Attributional style and irrational beliefs as related to para-psychological belief

Attribution theory is utilized to help understand how people explain behaviors and outcomes for themselves, as well as others (external versus internal factors, stable versus unstable factors, controllable versus uncontrollable factors, and global versus specific factors). It has been applied to diverse topics including learned helplessness, depression, motivation, and anxiety. Many people contain strong paranormal beliefs and attributional principles may help psychologists understand and mitigate the effects these beliefs have on people's lives and daily functioning. Paranormal beliefs appear to have implications for personality and adjustment, especially that which concerns locus of control, death threat, self-concept, inference making, dogmatism, and irrational beliefs.;A total of 95 undergraduate students (33 men, 62 women) were enlisted from the Introductory Psychology subject pool and undergraduate courses in Psychology. Participants were given the Paranormal Belief Scale, the Ellis Scale of Irrational Beliefs, and the Attributional Style Questionnaire in an attempt to further clarify the relationship between attributional styles, irrational beliefs, and beliefs of the para-psychological.;Results of the present study indicate that relationships between belief in the para-psychological and the four factors of attributional style were not supported, nor was there a significant relationship between para-psychological beliefs and irrational beliefs. However, exploratory analyses did reveal some interesting findings. A significant relationship between overall attributional style and paranormal belief was observed. Additional analyses suggested a significant difference for scores on paranormal belief and optimistic attributional style. Participants who exhibited a higher belief in the paranormal tended to have a more optimistic attributional style than those exhibiting a lower belief in the paranormal. However, a relationship between attributional style and irrational beliefs was not supported by the data generated from the present study.;Further analysis suggested several note-worthy relationships between demographic variables and scores obtained on subscales of both the Attributional Style Questionnaire and the Revised Paranormal Belief Scale. The inter-correlations between scores on the aforementioned subscales were addressed as well. Results indicated that females tended to score higher on the internality factor of the ASQ. Females also tended to score significantly higher than males on total paranormal belief score, witchcraft, spirituality, and precognition.;No significant differences were detected between race and irrational beliefs, which may in part be due to the fact that 74 of the 95 participants in this study were Caucasian. Further, no racial group differed significantly from any other group on paranormal belief. African-Americans tended to score significantly higher on the subscale of witchcraft than both Caucasians and Asians, but they did not differ significantly from Latinos. Additionally, the Other group tended to score significantly higher on the globality factor of the ASQ than either Jews or Christians. Due to the exploratory nature of these analyses, all must be interpreted cautiously. Implications and limitations of the study, as well as future research were also addressed.