Supernatural Agency: Individual Difference Predictors and Situational Correlates

Abstract

Barrett (2004) proposed that belief in God, ghosts, and other supernatural agents is cross-culturally ubiquitous because of a cognitive Hypersensitive Agency Detection Device with the propensity to find agents in the environment. However, supernatural agency experiences are not reported by all religious believers. A survey explored individual differences between those reporting never having had a spiritual, religious, supernatural, or paranormal (SRSP) experience (n = 284) and those who reported at least one (n = 299). SRSP experiences were associated with a distinct psychological profile, including higher scores on measures of positive schizotypy, thinner mental boundaries, and empathy; however, the difference in psychological profile was not specific to agentic SRSP experience. Experiences of nonreligious supernatural agency (n = 80) were more likely than other types of SRSP experiences to have occurred in a threatening and ambiguous environment and to be accompanied by increased negative affect, thus providing initial support for Barrett's hypothesis that the threshold for agency detection is lowered under such conditions.

Notes

¹In this article we are making no metaphysical claims regarding the existence or nonexistence of SNAs of any kind. Thus, we are focusing on the psychological correlates of people's reports of detecting supernatural agency and are not concerned with the veracity of these experiences.

²Relatively small group size was a consequence of the nature of the groups and the limited information provided in some self-reports, which resulted in cases being removed from analysis due to their ambiguity.

^aStatistics for these measures are based on transformed scores.

^aThese semantic differentials were scored on a 7-point scale from 1 to 7, where lower scores indicate the first word in the pair, hypothesized to enhance Hypersensitive Agency Detection Device sensitivity.