If not taken care of, the supernatural can become very paranoid. According to studies, paranormal beliefs are a major indicator of increased stress levels. Researchers at Manchester Metropolitan University say they have found a link between a set of beliefs and a reduced ability to deal with stress.

The study relied largely on participants filling out a questionnaire known as the Revised Paranormal Belief Scale – which measures the degree of belief in each of these seven categories:

• traditional religious belief
• Sai
• witchcraft
• Superstition
• spiritualism
• extraordinary life form
• premonition

According to scientists, these beliefs are further divided into dimensions – including ghosts and other entities, religious beliefs, and traditional paranormal beliefs like witchcraft or black magic. The second is New Age philosophy, which covers a number of issues such as spiritualism, precognition, and paranormal life forms.

How do paranormal beliefs increase stress?

Statistics say that more than a quarter of adults in the US consider themselves superstitious, and recent trends show that young people are more superstitious than older populations.

A research team led by Dr. Kenneth Drinkwater and colleagues had more than three thousand participants complete questionnaires assessing various aspects of perceived stress. The answers were complemented with a 10-item Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) questionnaire completed by study volunteers. By comparing the two, the researchers wanted to see how the perceived sense of control within different paranormal beliefs would affect the amount of stress a believer experienced and how much success they had in dealing with feelings of stress. As expected, they saw a different pattern.

Their findings, published in the journal one more, discovered that people who scored higher for traditional paranormal belief reported increased levels of distress and a decreased ability to manage stress. These beliefs are also associated with feelings of anxiety about lack of control over external forces.

However, belief in New Age philosophies, including PSI, was not associated with increased distress and/or decreased ability to cope.

Prior research has suggested that, in general, belief in the paranormal is not associated with sensitivity to stress. Yet studies on superstition – a subset of paranormal belief say that people who rely on superstition to gain the illusion of control over outcomes in stressful situations.

According to the authors, that analysis found that there was no recognized overall relationship between stress management and paranormal beliefs of any kind. However, they found few studies linking different paranormal beliefs to different stress management outcomes.

“Recent research indicates that paranormal belief, in the absence of associated cognitive-perceptual and psychopathology-related factors, is not associated with negative well-being outcomes,” they wrote. “However, investigators have historically reported associations between specific aspects of belief (for example, superstition) and sensitivity to stress.”

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