Neuroticism, Psychoticism and Extroversion

Right. I may have mentioned earlier that I was going to do some research on personality and how this affects paranormal belief. With this in mind, I was doing some googling and I came across a very simple, nicely worded word document that must have been aimed at A Level Students. I thought it would be lovely to use this document as an introductory idea as to why personality may affect your belief in the paranormal.

I’m only looking at 3 personality factors - the ones mentioned in Eyesenck’s EPQ (a personality test formed by a man who believed we can be summed up by 3 personality categories). I’ll cover more in the future.

Neuroticism

It’s probably obvious why this is included in a post about paranormal beliefs. I’m hugely neurotic myself (ask literally anyone who knows me) so it’s easy for me to see why people in my boat would take comfort in the powers of the unknown.

Scared of failing an exam? Don’t walk under any ladders. Miss your late uncle? Go to the beach and listen for his words in the sounds of the waves.

If these things are going to calm us down and make us feel better about life and ourselves, then fuck it. Do whatever you believe, even if you don’t fully believe it, and live happily as this new calm self.

On a personal level, this happened to me; I experienced the death of a friend last year, and even though I’m completely anti-afterlife and what have you, whenever I was extra sad, I’d pretend this person was “watching” me, and that she was happy. I haven’t actually told anyone about this so friends reading this blog might be taken aback, but it’s true. And it did genuinely calm me down.

So this is how belief in stuff happens. It’s when you take SO much comfort in something that you’ll invest in literally anything that makes you feel better. And that’s completely understandable.

Psychoticism

This section is aimed more atthose who I believe to be charlatans - Sally Morgan, Sylvia Browne, etc - and those who have been exposed as such, namely Peter Popoff (infamous faith healer who’s still making money even after being exposed).

Psychoticism can be broken down into several traits, two of which being “sensation seeking” and “low empathy”.

Peter Popoff was a hugely successful faith healer and televangelist (just watch this video) who would approach audience members at his sell-out shows, tell them that God knows their disease, impressively name the disease, then perform angelic arm movements and press on the audience member’s head while claiming that God had got rid of the disease and they could stop worrying.

It was all bullshit, obviously; this was a man who was receiving messages through an earpiece from his wife who was reading “prayer cards” to him that the audience members had filled out before the show. This explains Popoff being told the disease through a Godly “connection”… but the healing?

One of my favourite clips of Popoff is when he heals an arthritic woman and tells her she doesn’t need her walker and she can stand up. She stands up and immediately collapses to the ground. But he still shouts hallelujah!

That’s a minor case. There are cancerous believers who refuse treatment because they believe they’ve been healed by God. This can, of course, end up in death.

So what does this say about Popoff? Lack of empathy? Almost certainly. I don’t know how a man could sleep at night knowing that he’s bullshitting everyone into death.

And how about sensation seeking? These famous personalities have huge shows in massive venues, touring all over their respective countries. They have thousands of fans buying their tickets (BUYING THEIR TICKETS) and screaming their name. That sounds like a great sensation to me - something an aspiring showman/woman dreams of - and brings me on to the last point:

Extroversion

Showmanship wins you followers. It’s a fact of life. Nobody’s going to queue up round the block to watch a sweaty, scrawny shuffling man whispering readings into a microphone.

I’ve read tons of girly magazines that say “if you ACT confident, people will BELIEVE you’re confident and you’ll FEEL confident”, and I’m sure it applies here. If you’re a massive, confident extrovert, people are going to believe whatever you say, no matter how crazy it is.

This is probably an evolutionary thing: we’ll trust someone who we believe is an MKO (more knowledgeable other), and when a person is acting confidently, we believe they’re an MKO.

If a paranormal fan is an extrovert themself, they’ll be wanting to believe what the showman is saying - extroverts tend to be social butterflies and have a desire to be liked. If you went up to someone and said “nah shut up that’s rubbish”, you wouldn’t be their friend.

Actually, if you’re more introverted yourself and WISH you were an extrovert (cough me), you’d be willing to go along with what an extrovert says.

Does it seem like I’ve gone in a circle from the neuroticism point? I basically have, and that’s why this is a great place to start with when looking at personality and beliefs.

I’ll leave it for now, congrats if you read this far, but if you have the time, watch the Popoff video linked earlier in this post and look for signs of neuroticism, psychoticism and extroversion - you’ll find loads.