Environmental Threat and Parapsychological Contributions to the Psychological Literature

Abstract

Summary Environmental threat has been suggested as one of the major causes of high authoritarianism. One aspect of the authoritarian personality is the maintenance of superstition, defined as the belief in “mystical or fantastic external determinants of the individual's fate.” The focus of research on parapsychological phenomena in essence seems to satisfy this definition. Consequently, it was hypothesized that the annual percentage of parapsychological contributions to the psychological literature (a) is correlated positively with the unemployment rate, (b) is correlated negatively with the disposable per capita income in constant dollars, and (c) is correlated positively with the subjective “annual threat weightings” of historians (n = 3) and social critics (n = 1). Analyses were based on the years 1929–75. All hypotheses were supported. Hierarchical stepwise regression indicated that the four predictors accounted for 41% of the variance.