The psychology of belief in discarnate communication

Interest in paranormal belief escalated in the 1980s, with novel associations discovered between paranormal belief and cognitive function (eg. Tobacyk, 1984; Wierzbicki, 1985). Greater emphasis was also placed on the formalizing of belief measuring instruments, and over the last 30 years the most popular questionnaires assessing paranormal belief have been the Anomalous Experiences Inventory, the Australian Sheep-Goat Scale, the Magical Ideation Scale and the Paranormal Belief Scale (Lindeman & Svendholm 2012). Moreover, these instruments frequently incorporate items covering an expanded array of anomalistic topics beyond just ESP belief – content traditionally associated with the sheep-goat concept (Thalbourne & Haraldsson, 1980). One such item array pertains to the legitimacy of contact/communication with spirits of the dead and the veracity of life after death, both being direct expressions of belief in discarnate communication (or mediumship). However, these mediumship-related items have generally been subsumed into a broader belief factor labeled traditional paranormal belief (Lange & Thalbourne, 2002), which to a certain extent has diminished the impact of mediumship as an independent construct worthy of consideration. With this in mind, the object of this essay is to explore belief in mediumship as a distinct concept, rather than as simply another manifestation of traditional paranormal belief. The essay will concentrate on defining the different manifestations of belief in mediumship with an attempt to clarify what is known about the potential origins of such belief, culminating in a model of mediumship belief that might be applicable to future research directions