1. Personality Factors A more imaginative personality
Rafa Liu

2. Fantasy proneness
Personality test activity

3. Fantasy proneness
It is not an occasional occurrence. Most writers and artists possess this characteristic in varying degrees.

4. Fantasy proneness
Psychic experience in some due to difficulty in separating reality from fantasy they are so absorbed in a fantasy that it feels it is actually happening.
Evidence suggests that paranormal believers are more fantasy prone.
Wiseman el at. (2003) mock séance
One actor suggested table was levitating (it wasn’t)
More believers than non believers reported table had moved

5. Suggestibility
Definition: is the inclination to accept the suggestion of the others. People who are suggestible are more easily hypnotised.
Example: Your parents tell you that you have always been a good singer, so from then on you believe you have talent when really your parents were falsely encouraging you.

6. Suggestibility
Hergovich (2003) suggested suggestibility may be linked with paranormal beliefs because some involve deception.
for example
psychic mediums or the apparent spoon bending abilities of Uri Geller, which have been demonstrated to be fakes.
Psychic mediums have the ability to sense and communicate with beings and energies in other dimensions, including the spirits of people who have died.

7. Suggestibility
Suggestible people are more prone to accept these phenomena as real.
demonstrate
Hergovich tested participants’ suggestibility by trying to hypnotise them
found
A positive correlation between this and their score on paranormal belief scale.

8. Creative personality
Thalbourne (1998) meta-analysis of relevant studies
found
correlation between
creative personality and paranormal beliefs.

9. Evaluation

10. Suggestibility
Clancy et al. (2002) found people who claimed to have experienced an alien abduction were also found to be more susceptible to false memories
possible that some reports of paranormal experience are false memories.

11. Link to false memories
People with strong imaginations create a memory of events and then believe them to be true.
susceptible to false memories
A memory of something that didn’t happen but feels as if it is real.
a memory of something that didn’t happen but feels as if it is real.

12. Link to false memories French and Wilson (2006)
gave 100 participants a questionnaire
4 of the 5 items were real but 1 was fictitious
36% claimed they had seen the fictitious and these participants scored higher on paranormal belief and experience

13. Missing words Thalbourne (1998) Clancy et al. (2002)
Wiseman el at. (2003)
Hergovich (2003)
French and Wilson (2006)
believers
non believers
false memories
imaginations
deception

14. Assessment
Outline two imaginative personality factors underlying anomalous experiences. (6 marks)