RESEARCH ARTICLE
Gender Differences in Sensation Seeking and Paranormal/Anomalous Experiences
Alejandro Parra*
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2015Volume: 8
First Page: 54
Last Page: 58
Publisher ID: TOPSYJ-8-54
DOI: 10.2174/1874350101508010054
Article History:
Received Date: 27/12/2014Revision Received Date: 18/02/2015
Acceptance Date: 18/02/2015
Electronic publication date: 31/3/2015
Collection year: 2015
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Sensation seeking is the tendency to pursue sensory pleasure and excitement. A body of research indicates that sensation seeking may contribute to paranormal/anomalous experiences. Examination of relations between sensations seeking and paranormal beliefs has resulted in a limited body of research. This paper hypothesizes that both – sensation seeking and paranormal/anomalous experiences – will be significantly and positively correlated. Two samples of 446 females and 162 males (Mage = 8.60, SD = 4.65) filled two questionnaires, Sensation Seeking Scale and a 10-item self-report inventory designed to collect information on spontaneous paranormal/anomalous experiences. An index of experiences (Index) was constructed to correlate with the sensations seeking. More than half have experienced different types of paranormal/ anomalous experiences, mainly telepathy and déjà-vu. The main hypothesis was supported for both, males (p = .002, one-tailed) and females (p < .001). Factor analysis showed that women tended to score higher than men, explaining the 6.5% of the variance. These findings also suggest that sensation seeking may have some utility in predicting subjects' psi performance.