Implications of Psychology

Introduction

It seems slightly out-of-place to have too many posts on this blog about Psychology, since this blog is primarily concerned with the Paranormal. However, like with anything else, there is a great deal of Psychology involved and at work in all, if not most aspects regarding the Paranormal. This post is concerned with listing all the implications there are for psychological phenomena with regard to the Paranormal, and, as ever, it will be added to over time.

Eyewitness testimony

Reliability of one's memory

How reliable is one's memory? The answer is that it isn't at all. The human mind remembers some details of events, etc., but it cannot remember all of them. So how can anyone be sure that the memory of eyewitnesses of unexplainable events are remembering all of the details of their experience? They will remember the most important, or uncanny features, but not necessarily everything about what they saw. 

LESSON ONE: The eyewitness's version of what they saw isn't entirely complete. It may lack some details which the eyewitness failed to remember. However, it shouldn't matter too much, because the eyewitness should remember most of the details, or the majority of the ones that made the experience distinct and unusual. 

Selective memory

Can people be sure that they are remembering all the details of a particular event or experience? As was seen in the previous section, the answer is no. Yet another reason why one's memory is not necessarily complete is due to something called 'selective memory'. Here, a person selectively forgets particular details of something which they may, even unconsciously, choose to forget. For example, if Person A had an experience where they'd thought they'd seen a ghost, but later they discovered that they had misperceived the ghost and that the "ghost" was actually an object that they'd seen, which had appeared as something dark, seen in poor lighting, perhaps mixed with short-sightedness on their part. But what if Person A still believed that it had actually been a real "ghost", despite the revelation of it being merely misperception and, after the incident, they relayed to their friends about it. So in this scenario, Person A would describe what the ghost looked like, but because they believed that it was an actual ghost, they forgot the last details where they'd discovered what the "ghost" actually was. This is an example of selective memory.

Cognitive dissonance

So again using the example involving Person A, it can be illustrated how cognitive dissonance will work. If Person A believes it was a ghost, then they will remember all the details that confirm their belief and they will forget the details that do not confirm it. (See also: Cognitive dissonance) 

Social influence

Social conformity

Informative social conformity

As has already been said elsewhere, informative social conformity plays a major role in environments such as mediumship circles. If a person is told that they have a Native American as a spirit guide and they believe that what the other people who told them were correct in saying that, they will be influenced by this piece of evidence and, consequently, they will find evidence for this assumption - i.e. they will come across, at some point, a spirit guide who is a Native American in their meditations. Yet if they hadn't of taken on board this information, they are less likely to find a spirit guide as being a Native American. (See also: Informative social conformity)

Suggestion

Say Person B is a highly spiritual person and that, one day, they are told that they have a spirit guide who is a Tibetan monk. Because they believe in the possibility of spirit guides, they will be open to this suggestion. Thus, the suggestion given to them of them having a spirit guide who is a Tibetan monk again influences, in the same way as above, their subsequent meditations (where they visit their spirit guides).  Again, because they had been given the suggestion that they have a Tibetan monk as a spirit guide, they are more likely going to come across a spirit guide of theirs who is (or seems to be) a Tibetan monk. 

Individual's psychology

Belief

If a person believes in a particular thing, such as angels, they will come across instances or 'coincidences' in which they had found or "been given" some sort of 'evidence' which is personal proof for them for their particular belief. So if Person C's young child died recently, but she believed that they were being cared for by angels, if she happened to be thinking of her child and at that moment comes across a white feather nearby (or landing from the sky), she will perceive that as "evidence" or "proof" that her child IS being looked after by angels.

Cold reading

This is a technique employed in mediumistic, psychic, auric, psychometric and astrological readings. A cold reading is a reading or description of someone which consists of information that is vague, ambiguous and general. Through other processes, including belief, the information given (cold reading) in psychometric readings, for example, is perceived as evidence for the person's (the client's) belief that the person does really have psychic abilities and that it is possible to use these to discover information about themselves through psychometry or other practices. (See also: cold reading)

To be continued...