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Differences and similarities in religiousand paranormal beliefs: a typology ofdistinct faith signaturesMarc Stewart Wilson a , Joseph Bulbulia b & Chris G. Sibley ca Psychology , Victoria University of Wellington , Wellington , NewZealandb Religious Studies , Victoria University of Wellington ,Wellington , New Zealandc Psychology , University of Auckland , Auckland , New ZealandPublished online: 07 May 2013.

To cite this article: Marc Stewart Wilson , Joseph Bulbulia & Chris G. Sibley (2013): Differencesand similarities in religious and paranormal beliefs: a typology of distinct faith signatures, Religion,Brain & Behavior, DOI: 10.1080/2153599X.2013.779934

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Differences and similarities in religious and paranormal beliefs: atypology of distinct faith signatures

Marc Stewart Wilsona*, Joseph Bulbuliab and Chris G. Sibleyc

aPsychology, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand; bReligious Studies,Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand; cPsychology, University ofAuckland, Auckland, New Zealand

We applied latent class analysis (LCA) to derive a statistically reliable typology ofreligious and paranormal beliefs in a large, diverse sample of New Zealanders(N�4422). We identified five patterns of belief, which we call faith signatures,reflecting distinct combinations of high or low belief in different religiousteachings and paranormal phenomena. Although conventional wisdom pitsagnostics against religious believers, we found that undifferentiated skeptics (41%)and religious exclusives (12%) expressed similarly high levels of disbelief for mosttypes of paranormal phenomena, with religious exclusives showing traditionalreligious beliefs only. Also, we found striking similarities between undifferentiatedbelievers (9%), New Age spiritualists (13%), and moderate agnostics (25%), all ofwhom accorded belief to supernatural realities across a number of religious andparanormal phenomena. However, only undifferentiated believers committed tothe truth of superstitions. Importantly, we also found that faith signatures arereliably associated with demographic variables and core psychological traits(anomie, trust, and happiness). Thus, LCA reveals that the classifications‘‘religious’’ and ‘‘secular’’ obscure subtleties in distinct categories of supernaturalorientations. Furthermore, by scratching the surface of what appears to be ahighly secular society, our results challenge conventional distinctions betweenreligious and secular orientations. The key distinction is not between belief anddisbelief but rather between levels of discrimination in different types of belief.

Keywords: anomie; cognition; latent class analysis; paranormal; religion;secularization

Introduction

The religions of Western democracies appear to be dying. Temples have grown lonely,

temple coffers have emptied, and every day another child forgets that Christmas and

yoga once held religious meanings. C. Wright Mills (1959, p. 33) famously wrote: ‘‘In

due course, the sacred shall disappear altogether except, possibly, in the private

realm.’’ Although news of religion’s death may be exaggerated (Rowthorn, 2011), the

religious traditions of most industrial democracies show steady declines in religious

adherents (Norris & Inglehart, 2004; Zuckerman, 2005). Temples are indeed

emptying. Yet how are these broad sociological trends affecting the ways in which

people think about supernatural realities?

On the face of it, nothing is more familiar than religious diversity. For instance,

the values and choices of Taliban militants differ from those of Zen monks; and

*Corresponding author. Email: Marc.Wilson@vuw.ac.nz

Religion, Brain & Behavior, 2013

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2013.779934

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atheists scoff at Christian fundamentalists, who vigorously reject atheism as arrogant

delusion (Dennett, 2006). However, cognitive psychologists of religion have recently

mounted persuasive challenges to the adequacy of folk taxonomies of religion.

Studies reveal cross-traditional similarities in how people represent supernatural

targets such as God (Barrett & Keil, 1998), the soul (Cohen, 2007; Slingerland &

Chudek, 2011), and absolute morality (Slingerland, Henrich, & Norenzayan, in

press). Similarities in patterns of religious thinking persist despite variation inexplicit theology and religious worship (Barrett, 2004). Some researchers view the

variation of religious cognition as being analogous to the variation of human

languages (Atran & Norenzayan, 2004; Boyer, 2001, 2008; Lawson & McCauley,

1990; Pyysiainen & Hauser, 2010). According to the linguistics model of religiosity,

the core properties of supernatural cognition are like the generative grammars of

natural languages insofar as they differ relatively narrowly within fixed parameters

across all human populations (Bulbulia, 2005). Several studies suggest that even self-

professed atheists harbor implicit forms of supernatural cognition (Bering, 2006;

Kelemen & Rosset, 2009). According to this linguistic model, religious belief is hard

to shake because our minds are structured to believe in gods (Barrett, 2004).

Despite an emerging consensus among evolutionary psychologists that the

categories of religious adherents do not reflect the categories of supernatural

thinking, recent research has challenged the doctrine of invariance. Indeed, critics

have declared a plague on two houses. Although they agree that folk categories of

traditional adherence are inadequate, they also argue that the differences betweenreligious and secular cognition cut deeper than marginal variation (Geertz &

Markusson, 2010; Johnson, 2012; Norenzayan & Gervais, 2013). Evidence support-

ing such robust differences comes from the sociology of religion, which finds that

over time, nations that consistently enjoy higher levels of social security experience

steady declines in religious faith (Zuckerman, 2005). This observation not only

implies that faith is in decline, but also that religious decline is linked to decreasing

perceptions of threat. According to this secularization thesis, religious orientations

are largely sustained by social insecurity (Diener, Tay, & Myers, 2011; Norris &

Inglehart, 2004).

Although traditional religion is in decline among secure countries, the

psychological underpinnings of the secularization thesis are debatable. Orthogonal

research on paranormal belief finds that people in secular societies maintain a variety

of paranormal beliefs, and that these are found among those who adhere to classical

religious faith and those who do not (Aarnio & Lindeman, 2007; Irwin, 1997).

Paranormal belief is both commonplace and diffuse in that it ignores the distinction

between secularity and religion. Might paranormal psychology be characterized asreligion by another name*that is, a religion without churches and congregations?

Given disagreements about where (if at all) to draw the line between different

types of supernatural belief, we sought an empirically satisfying classification that

would enable us to detect belief differences across a spectrum of religious and

paranormal sub-scales. We sought to understand the variation in types of religious

and paranormal belief in New Zealand, a religiously diverse country with a growing

proportion of citizens who do not identify with any religion (Hoverd, 2008). We used

a statistically reliable method of mixture modeling known as latent class analysis

(LCA) to build taxonomies of supernatural belief. LCA specifies a formal statistical

model in which some set of categories or distinct types of people are modeled after

the observed data.

2 M.S. Wilson et al.

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We applied LCA to survey reports taken from a large national sample of

New Zealanders (N�4422) to detect categories (or ‘faith signatures’) of religious/

paranormal believers. Following the guidelines outlined by Sibley and Liu (in press),

we began by deriving a model for distinct and statistically reliable latent classes ofbelief and unbelief. We then tested the model by looking for difference in core

psychological orientations that have been associated with religion. The outcomes we

considered were trust, anomie, and happiness. We looked for associations with

psychological variables because a fine-grained classification system should not

merely detect differences between religious and non-religious people, but also

differences across the full range of supernatural beliefs to which people in secular

societies adhere. Our analysis compared and contrasted two competing predictions.

On the one hand, the analysis of faith signatures in religious and paranormal beliefmight detect clear and distinct groupings, reflecting traditional religious believers

and secularists. This would be consistent with a religious adherent’s model, according

to which religious faith is dying. On the other hand, we might detect strongly similar

and pervasive supernatural beliefs with little variation across the board. This would

be consistent with the linguistic model of religious cognition, according to which all

supernatural thinking is fundamentally similar.

An overview of latent class analysis

LCA explores how unobserved subgroups of participants reliably differ in their

opinions or views across a range of topics. The set of unobserved subgroups then

represents a categorical latent variable (i.e., a set of distinct categories or types ofpeople) that are hypothesized to produce the overall pattern observed in the data (see

Hagenaars & McCutcheon, 2002). LCA thus allows researchers to create a model

that categorizes people into different sub-types or categories, which are theorized to

underlie the overall pattern of responses. We can then use this method to determine

how many different latent classes or types of people are needed to parsimoniously

summarize the observed data (for an example of this method in the social sciences,

see Sibley & Becker, 2012).

Because it is able to detect signals of similarity and difference across a range ofresponse items, LCA is directly suited for identifying different categories of people

who have distinct patterns of religious belief. Specifically, it is possible to use LCA to

identify distinct groups or types of people who may have different combinations of

belief and skepticism about religious and paranormal beliefs*some low, some

moderate, and some high. We call these different types faith signatures, which we

define as different categories of people who express distinct combinations of high/

low belief in different religious teachings and paranormal phenomena. Notably,

distinct faith signatures might be completely obscured when researchers restrict theirattention to overall mean levels of response to a set of attitude or opinion items.

Lacking LCA, we could not have reliably grouped people in our sample into different

latent categories based on similarities and differences in their overall pattern of

responses across a range of continuous indicators.

Historical antecedents to faith signatures

We are not the first to tackle the categorization problem. Irwin (1997) used

hierarchical cluster analysis of mail survey responses from a sample of 228

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Australians and therein found four groups of paranormal believers (traditional

religious believers, tentative believers, skeptics, and New Agers). These groups

differed meaningfully on an index of self-reported dissociative tendencies, which

Irwin took as an indication of validity regarding the identified typology. Irwinargued that hierarchical cluster analysis provides a useful complement to the more

common use of continua-based methods. Aarnio and Lindeman (2007) also

conducted a cluster analysis of more than 3000 Finns, based only on their scores

of traditional religious belief and paranormal belief scales (the mean of the

remaining six sub-scales). In so doing, Aarnio and Lindeman reported four clusters:

‘‘skeptics’’ (low on both scales: 49% of sample), ‘‘religious people’’ (high only on

traditional religious belief: 35%), ‘‘paranormal believers’’ (high only on paranormal

belief: 11%), and ‘‘double believers’’ (high on both scales: 3%) (see also Wulff, 2006).Consider the analogy to medicine, where the LCA of disease is routinely

employed. The types of diseases that afflict people are often masked by diverse,

complex, and overlapping symptoms, the manifestations of which do not come pre-

labeled. Categorizations based on observations and intuition clearly risk missing*or

worse, distorting*the underlying manifestations of diseases, whose profiles cannot

be readily detected. This situation is hardly improved by approaching disease

through average levels of symptoms. In fact, it is quite the opposite: extreme

presentations of disease may be critical for detection. What is needed is a reliablemethod for capturing the signals of diseases across what amounts to be a booming

and buzzing confusion of symptoms*that is to say, a method for detecting the

signatures of disease. LCA can do that. By a similar logic, LCA is relevant for

detecting underlying categories of belief in the supernatural. We unduly bias these

classifications if we assume, in advance of analysis, whether ‘‘religious’’ and

‘‘paranormal’’ cut a population of believers and disbelievers at some natural point.

A typology of religious and supernatural believers: more similar than different?

There has been a considerable research effort in recent years comparing and

contrasting religious and non-religious people across a host of outcome measures.

To name just a few, these include health, subjective well-being, personality, and levels

of trust (see Batson, Schoenrade, & Ventis, 1993; Beit-Hallahmi & Argyle, 1997).

Although this research is informative, we argue that general comparisons of religious

and non-religious people*or even comparisons of people from different denomi-

nations*risk masking a more complex pattern of outcomes and trait differences.Similarities and differences might extend across a spectrum of beliefs and disbeliefs

in religious and less normative phenomena such as the paranormal. In other words,

there might be fundamental and distinct categories of supernatural belief, the

properties of which are not readily obvious or determinable from information about

whether a person is religious in the traditional sense.

Conversely, there might be distinct differences in types of religious doubt,

depending upon whether one is talking specifically about traditional religious

disbelief or skepticism about all things paranormal. Although psi (parapsychologicalphenomena such as mindreading, ESP, and telekinesis), witchcraft, and precognition

may be viewed as having little or nothing to do with traditional religious beliefs, they

are nevertheless dimensions of belief that form reliably distinct factors (see Tobacyk,

2004), which makes them important to include in our model. However, it remains an

open question whether the typologies of religious and paranormal belief are complex

4 M.S. Wilson et al.

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or whether such complexity corresponds to distinct types or classes of people. This

complex typological structure may be masked at best, or misconstrued at worst,

when broadly comparing people who express traditional religious belief or non-

belief.We tackle the categorization problem in the following way. To begin, we use

sub-scales for traditional and paranormal beliefs to survey a large sample of

participants. In so doing, we include a deliberately broad range of dimensions

of supernatural belief in order not to bias classifications according to our own

intuitions about similarities and difference. We then use LCA to generate appropriate

classifications, which we refer to as faith signatures: profiles that reflect different

patterns of belief about religious and supernatural phenomena. We then validate

these profiles by assessing the extent to which they reliably differ across demographicand psychological variables. The psychological variables we assess are trust, anomie,

and happiness, variables that define fundamental psychological outcomes on which

religious and non-religious people are often compared.

Religion and social capital: trust, anomie, and happiness

Even though numerous studies have found that religious and secular people differ in

core psychological outcomes, disagreements persist about these differences (again, wesuggest that such disagreements may be resolved by better classifications). Religious

people have been found to exhibit strong distrust for atheists (Gervais, Shariff, &

Norenzayan, 2011), but secular people do not exhibit a similar bias for committed

religious people (Sosis, 2005). Despite this fact, the practice of religion appears to be

associated with greater trust for religious cohorts: people who participate in religious

communities are often entrusted by fellow members of the community (Berggren &

Bjornskov, 2011; Maselko, Hughes, & Cheney, 2011; Todd & Allen, 2011).

Other studies have found that religious people appear to experience higher levelsof social belonging (reviewed in Sibley & Bulbulia, 2012b). More than a century ago,

the French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1897/2006) observed that the transition to

industrial life, which produced the demographic shift to urbanization, concurrently

increased feelings of isolation and alienation, a condition that Durkheim called

anomie. Durkheim conjectured that strong religious communities buffer their

members against anomie. In line with Durkheim’s model, numerous studies have

found that religious practice is associated with strong social ties, which predict

overall higher levels of personal well-being (Koenig et al., 1997; Salsman, Brown,Brechting, & Carlson, 2005). Secular and religious lifestyles would therefore appear

to predict different levels of anomie, a core dimension of psychological well-being.

However, the relationship between religion and anomie is unclear. Other studies

have shown that people living in largely secular countries enjoy comparably high

levels of social belonging (Norris & Inglehart, 2004; Zuckerman, 2009), and that

secular buffers are comparable to religious ones, even at times of extraordinary crisis

(Sibley & Bulbulia, 2012a).

Finally, studies suggest that religious and secular people also appear to differ inhappiness. Specifically, religious people consistently report overall higher levels of

happiness when compared with non-religious people (Brooks, 2007). However, the

relationship between religion and happiness also remains ambiguous. Countries with

the highest overall levels of secularity have the highest levels of average happiness

(Zuckerman, 2009) and the smallest gap in subjective well-being between the

Religion, Brain & Behavior 5

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religious and secular (Diener et al., 2011). Other research indicates that people with

weak religious faith exhibit greater overall anxiety when compared to people with

strong religious faith; and that the lowest levels of anxiety are found among those

who lack religious faith entirely (Ross, 1990). In short, researchers do not agree onhow religious and secular people differ in trust, anomie, and happiness. If the

classifications of ‘‘religious’’ and ‘‘secular’’ are inadequate, then we should not be

surprised that findings in the area are varied.

Assessing the belief spectrum: traditional religious and paranormal beliefs

In a review of 147 studies, Goulding and Parker (2001) reported the use of no fewer

than 149 different individual questions, or sets of questions, to assess self-reportedparanormal belief and abilities. They note, however, that in the years preceding their

review, two measures appeared to have become particularly popular: Thalbourne and

Haraldsson’s (1980) Australian Sheep-Goat Scale and Tobacyk’s Paranormal Belief

Scale (PBS) (see Tobacyk, 2004; Tobacyk & Milford, 1983). Responses to the 26

items on PBS are typically divided into seven sub-scales that include the following:

extrasensory perception (ESP) and psychokinesis (under the sub-scale heading of

psi); precognition (e.g., ‘‘Some people have an unexplained ability to predict the

future’’); spiritualism (e.g., ‘‘Your mind or soul can leave your body and travel [astralprojection]’’); witchcraft (e.g., ‘‘Through the use of formulas or incantations, it is

possible to cast spells on persons’’); extraordinary life forms (e.g., ‘‘The abominable

snowman of Tibet exists’’); superstition (‘‘If you break a mirror, you will have bad

luck’’); and, somewhat contentiously, traditional religious belief (e.g., ‘‘The soul

continues to exist though the body may die,’’ ‘‘There is a devil,’’ and ‘‘There is a

heaven and a hell’’).

The predictors of religious and paranormal belief are as follows. While women

endorse non-religious, paranormal phenomena and religious phenomena more thanmen (e.g., Clarke, 1991; Flere, 2007; Tobacyk & Milford, 1983), men endorse greater

belief in extraordinary life forms. Although religious belief typically increases with

age (e.g., Emmons & Sobal, 1981; Heintz & Baruss, 2001), belief in paranormal

phenomena appears to show the reverse: younger people express higher levels of

paranormal belief (e.g., Clarke, 1991; Emmons & Sobal, 1981). There have also been

mixed results when one considers demographic differences. Most studies do not find

an unequivocal relationship between religious/paranormal belief and intelligence

(e.g., Smith, Foster, & Stovin, 1998; Stuart-Hamilton, Nayak, & Priest, 2006),education (e.g., Schulter & Papousek, 2008; Tobacyk, Miller, & Jones, 1984), or

socio-economic status (e.g., Rice, 2003; Sheils & Berg, 1977). However, more recent

studies find an association between religious/paranormal belief and analytic thinking

(Gervais & Norenzayan, 2012; Pennycook, Cheyne, Seli, Koehler, & Fugelsang,

2012).

Tobacyk (1983) hypothesized that paranormal believers would report greater

levels of interpersonal trust, but his results showed that this relationship was not

significant. Although all correlations were positive (with belief in psi, traditionalreligious belief, and spiritualism all between 0.11 and 0.16), the sample of 60

participants might not have provided sufficient statistical power to detect signifi-

cance. Tobacyk (1985) also reported that superstition was associated with greater

anomie and alienation, while spiritualism was associated only with greater

alienation. However, Tobacyk and Pirtilla-Backman (1992) found that in a sample

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of Finnish university students, all sub-scales except for traditional religious belief

(with which there was no relationship) were associated with alienation and/or

anomie.

Overview of the present study

Our study sought to better understand the variation in types of religious and

paranormal belief. We assessed levels of belief using a large sample from New

Zealand, a religiously diverse country with a growing proportion of citizens who donot identify with any religion (Hoverd, 2008). We used LCA to derive a statistically

reliable typology of beliefs in a large and diverse sample of New Zealanders (N�4422). As a fine-grained classification system, LCA should not merely detect

differences between religious and non-religious people, but also differences across

various types of beliefs that we call different faith signatures. To model possible

categorical differences in types of beliefs, we aim to cast a wide net, encompassing an

array of religious and paranormal beliefs that are traditional and non-traditional.

This should allow us to detect the various types of people: those who hold onlytraditional religious beliefs, traditional religious and paranormal beliefs, neither

traditional religious nor paranormal beliefs, and non-traditional paranormal

phenomena but not traditional religious beliefs.

In terms of formal hypotheses, our analysis compared and contrasted two

competing predictions. On the one hand, the analysis of faith signatures in religious

and paranormal belief might detect clear and distinct groupings that reflect

traditional religious believers and secularists. This would be consistent with a

religious adherent model, and also past research comparing religious and non-religious people as two general categories. On the other hand, we might detect a series

of faith signatures that more closely resembles a linguistic model that predicts strong

similarities and pervasive supernatural beliefs with little variation across the board.

Method

Participants

This study is based on 4422 respondents (viz., those who completed all paranormal

belief items from the full sample of 5621) who took an internet-based survey

promoted by a national New Zealand newspaper. Fifty-one per cent of the sample

were female, the average age was 40.97 years (SD�15.82), the median highest level

of education was a completed bachelor’s degree/trade certificate, and median income

fell into the ‘‘$40,000 to $60,000’’ bracket. The sample thus cannot be consideredrepresentative of the New Zealand population, but it did reach a large number and

range of New Zealanders.

Survey measures

Paranormal beliefs were assessed using the revised Paranormal Beliefs Scale

(Tobacyk, 2004), which asks participants the extent to which they agree (1�strongly

agree, 7�strongly disagree) with 26 statements concerning the existence of

paranormal phenomena. The scale has typically displayed satisfactory reliability

and has been used in a variety of nations and samples (e.g., Aarnio & Lindeman,

Religion, Brain & Behavior 7

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2007; Peltzer, 2003; Tobacyk & Pritilla-Backman, 1992). This scale was presented as

the very first set of questions in the survey. The Paranormal Beliefs Scale assesses

seven distinct dimensions of paranormal belief: (1) traditional religious belief; (2)

spiritualism; (3) witchcraft; (4) precognition; (5) psi; (6) extraordinary life forms; and

(7) superstition.Anomie was assessed by the same three items used by Goertzel (1994), which

asked the degree to which respondents agreed (on a seven-point scale from 1�strongly disagree to 7�strongly agree) with the following statements: ‘‘The situation

of the average person is getting worse,’’ ‘‘It is hardly fair to bring a child into today’s

world,’’ and ‘‘Most public officials are not interested in the average person.’’ Of the

analysis sample, 3095 participants completed the Anomie Scale (the remainder

completed a different measure).

Trust was assessed by asking respondents the extent to which they agreed (on a

seven-point scale from 1�strongly disagree to 7�strongly agree) that they could

trust police, neighbors, and relatives (Goertzel, 1994).Happiness was assessed using Lyubomirsky and Lepper’s (1999) four-item

Subjective Happiness Scale. Items asked the participants to indicate, for example,

their subjective happiness (‘‘not a very happy person’’ to ‘‘a very happy person’’) or

to indicate the extent to which they resemble exemplars of a happy and an unhappy

person (‘‘not at all’’ to ‘‘a great deal’’), using a seven-point scale.

To assess religiosity/spirituality, two yes/no items were used; these asked

participants if they thought of themselves as a religious person or a spiritual person,

respectively. Additional questions asked whether or not the respondent had ever an

experience that they considered to be paranormal in nature, and whether they

identified with a particular religious or spiritual ‘‘faith’’ and/or belonged to a

congregation.

Anomie, trust, and happiness items were presented toward the end of the survey

and preceded the demographics section, where participants answered a series of

questions that included income, education, age, and gender. Income was based on an

indication of six brackets (‘‘up to $20,000,’’ ‘‘$20,000 to $40,000,’’ ‘‘$40,000 to

$60,000,’’ ‘‘$60,000 to $100,000,’’ ‘‘$100,000 to $150,000,’’ and ‘‘more than

$150,000’’), which best reflected participants’ personal income before taxes. Highest

level of education was based on selecting one of seven options (‘‘before/during 5th

form,’’ ‘‘completed 5th form only,’’ ‘‘before/during 7th form,’’ ‘‘completed 7th form

only,’’ ‘‘one or more years study towards a Bachelors degree or trade certificate,’’

‘‘completed Bachelors degree or trade certificate,’’ and ‘‘completed a postgraduate

qualification’’).

Additionally, we included a battery of questions about conspiracies, urban myths,

superstitions, lottery behavior, alternative medicine, contemporary scientific beliefs,

feelings about social groups, and religious orthodoxy and fundamentalism. These

measures were included for a different research project.

Procedure

Data were collected during a two-week period following the promotion of the

internet survey by the Sunday Star Times, one of New Zealand’s largest newspapers.

Participants were invited to complete a survey about the beliefs of New Zealanders.

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Results

Table 1 shows the internal reliabilities and descriptive statistics for the Paranormal

Belief sub-scales. All but one sub-scale met conventional standards for reliability. The

three items comprising the Extraordinary Life Forms sub-scale performed poorly

(a�0.59), all others intercorrelated significantly, with an average intercorrelation of

0.33. The Happiness Scale proved highly reliable (a�0.89), but the alphas for

anomie and trust fell below the criteria typically considered acceptable. The three

anomie items produced a�0.58 (compared to a�0.49 reported by Goertzel, 1994)

with an average inter-item correlation of 0.31. The Trust Scale produced a�0.53

(compared to a�0.58 reported by Goertzel, 1994) and obtained an average

intercorrelation of r�0.30. In light of the small number of items, and the relatively

satisfactory inter-item correlations, scale scores were calculated based on the average

of the three items in each scale. Unsurprisingly, anomie and trust were strongly

negatively correlated (r (3093)��0.51, pB.001), and happiness was associated with

greater trust (r (4233)�0.28, pB.001) and less anomie (r (3093)��0.23, pB.001).

Table 1 also shows the intercorrelations between the sub-scales of the

Paranormal Belief Scale, indicating generally high levels of association*the more

one typically endorses the items of one sub-scale, the more one endorses those of

other sub-scales. Similarly, women reported greater endorsement of traditional

religious belief, spiritualism, witchcraft, precognition, psi, and superstition (all value

for F (1,4211)�167.24, pB.001, partial h2�0.04�0.13), and of extraordinary life

forms (F (1,4211)�6.55, pB.05, partial h2�0.002). Additionally, Table 1 shows the

relationships between the Paranormal Belief Scale total scale and sub-scale scores,

and our indices of well-being/trust and demographics. Happiness was inconsistently

(and weakly at best) associated with some Paranormal Belief sub-scales, while trust

(negatively) and anomie (positively) were consistently but weakly associated with

all sub-scales, indicating that increased belief was associated with lowered trust

and greater anomie. Education and age were both negatively associated with all

Paranormal Belief sub-scales such that less formal education and income were

associated with greater paranormal belief. Although weak, increasing age was

generally associated with lower reported belief in paranormal phenomena (with the

exception of religious belief and psi, where the correlation was non-significant and

displayed a positive association, respectively).

Latent class analysis of religious and paranormal beliefs

We used LCA to examine differences in seven different dimensions of paranormal

belief. We compared models ranging from one to six classes. The Lo-Mendell-Rubin

adjusted Likelihood Ratio Test (aLRT) indicated that a five-class solution provided

the best fit to the data. To reduce the risk of extracting trivial additional classes, we

decided on a conservative pB.001. A five-class solution performed significantly

better than a four-class model (aLRT�1668.40, pB.001). A six-class solution, by

contrast, did not perform significantly better than the preferred five-class solution

(aLRT�724.78, p�.04)

Comparison of sample-size-adjusted Bayesian information criterion (BIC)

statistics for the different solutions also supported a five-class solution. The

BIC statistics were as follows: single-class solution BIC�116437.40; two-class

solution BIC�103697.50; three-class solution BIC�99986.20; four-class solution

Religion, Brain & Behavior 9

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Table 1. Means, SDs, internal reliabilities, and inter-scale correlations of the Paranormal Belief Scale and its sub-scales, and with discriminant measures.

Descriptive

statistics Sub-scale intercorrelations Discriminant measures

a M (SD) 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. Happiness Trust Anomie Educ Income Age

1. Traditional Religious Belief 0.90 3.46 (2.07) 0.30* 0.16* 0.41* 0.47* 0.56* 0.50* 0.03 �0.07* 0.17* �0.13* �0.10* �0.02

2. Spiritualism 0.90 2.97 (1.91) 0.48* 0.47* 0.74* 0.82* 0.66* 0.01 �0.14* 0.21* �0.20* �0.16* �0.05*

3. Witchcraft 0.88 2.93 (1.80) 0.42* 0.38* 0.62* 0.64* �0.00 �0.13* 0.21* �0.14* �0.13* �0.04

4. Precognition 0.87 2.76 (1.63) 0.54* 0.46* 0.69* 0.00 �0.12* 0.22* �0.20* �0.14* �0.06*

5. Psi 0.80 2.92 (1.54) 0.39* 0.42* 0.04 �0.11* 0.18* �0.17* �0.11* 0.04

6. Extraordinary Life Forms 0.59 3.25 (1.23) 0.39* �0.03 �0.10* 0.16* �0.07* �0.06* �0.04

7. Superstition 0.80 1.69 (1.14) �0.07* �0.13* 0.19* �0.16* �0.12* �0.10*

Overall PBS score .94 2.88 (1.28) .01 �.14* 0.25* �0.20* �0.16* �0.04

* p B .001

10

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BIC�98519.00; five-class solution BIC�96867.50; six-class solution BIC�96173.70. The BIC is an indicator of model fit, which can be used to compare a

series of models that differ in the number of parameters. The BIC statistics indicate

that the incremental increase in model fit seemed to plateau once five latent classeshad been specified, suggesting that this solution provided a parsimonious model of

the latent classes (or discrete categories of people) underlying the observed data.

Because LCA specifies a formal model of the categorical latent factor theorized

to produce the observed data, we were able to formally estimate the probability that

each participant belonged to each of the five classes. The probability (averaged across

participants) that a given participant belonging to a given class would be correctly

categorized is given on the diagonal in Table 2. This provides an intuitive way to

assess the reliability of the latent class model. As shown, these probabilities are allwell above 0.90, indicating excellent classification likelihood, and only a small

average likelihood of misclassification.

Interpretation of the latent classes

Figure 1 presents the estimated means for the five classes of people who believed in

different combinations of paranormal belief and at differing levels of belief and

unbelief. We identified one class representing people who we refer to as ‘‘religious

exclusives.’’ These are people who express strong traditional religious beliefs, like the

existence of God, but tend not to believe in other paranormal phenomena. This

group constituted 12.1% of the sample.

We also identified two further classes of people who expressed high levels of belief

in traditional religion. These were the undifferentiated believers (8.8%), who tendedto believe in all of the different paranormal phenomena we examined, and a group

we labeled ‘‘New Age spiritualists’’ (13.4%). New Age spiritualists expressed the

highest level of belief in paranormal phenomena relating to the spirit, a high level of

belief in religion and many other paranormal phenomena, but did not believe in

superstitions. We labeled the final two classes of people identified by our model

‘‘moderate agnostics’’ (24.9%) and ‘‘undifferentiated skeptics’’ (40.8%). Moderate

agnostics were so labeled because they tended to express a moderate level of belief

close to the scale midpoint, which may be taken as an indicator of sitting on the fenceabout most paranormal phenomena, with the exception of a low belief in common

superstitious practices. Undifferentiated skeptics, by contrast, were the largest single

category in our sample, and expressed a high level of unbelief or skepticism in all

seven of the different aspects of paranormal phenomena that we examined.

Table 2. Latent class probabilities for most likely classification by latent class membership

(row) and latent class (column).

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

1. Religious exclusives 0.921 0.025 0.052 0.000 0.002

2. New Age Spiritualists 0.008 0.976 0.016 0.000 0.000

3. Undifferentiated believers 0.027 0.027 0.903 0.009 0.035

4. Moderate agnostics 0.000 0.000 0.024 0.932 0.044

5. Undifferentiated Skeptics 0.000 0.000 0.058 0.031 0.911

Note: Values along the diagonal (shown in bold) represent the average probability that a person in a givenlatent class was correctly categorized as belonging to that class.

Religion, Brain & Behavior 11

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Demographic differences in the nature of paranormal beliefs

Previous studies have found that women are more likely to believe in the

supernatural; other predictors of supernatural belief include lower income and less

education (Zuckerman, 2009). However, comparisons of education, income, age, and

gender across the categories derived from LCA show a more variegated picture.

Figures 2 and 3 show the breakdown of gender, age, education, and income across

the five latent classes. Cross-tabulating gender against latent class underscored the

finding that the sexes were not equally represented across the groups (x2 (4)�522.09,

pB.001). While women were disproportionately more common among undiffer-

entiated believers, New Age spiritualists, and moderate agnostic categories, they were

under-represented in the undifferentiated skeptic and (less obviously) religious

exclusive categories.The five classes differed significantly on age (F (4,4047)�10.11, pB.001, partial

h2�0.01), education (F (4,4150)�43.06, pB.001, partial h2�0.04), and income

(F (4,3989)�23.59, pB.001, partial h2�0.02). Post hoc Bonferroni tests indicated

that New Age spiritualists and undifferentiated skeptics were significantly older than

both moderate agnostics and undifferentiated believers, and that religious exclusives

were also significantly older than undifferentiated believers. Religious exclusives and

Figure 1. Mean scores on different dimensions of paranormal belief for the five distinct faith

signatures identified using latent class analysis.

12 M.S. Wilson et al.

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undifferentiated skeptics were equally educated and significantly more educated than

all other groups. Additionally, moderate agnostics were more educated than both

New Age spiritualists and undifferentiated believers. Finally, undifferentiated

skeptics reported significantly higher personal income than all other groups, and

religious exclusives reported higher personal income than all groups other than

undifferentiated skeptics. Although undifferentiated believers reported the lowest

personal income, they did not differ significantly from New Age spiritualists and

moderate agnostics.

Figure 2. Proportion of women and proportion of the sample belonging to a congregation

across different latent classes.

Figure 3. Mean age, education, and income across different latent classes.

Note: Error bars represent the standard error of the mean.

Religion, Brain & Behavior 13

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Differences in anomie, happiness, and trust

Recall from Table 1 that high levels of endorsement across the seven sub-scales of

paranormal belief were associated with lower trust and greater anomie, and

inconsistently (if at all) with happiness. Matters appear rather differently, however,

when comparisons are made across classes. Members of the five classes differed

significantly on happiness (F (4,4230)�9.42, pB.001, partial h2�0.01), anomie

(F (4,3090)�45.38, pB.001, partial h2�0.06), and trust (F (4,4230)�23.10,

pB.001, partial h2�0.02). As Figure 4 illustrates, the mean (and standard error)

for these three classes indicate that religious exclusives and New Age spiritualists

reported similarly high levels of happiness, and that undifferentiated believers

reported the lowest levels of happiness relative to the other groups. Undifferentiated

believers also reported higher levels of anomie and lower levels of trust, and religious

exclusives reported lower levels of anomie than all groups except undifferentiated

skeptics. Levels of trust among religious exclusives were equal and similar to those of

undifferentiated skeptics. New Age spiritualists and moderate agnostics were equally

moderate in their levels of both anomie and trust. Despite having strong differences

in belief about traditional religion, it is notable that religious exclusives and

undifferentiated skeptics were similar across core measures of personal and social

well-being, as well as education. Moreover, both classes differed from what would

appear to be their theologically similar counterparts. Undifferentiated believers were

closer to moderate agnostics than they were to religious exclusives. Likewise,

moderate agnostics resembled undifferentiated believers more than they resembled

undifferentiated skeptics.

Religious/spiritual self-identification and observance

Table 3 shows the proportion of members from each class who were female,

paranormal experients (i.e., reported having had an experience that they regarded as

paranormal), identified as religious/spiritual, identified a particular faith, and

belonged to a congregation. Identification as a ‘‘religious person’’ was significantly

Figure 4. Mean scores on happiness, anomie, and trust across different latent classes.

Note: Error bars represent the standard error of the mean.

14 M.S. Wilson et al.

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greater (at 75%) than expected among religious exclusives, as compared to less than

4% of undifferentiated skeptics. Similar results were obtained for self-identification

as a ‘‘spiritual person,’’ where, once again, 88% of religious exclusives and only 15%

of undifferentiated skeptics did so (compared to expected values of 48% for eachclass). However, 88% of New Age spiritualists self-identified as spiritual (where only

40% had identified as religious). Unsurprisingly, religious exclusives overwhelmingly

(93%) identified as belonging to a particular faith, as compared with less than 9% of

undifferentiated skeptics, 32% of moderate agnostics, 39% of undifferentiated

believers, and 43% of New Age spiritualists.

The data reveal a similar pattern for institutional practices (see Figure 2).

Religious exclusives were more than four times more likely than any other group to

report belonging to a congregation, and there was little congregational affiliationreported among other supernatural belief types. If there are social practices that

sustain non-traditional supernatural commitments, these practices are not perceived

as such. The sources of non-traditional patterns of supernatural commitment*what

appears to be religions without churches and congregations*remains unknown.

Discussion

This study aimed to develop and validate a typology of different patterns oftraditional and less traditional paranormal beliefs and non-beliefs. To do so, we

conducted an LCA of the Paranormal Beliefs Scale in a large and diverse sample of

New Zealanders. Our analysis revealed five distinct classes, which we call faith

signatures. We labeled these five categories religious exclusives, New Age spiritualists,

undifferentiated believers, moderate agnostics, and undifferentiated skeptics. Our

findings clearly indicate that the categories ‘‘secular’’ and ‘‘religious’’ do not capture

the intricacy of supernatural belief orientations in New Zealand, a Western

democracy regarded to be highly secular (Zuckerman, 2005). Our findings areconsistent with studies showing that people may be simultaneously committed to a

range of paranormal and religious beliefs (Pennycook et al., 2012). LCA, in a large

sample, takes this finding further by revealing five categories of supernatural belief

and disbelief.

By comparing religious exclusives (12%) and undifferentiated skeptics (41%), we

found that both groups expressed similarly high levels of disbelief for most types of

paranormal phenomena, with religious exclusives showing belief for traditional

religious beliefs only. Although conventional wisdom pits agnosticism and religiousbelief as opposing categories, we found that undifferentiated believers (9%) and

moderate agnostics (25%) both accorded some belief to supernatural realities across

a broad range of religious and paranormal phenomena, albeit with different levels of

confidence. A fifth supernatural orientation*New Age spiritualists (13%)*reflected

skepticism about superstitions, but otherwise resembled undifferentiated believers.

Faith signatures are important because they challenge the analogy between

supernatural cognition and language. LCA did not reveal any manifestations of

grammar-like patterns, with core similarities across the board, and with onlymarginal variation. Communities tend to speak roughly the same languages. Yet we

observed that faith signatures are connected to distinctive demographic and

psychological differences. For similar reasons, we found the duality between religious

and secular beliefs to be lacking. Although religious affiliation is often assessed by

simply asking people to answer yes or no to the question ‘‘Do you affiliate with a

Religion, Brain & Behavior 15

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Table 3. Gender, paranormal experience, religious/spiritual identification, and congregation attendance across the latent classes.

Religious

exclusives

New Age

spiritualists

Undifferentiated

believers

Moderate

agnostics

Undifferentiated

skeptics x2(4)

% female (51% of sample) 45.2 75.6 72.5 63.1 32.5 522.09*

% paranormal experients (26.3%) 30.8 60.1 41.3 31.6 7.6 753.50*

% ‘‘spiritual person’’ (48.9%) 83.3 87.8 72.9 58.0 15.1 1695.89*

% ‘‘religious person’’ (22.0%) 75.7 25.6 30.3 20.5 4.0 1175.34*

% having a faith (32.2%) 93.5 42.7 39.7 32.4 8.8 1472.84*

% belonging to congregation (15.8%) 70.7 17.6 15.9 11.0 3.7 953.28*

* pB.001

16

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religion and/or denomination?’’ or in other studies, such as the Gallup Polls, ‘‘Is

religion an important part of your daily life’’ (Diener et al., 2011), we found much

more complicated, underlying patterns of belief and doubt. Our results show that the

picture of religious faith and the classification of people as religious and non-

religious are more complex than is captured by the dualism of ‘‘religious’’ and

‘‘secular.’’Diener et al. (2011) reported that 35% of the New Zealand population might be

classified as religious (as compared with 66% of the American population). Their

results are supported by a New Zealand national probability sample undertaken by

Hoverd and Sibley (2010), which used similar items. Our analysis here indicates that

only 12% of participants expressed strong and exclusive traditional religious beliefs.

Another 8.8% expressed similarly strong religious beliefs across an array of other

paranormal phenomena. New Age spiritualists made up a further 13.4% of the

sample; and although they believed in both religious and paranormal phenomena,

they were strongly doubtful of superstitions. Collectively, these three groups sum up

to 34.2% of the participants in our sample; however, notice that there are marked

differences between what members of these groups believe.

The term ‘‘religious’’ simply fails to capture these differences. Classification into

one of these three faith signatures showed considerable overlap with one’s self-

definition as a ‘‘spiritual person’’ (see Table 3). However, self-reports that one had

faith or belonged to a congregation shared the most overlap with the religiousexclusives class (roughly 94% of religious exclusives stated that they had faith, and

70% reported that they belonged to a congregation). These proportions, however,

were much lower for New Age spiritualists and undifferentiated believers, with

around 40% of people in these classes reporting that they had faith, and around 16%

reporting that they belonged to a congregation. Here we can see how the inclusion of

paranormal sub-scales was important for identifying distinct orientations to the

supernatural in this secular country. By including paranormal belief, we can be

confident about the reliability of the religious exclusive class, which was defined by

the fact that its members held strong traditional religious beliefs. However, they also

expressed strong disbelief in all six dimensions indexed by the Paranormal Beliefs

Scale: namely, beliefs about spiritualism, witchcraft, precognition, psi, extraordinary

life forms, and superstition. Accordingly, religious exclusives have a well-cultivated

skepticism for all things paranormal.

The two final faith signatures would appear, at first blush, to represent different

types of non-belief. We labeled these classes ‘‘moderate agnostics’’ (24.9%) and

‘‘undifferentiated skeptics’’ (40.8%). Moderate agnostics were so labeled because theytended to express a moderate level of belief close to the scale midpoint. This may be

taken as an indicator of sitting on the fence about most religious and paranormal

phenomena, with the exception of a low belief in common superstitious practices. On

closer inspection, we can see that, theologically speaking, moderate agnostics do not

resemble undifferentiated skeptics, who reject everything paranormal. Rather,

moderate agnostics appear closer to New Age spiritualists, although with less

confidence. Demographically, moderate agnostics were similar to undifferentiated

believers (younger, less educated, less happy, and higher in anomie). Finally,

undifferentiated skeptics, the largest single category in our sample, expressed the

greatest disbelief in all seven sub-scales of religious/paranormal belief. They are the

category most closely resembling ‘‘secular.’’ Although they are the ‘‘majority’’

category, undifferentiated skeptics are in an overall minority (40.8%). Six out of

Religion, Brain & Behavior 17

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every 10 people in this sample accorded at least some level of belief in the

supernatural. A majority of New Zealanders, it seems, believes that there is more to

our reality than meets the eye.

Researchers of secularization variously attribute declines in religious faith to

scientific rationality (Berger, 1990; Weber, 1924/1947), attitudes of purposelessness,

up-rootedness and anomie (Taylor, 2007), a loss of religious market competition(Finke & Stark, 1992; Iannaccone & Stark, 1994), and an overall reduction of

existential threats (Norris & Inglehart, 2004; Zuckerman, 2005). We derived our

latent class model by applying it to levels of belief and disbelief in seven core

dimensions of religious and paranormal phenomena, which had been identified in

previous research. However, LCA simply did not divide our sample into religious

believers and doubters, nor did it divide supernatural believers into religious

traditionalists and paranormal radicals. Here is the problem: Although the category

of ‘‘belief’’ has dominated both the psychology of religion and paranormal

psychology, our findings suggest that supernatural orientations are defined by

discrimination in beliefs and disbeliefs across a spectrum of options. Faith signatures

reveal that questions about the causes of religious decline, in some generic sense, are

poorly formulated.

Consider the implication that religious exclusives and undifferentiated skeptics

appear to be theological opposites*and they are when it comes to traditional

religious faith. However, they also appear remarkably similar when it comes to thefull spectrum of paranormal beliefs. Both religious exclusives and undifferentiated

skeptics share a vigorous atheism across most supernatural domains. Whereas

undifferentiated skeptics express doubt in god(s), religious exclusives permit belief in

one God and are atheists about all others. Relatedly, the categories of New Age

spiritualists and agnostics, which hold opposing beliefs as common sense would

suggest, appear on closer inspection to have remarkably similar faith signatures. Both

types allow some belief for most paranormal realities except superstitions.

Recall that to validate our latent class model, we assessed the extent to which

the five faith signatures differed across demographics (gender, age, income, and

education) and predicted differences in anomie, trust, and happiness, three outcomes

on which religious and non-religious people are often compared. We reasoned that if

our profiles represent a useful classification system beyond simply classifying people

as religious or non-religious, then there should be distinct differences across classes in

anomie, trust, and happiness. These differences should go beyond those that are

apparent when simply comparing the three classes that show a high level of

traditional religious belief (religious exclusives, New Age spiritualists, and undiffer-entiated believers) and the two classes that show low levels in traditional religious

belief (moderate agnostics and undifferentiated skeptics).

Did faith signatures predict meaningful differences? Yes. There were reliable age

differences across the classes, with undifferentiated believers and moderate agnostics

as the youngest on average. Moreover, religious exclusives and undifferentiated

skeptics were also demographically similar. Indeed, religious exclusives were closer to

undifferentiated skeptics in age, level of education and income than they were with

undifferentiated believers. Both religious exclusives and undifferentiated skeptics*the most rejecting of the faith signature typologies*were older, more educated, and

wealthier than both undifferentiated believers and moderate agnostics. This finding

is important because it shows that there are reliable demographic differences

associated with such discriminating faith signatures.

18 M.S. Wilson et al.

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Recall that the secularization thesis holds to the view that people are losing

religion. When we classify people as either religious or secular, we find that religious

people tend to be older*an effect that holds in New Zealand (Hoverd & Sibley,

2010) and around the world in general (Emmons & Sobal, 1981; Heintz & Baruss,

2001; Inglehart, 1990; Putnam & Campbell, 2012). The younger age of undiffer-

entiated believers is particularly interesting, because it suggests that there may be a

cohort effect in which religious people from younger generations, on average, show amore inclusive set of religious and paranormal beliefs. It appears that younger people

are more open across a range of supernatural beliefs and that older people are more

discriminating in their beliefs and disbeliefs. This observation might reflect a

developmental process according to which everyone is more prone to start out by

believing in a large array of paranormal phenomena. However, such beliefs are then

selectively dropped as people age and thereby become more exclusive in their

disbeliefs (Bulbulia, 2004, p. 33), leading to increased differentiation in their beliefs.

Conversely, it is possible that demographic changes are occurring in New

Zealand’s religious landscape, as beliefs are becoming more varied, and as people are

increasingly open to a wide range of paranormal beliefs. This alternative predicts a

gradual shift to undifferentiated belief in the population, as younger members of this

category grow older. The etiology and developmental trajectories of the faith

signatures that we observed remain open research questions for which future studies

are needed. However, our typology of faith signatures strongly challenges any simple

picture, according to which populations are shifting from religious to secular, forsuch a picture misses the patterns of belief and disbelief that LCA identifies.

We also observed differences in our three general indicators of subjective

well-being (anomie, trust, and happiness) across the five faith signatures. As with

demographic differences, our results indicated reliable variation across the three

classes that exhibited traditional religious belief. Undifferentiated believers showed

the most negative psychological outcomes, with the lowest levels of trust and

happiness, as well as the highest levels of anomie. Findings that religious people

tend to be happier (Reed, 1991) might be driven by religious exclusives and New

Age spiritualists, who were indeed happier than everyone else. Yet notice that

undifferentiated believers show the exact opposite: this group expressed high levels of

belief across a spectrum of supernatural items. However, categorization in

undifferentiated believers predicted the lowest levels of happiness, with even lower

levels of happiness than moderate agnostics and undifferentiated skeptics.

It is interesting to consider why these signatures of religious belief and disbelief

predict happiness. Undifferentiated believers were non-discriminant in their beliefs.It is possible that disbelieving in some class of supernatural entities is important

to happiness, and that, by failing to disbelieve, happiness becomes more difficult.

A related possibility is that because undifferentiated believers hold traditional

religious beliefs along with paranormal beliefs, they experience social isolation

associated with their openness to alternative forms of supernatural belief. It has been

suggested that belief is a marker of religious group membership (Irons, 2008). It

might turn out that one signal of traditional religious group membership is that one

should be committed to exclusive belief, which implies skepticism about paranormal

phenomena and alternative religious teachings (Lanman, 2012). Undifferentiated

believers who do not signal committed membership to a set of religious teachings

might reap the social capital benefits of religious membership. This is a matter for

future research.

Religion, Brain & Behavior 19

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That religious exclusives showed high levels of trust and low levels of anomie

is perhaps not surprising. However, undifferentiated skeptics showed a similar

pattern. Indeed, of all the faith signatures, religious exclusives and undifferentiated

skeptics exhibited the lowest levels of anomie and the highest levels of trust. This

suggests that it might not be traditional religious beliefs or exclusive traditional

religious beliefs per se that predict increased social capital and well-being. Rather,

our results suggest that a more likely candidate is the discriminability in what one

believes and does not believe. Despite our suggesting this hypothesis, our data

cannot directly test it. However, this hypothesis is consistent with the findings of

Ross (1990), who showed that people with weak religious faith exhibit greater

overall anxiety when compared with people who have strong religious faith, but

that the lowest levels of anxiety are found among those who lack religious faith

entirely (for similar findings, see Greeley & Hout, 2006). Our results mirror this

effect.

Additional support for the discriminability hypothesis comes from longitudinal

research on changes in religion and well-being following the Christchurch earth-

quakes in New Zealand, which killed 185 people and destroyed more than a third of

buildings in New Zealand’s third-largest city. Sibley and Bulbulia (2012a) examined

change in religious belief before and after the earthquakes in a large independent

national sample. They found that religious people who lived through the

Christchurch earthquake and who subsequently lost their faith (i.e., became non-

religious) showed a significant decline in post-earthquake levels of reported health.

Yet both religious and non-religious people who lived through the Christchurch

earthquake, or who had found faith, showed no change in their ratings of satisfaction

with their health. Sibley and Bulbulia (2012a) conjectured that the loss of health

might have been related to increased epistemic uncertainty. More generally, it might

turn out that strong disbelief, for at least some supernatural phenomena, is

important for health and happiness, because discrimination forges stronger commu-

nities or because doubting something is intrinsic to human well-being.

Conclusion

Sociologists of religion have documented declines in religious adherence across most

industrialized countries, a trend that Max Weber (1917, p. 155) famously charac-

terized as ‘‘the disenchantment of the world.’’ Despite the change in patterns of

church affiliation, which predicts the demise of religion in many countries (including

New Zealand; see Abrams, Yaple, & Wiener, 2011), we find that supernatural

thinking abides. We used LCA to derive a statistically reliable typology of religious

and paranormal beliefs in a large and diverse sample of New Zealanders. Our

analysis revealed five distinct belief types, which we call faith signatures: religious

exclusives; New Age spiritualists; undifferentiated believers; moderate agnostics; and

undifferentiated skeptics. The size and diversity of our sample, the statistical

robustness of LCA, and the validation of our findings*with clear demographic

and psychological outcomes*suggest that the five faith signatures reflect genuine

differences in supernatural belief. The upshot: disbelieving in something or everything

predicts social belonging and trust, while faith in something but not everything

predicts happiness. Advice: know what you believe and aim for discrimination.

20 M.S. Wilson et al.

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Acknowledgements

This paper was conceived and the majority of the research conducted while Marc Wilson andChris Sibley were on sabbatical at Harvard University. We are grateful to the Canadian SocialSciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and Victoria University URF Grant #8-3046-108855 for supporting Joseph Bulbulia and Chris Sibley. We are grateful to RichardSosis, Lara Greaves, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments.

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