense organs of the human body (e.g., sight and hearing). Belief in
ESP thus treats sensing and interpreting (i.e., perceiving) informa-
tion as purely mental phenomena. In a similar way, small children
do not appreciate that the senses, such as vision and hearing, are
necessary conditions for informational access, but see beliefs and
knowledge as arising purely mentally within the individual, like
desires (Flavell, 2004; Robinson, Haigh, & Pendle, 2008; Wim-
mer, Hogrefe, & Perner, 1988).
Omens, in turn, might be understood as confusions between
symbols and indexes, that is, between mental and material. Omens,
for example celestial bodies and their relative positions in astrol-
ogy, have symbolic contents. A symbol is a mental representation
based on social conventions and thus it bears no realistic connec-
tion to its referent. An index, in contrast, is a sign that has a
physical and temporal causal connection to its existing or upcom-
ing external referent; it is like a fragment torn away from the object
(Peirce, 1955). For example, smoke is an index of fire and dark
clouds are indexes of coming rain. Signs that are symbols for
adults (e.g., names) are initially indexical for young children
(Homer & Nelson, 2005; Iverson & Goldin-Meadow, 2005; Piaget,
1929/1951). Similarly, for adults with a tendency to hold PSMS
beliefs, the symbolic content attached to a spread of Tarot cards
may appear as an index, that is, causally connected to future
events, and the symbolic content attached to amulets or rituals may
appear as a means to affect external events.
Furthermore, the definition of PSMS beliefs as confusions of
core knowledge makes it possible to trace the paranormal and
nonparanormal components in pseudosciences and traditional
schools of thought, such as astrology, Feng shui, and oriental
medicine. Usually, these teachings are categorized as paranormal
only because their arguments have not been scientifically proven.
Yet, lack of proof alone does not make an argument paranormal.
Moreover, these teachings include several reasonable tenets, in-
cluding the ideas that planets might influence earthly events and
that we should keep our kitchens clean. What is paranormal in
these doctrines are the assumptions that the placement of furniture
affects a flowing, living, spiritual force or energy, that this kind of
force is the reason for physical and mental health, and that the
symbolic contents of the zodiac (e.g., aggression and energy linked
with Mars) have causal influence on people’s personalities and
destinies.
Assessment Methods Hit The Target Better Than
The Definitions
While the conceptual formulations about what separates PSMS
beliefs from other unfounded beliefs were often blurry, the oper-
ational definitions showed less ambiguity. Most of the reviewed
measures assessed beliefs in phenomena whose paranormality no
significant majority of people would doubt. Indeed, the measures
typically concentrated on key areas of belief, such as ESP, astrol-
ogy, spiritual (incorporeal) beings, and luck-related beliefs. Even
though none of the reviewed measures were designed with the
category error definition in mind, examination of the belief objects
reveals that most of them fit this definition well, as can be seen in
Table 2.
However, some assessment methods raised the question if what
they were measuring are really PSMS beliefs. For example, some
single items in questionnaires (e.g., “I believe in the unconscious”,
Gallagher et al., 1994) and belief objects related to extraterrestrial
life are not obvious manifestations of PSMS beliefs. It is also
doubtful whether measures such as illusory rule detection are
accurate ways to assess PSMS beliefs (e.g., a belief that one can
find a numerical cue with a keyboard to stop an uncontrollable
noise if one is induced to find one, Matute, 1995). Whether one
accepts the idea that PSMS beliefs must include category errors or
not, it is difficult to see what is paranormal in these beliefs and
abilities. Whatever conceptual definition proves best supported,
we suggest that future work be conceptually more rigorous and
that assessment methods be chosen with an emphasis on the
specific nature of PSMS beliefs.
Some measures assessed experiences such as déjà vu and altered
states of consciousness (e.g., hallucinations or out-of-body expe-
riences). Reports of these kinds of experiences are questionable as
measures of PSMS beliefs because they may, but do not necessar-
ily, inform us about participants’ beliefs. Individuals who experi-
ence disruptions in consciousness and alterations in the perception
of self or surroundings may well find the experiences as valid
indications of paranormal phenomena. However, some other indi-
viduals may interpret these kinds of occurrences as signs of ex-
haustion and maintain a skeptical attitude when describing them:
“It was as if my mind was separated from my body,” in which case
 DEFINING PSMS BELIEFS
it is unjustified to call these individuals paranormal believers.
Therefore, we recommend that future studies should not straight-
forwardly equate experiences with belief.
Questions about behavior were often used as measures of belief,
motivated by the observations that sometimes beliefs are implicit
and unconscious, and that people often explicitly reject the sug-
gestion that they believe in magic but nevertheless allow it to
influence their thinking and actions (Campbell, 1996; Ciborowski,
1997; Subbotsky, 2001). However, acts need not be driven by
belief; people may well understand that their actions are irrational,
for example. Especially luck-related rituals could be motivated by
a host of reasons other than PSMS belief, such as cultural habits or
comfort seeking. Only if an individual believes that the symbolic
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
content of the act (e.g., luck attached to a ball) has causal influence
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
on future outcomes, does the act deserve to be labeled superstition.
Thus, researchers employing behavioral methods to measure
PSMS beliefs should proceed with caution and verify that the
behaviors indeed have a superstitious meaning for the particular
participants being studied.
The last issue we would like to draw attention to is the cultural
specificity of the beliefs and the differences in the meaning of
certain beliefs even within contemporary Western cultures. Some
extraordinary life forms (e.g., Bigfoot and the abominable snow-
man of Tibet) included in widely used questionnaires are not
necessarily familiar or considered paranormal everywhere. For
example, we thought that the Loch Ness Monster is simply a
horrible animal until we learned from a helpful reviewer that
Nessie seems to have sprung directly from the water or been
dropped from the sky. Thus, depending both on the content of the
belief and the definition adopted, beliefs in Nessie may or may not
demonstrate a PSMS belief. (Because children do not have uni-
versal predispositions to understand animal reproduction and life
span, we prefer to refer to these kinds of creatures with concepts
such as myths, legends, or folktales, but not as PSMS beliefs).
Furthermore, some beliefs might be dated, such as the belief that
a black cat crossing brings bad luck. On the other extreme, belief
in mind reading does not necessarily denote PSMS belief anymore,
as our informed participants familiar with recent brain imaging
studies (famously publicized as “brain reading”) have alerted us to.
Whenever culture-specific beliefs are not the focus of the study,
we judge it advisable to replace culture-specific items (e.g., “Do
you believe that the No. 13 is unlucky?”) with culture-free coun-
terparts (e.g., “Do you believe that some numbers are unlucky?”).
This would minimize confounding variance in the dependent vari-
ables while preserving the gist of the items.
Epilogue
The heterogeneity of research traditions may explain why the
psychological appeal of paranormal, magical, superstitious, and
supernatural beliefs is so poorly understood. However, we cannot
formulate theories about these beliefs and we cannot assess the
beliefs with valid measures if we are not even in the clear on what
the object of research is. One major reason for lack of fertile theory
formation on the origin and development of the beliefs is that the
meaning of the terms paranormal, superstitious, magical, and su-
pernatural has not been brought into question. Concept definition
is of particular importance also because these concepts bear on the
scope and limits of science. As scientists we cannot subscribe to
251
the claim that science cannot explain supernatural phenomena
because they belong to another world, a world beyond the scope of
science. For example, the arguments that life continues after death
or that walking under a ladder brings bad luck belong to the realm
of science because they are general propositions about the ways
the world works, and especially because they challenge prevailing
scientific knowledge.
Over the last decades, research emphasis on the beliefs has
shifted from domain-general thinking to domain-specific concep-
tions. This new line of work has sharpened the scope of research
in important ways; after all, it is the content that is the crux of the
matter in the beliefs. Defining paranormal, superstitious, magical,
and supernatural beliefs as category errors of core knowledge, as
we suggest, has a high heuristic value as it demonstrates the role
of universal domain-specific knowledge as the common founda-
tion of PSMS beliefs across time and cultures. In addition, the
definition has theoretical utility because it holds the most promise
for integrating the various definitions of the beliefs and it offers
clues to the psychological processes behind the tendency to hold
these beliefs.
Whichever definition scholars are working under, we hope that
the so far miscellaneous operationalizations are in the future con-
fined to a more concise set of contents, and that conceptual
distinctions are more empirically justified than they have so far
been. We also hope that the so far separate research tracts could be
merged for a synthesis. Only by reaching such a synthesis can the
field further our understanding of these extraordinary beliefs.
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Received November 12, 2011
Revision received January 9, 2012
Accepted January 9, 2012 䡲