Posted in Mike Clawson at 11:31 pm by Mike Clawson
Emerging church blogger Matt Stone recently posted some extracts from a 2005 article in the Journal of Parapsychology entitled “Personality and motivations to believe, misbelieve and disbelieve in paranormal phenomena”. As the title indicates, the article discusses how personality (e.g. Myers-Briggs types) affects one’s tendency towards skepticism or belief in what they call “psi”, i.e. psychic phenomenon. I’ve not read the entire article (it’s rather long) but the excerpts on Stone’s blog are fascinating. Here’s a few quotes:
Paranormal beliefs and experiences are associated with certain personality factors, including absorption, fantasy proneness, and the Myers-Briggs intuition and feeling personality dimensions. Skepticism appears to be associated with materialistic, rational, pragmatic personality types. Attitude toward psi may also be influenced by motivations to have control and efficacy, to have a sense of meaning and purpose in life.
…
Research studies have found that belief in paranormal phenomena is associated with the N and F personality factors…. In a study of a technique attempting to induce a sense of contact with someone who had died, 96% of the participants with NF personality types reported after-death contact experiences, whereas 100% of the participants with ST (sensing, thinking) personality types did not have these experiences….
Interestingly, and contrary to some skeptics have suggested, the article states that a strong desire for control is actually more common among skeptics than among psi-believers. It says:
Skeptics also tend to have a greater internal locus of control (belief that they control the events in their lives) than those who believe in psi…. This is consistent with a stronger motivation for control by skeptics or possibly with less belief in supernatural influences.
…The initial evidence suggests that skeptics may tend to have a greater need for control. In fact, the speculations that an illusion of control is a significant factor in psi beliefs have primarily been proposed by skeptics and may be projections of their own needs for control.
If one moves beyond the motivation for control and looks at psi on its own terms, a different motivation emerges as prominent. Many people report experiences of ostensible spontaneous paranormal phenomena that occur without attempting to elicit or control the phenomena…. Even a casual review of these reports indicates that the experiences do not seem to be guided by self-serving, materialistic motivations or needs for control.
Research indicates the primary effect of psi experiences is an altered worldview and an increased sense of meaning and purpose in life and spirituality….
It is also important to note that this article is specifically correlating personality with belief in psi, not with religion in general. In fact it notes that the more skeptical personality types (STJs) are often found in authoritarian religious circles.
People with STJ personality types tend to rise to positions of leadership and authority in hierarchical organizations…. Fudjack and Dinkelaker (1994) noted that the masculine “extraverted/rational-empirical/pragmatic/ materialist” ESTJ personality is prominent in western culture and tends to prefer hierarchical organizations that emphasize power and control rather than creativity and flexibility. Kroeger, Thuesen, and Rutledge (2002) administered the Myers-Briggs personality test to over 20,000 people in all levels of a wide variety of corporate, government, and military organizations. Across these diverse groups, they found that 60% of 2,245 people in top executive positions had STJ personalities (ESTJ or ISTJ). The proportion of STJ types increased as the level on the management hierarchy increased.
Research indicates that the S personality types are associated with conservative religions that emphasize institutional religious authority and tradition whereas the intuitive (N) types are associated with more liberal, subjective, experiential approaches to religion and tolerance for religious uncertainty…. Similarly, greater dogmatism was associated with the S and J personality types….
Other personality models describe related factors like authoritarianism, traditionalism, or right-wing authoritarianism…. Altemeyer (1996) argued that fundamentalism is a religious manifestation of the authoritarian personality. Monaghan (1967) described “authority-seeker” as one of the main motivations for attending a fundamentalist church.
Fundamentalist religions often consider mystical or paranormal experiences as delusions or dangerous events.
All this of course raises some interesting questions about the degree to which personality type influences one’s proclivity towards certain worldviews, whether atheism, authoritarian religion, belief in paranormal phenomenon, or whatever else. For instance, the commentary on Stone’s blog below the article notes, anecdotally, that most people in the emerging church tend to be NFs or NTs (which has certainly been true in my experience - for instance I am an INTJ and my wife is an INFJ). I’m curious, for those of you here who have taken the Myers-Briggs test, what is your personality type? If the research plays out, one would predict that most here are probably at least S types.
(Note: most of the ellipses in the quotes above are where I took out the citations to improve readability. If you’re interested in the citations backing up these statements, see the original post.)
… According to reviews, the player has some serious interface issues and a weak screen, but if crucifixion is your thing, you can’t go wrong with this necklace cross-cum-MP3 player. Or is that the other way around? Is this an MP3 player that’s also a cross? Anyway, there you have it: the cross-shaped MP3 player, indeed.
Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, once criticized for leaving out atheists and nonbelievers when he delivered a much-touted speech on faith in America, now says he missed a chance to discuss their role in society.
Romney, who addressed his Mormon faith on Dec. 6 to allay concerns by hesitant voters, was criticized for asserting in that pre-primary speech that, “freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom.”
This week, Romney said he is still convinced of that, but that he regrets omitting atheists and agnostics from his initial address.
“Upon reflection,” Romney said at the Metropolitan Club in New York City, “I realized that while I could defend their absence from my address, I had missed an opportunity - an opportunity to clearly assert the following: Nonbelievers have just as great a stake as believers in defending religious liberty.”
As Siamang points out, he could’ve phrased the rest of his remarks slightly better.
Whether or not Romney actually means all this is still in question. It’s not like atheists weren’t around when he made his original remarks on faith. But he wasn’t trying to get their votes, either.
Ellen Johnson, former president of American Atheists, hasn’t said anything publicly yet (and hasn’t responded to an email inquiry) about her recent firing.
But others are making their voices heard… and they’re not all too happy with the AA Board’s decision:
I am Gil Gaudia. My wife Jeanne and I have been editorial assistants for the past two years at American Atheists. In doing so, we have worked closely with Ellen Johnson whom we respect and admire greatly. We have also had telephone and email contact with a few of the board members, especially with regard to editing their manuscripts. We were not impressed with their interpersonal skills. I have also contributed several articles to the magazine. We have just concluded an hour long telephone conversation with Ellen.
We are extremely biased in her favor, because we found her to be hard-working, honest, courageous, competent and caring of us and appreciative of our volunteer contributions.
This board’s action, in our opinion, will almost certainly result in the end of the organization and publication as we know it. We say this because, from first-hand experience we are aware of the number of hours, the amount of coordination and the knowledge of the operation that are all required to successfully produce a monthly publication, and we have no evidence that any of the board members are willing and able to invest that degree of commitment. Indeed, we have some reason to believe that the opposite is true. To those members who propose hiring Dawkins, Hitchins, Harris and others for the presidency, first see if they’ll agree to work for 38K, or thereabouts, in addition to doing latrine duty in their spare time.
For the board of directors of the most well-known Atheist group in America to have taken such a suicidal action is incomprehensible, but whatever their reasons, unless the members protest strongly and demand her reinstatement, (which she may not even want) it will only be a matter of time before we no longer have an organization to uphold the civil rights of Atheists.
As a contributor of many articles to this magazine, and as volunteers in editing other journal articles, spending many hours of our time in assisting Ellen in producing this publication, we are no longer interested in writing, editing or assisting in any way a magazine whose board has acted in such an irresponsible, unfair and self-destructive manner.
Gil and Jeanne R. Gaudia
To be fair, there are other groups that will continue to fight for the rights of atheists.
But a strong AA, with a well-respected president and spokesperson, is good for all of us.
… What method was the worst when people tried to share their faith with you? I know some people hand out pamphlets and other people tell you you’re going to hell on the street corner, all kinds of ‘fun’ things. As a follow up question, how has rude/mean/annoying encounters like that caused you to feel about the Christian faith ? My last question is, what method of sharing faith has made you at least open to talking to the other person about their faith?
I hope the wording hasn’t offended anyone. I’ve never talked to an atheist before (well I did over this forum for the past few days but not in person) and I would really like to learn more. Thanks for taking time and reading this.
In addition: Are there any methods of Evangelism you would actually consider listening to?
The new issue of Outreach Magazine gives their reader-submitted “Resources of the Year” in several categories. What came in at the number one spot for Leadership Training Resource of the Year may surprise some of you (and it greatly disappointed three authors who co-wrote a certain book that was a runner-up).
When he mentions his own book as a runner up to I Sold My Soul on eBay, he adds a side comment: “Cue the weeping and gnashing of teeth…”
All in good fun, of course
Meanwhile, I’m trying to get my hands on a scan of the actual magazine… if I get it, I’ll post a link to the page with the award!
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