The acceptance of scientifically unsupported beliefs, such as the existence of supernatural or paranormal phenomena, remains widespread.
A widely repeated finding is that women are more likely than men to believe in a wide range of phenomena such as astrology, ghosts, psychic powers and more.
It has been argued that this is due to women's greater preference for intuitive thinking styles compared to men (Ward & King, 2020).
Although paranormal beliefs are associated with intuitive thinking, gender differences in such beliefs remain strong even when this factor is taken into account (Lindeman & Aarnio, 2006). Therefore, the reasons for the great and persistent inequality between men and women in supernatural or paranormal beliefs have not yet been fully explained.
As a recent example, a representative U.S. national survey asked over 1,000 people about their views on various unsupported phenomena, including belief in supernatural human abilities - in particular, predicting the future and telekinesis if aliens had visited the earth and if they were afraid of ghosts and zombies.
On average, women scored significantly higher than men on beliefs about supernatural human abilities and were more likely to fear ghosts and zombies. There were no significant differences between men and women in terms of aliens or "Bigfoot".
These results are largely consistent with previous findings, although some research found that men were more likely than women to believe in extraterrestrial visitors (Aarnio & Lindeman, 2005; Rice, 2003).
They suggested that women may be more interested in supernatural explanations of the world that cannot be scientifically proven, while men may be more interested in phenomena that can be scientifically confirmed by proper evidence, although there is no doubt that gender differences in the latter were not significant.
Some studies have found that paranormal and supernatural beliefs are associated with greater preference for intuitive thinking and less preference for analytical thinking. However, even when calculating such differences in thinking styles, substantial differences remain between women and men in such beliefs.
Another reason behind this may be for the fact that women tend to be more empathetic than men, but even this is just a point of view.
Burimi: Psychology Today
