ABSTRACT
The person may decide that the probability of the event occurring by chance was sufficiently high as to require no further explanation, or that the event was so improbable that it could only be explained by paranormal forces of some kind. Most people in the study tended to underestimate the chance of a shared birthday in such a group, but those who were paranormal believers thought that the chances were far lower, in fact almost zero. One further mechanism that may make it more likely that a person will hang on to a paranormal belief even in the face of contradictory evidence is what psychologists call “confirmation bias”. People who believe in the paranormal have been found to be more prone to indulging in fantasy than the average person. A lack of analytical thinking may reduce a person’s ability to critically examine the evidence for paranormal phenomena.
