ON PARANORMALITY 大迷信

Superstition stems from fear; and fear stems from uncertainty. That’s why so many people are naturally interested in fortune-telling, out-of-body experiences, talking with the dead, ghost-hunting etc. Do you believe in these? Richard Wiseman, a psychology professor, tries to explain these phenomena with various psychological theories in his new book “Paranormality”. When I studied social psychology in the university, my professor once mentioned a tiny experiment on astrology: participants told the fortune teller their dates of birth, and are then offered personality analyses based on the information provided. In the end, all of them deem the analysis accurate, while actually all of the analyses they have got are the same. Fortune telling is nothing more than a psychological phenomenon.

迷信，源於恐懼；恐懼，源於未知。迷信是人類與生俱來的習性，是以許多人都為占卜、靈魂出竅、通靈、捉鬼等不可思議的謎團感到趣味盎然。你相信這些東西嗎？暢銷書作家兼心理學教授Richard Wiseman可不以為然。在其新書《Paranormality》中，他就嘗試用各種心理學學說，解釋一般人為何相信這些不實質存在的幻象。還記得當年在大學唸社會心理學，教授就跟我們提過一個關於占卜的小實驗：參加者先向占卜師報上自己的生日日期，後就各自接獲一張詳細的性格分析—他們都認為分析十分準確。殊不知，原來所有參加者所收到的分析是，一．模．一．樣．的。