Browsing by Subject "taikauskoisuus"

Objective: Previous experimental and cross-sectional studies have found that paranormal thinking increases under stressful situations and is associated with retrospectively reported early and recent stress-prone life events. It has been suggested that paranormal thinking might act as a means to increase one’s sense of controllability and understandability of life events when being under burden. To date, no study has investigated the associations between exhaustion and paranormal thinking. Therefore, the present study aimed to 1) examine the cross-sectional associations between exhaustion and paranormal thinking, 2) examine whether exhaustion predicts the development of paranormal thinking over an 11-year follow-up, and 3) investigate whether different developmental trajectories of exhaustion are differently associated with paranormal thinking. Methods: The participants (n = 906–2092) came from The Young Finns Study, which is a Finnish population-based on-going follow-up study consisting of six age cohorts (born between 1962 and 1977). Paranormal thinking was assessed in 2001 and 2012 with The Spiritual Acceptance vs. Rational Materialism questionnaire. Exhaustion was assessed in 2001, 2007 and 2012 with The Maastricht Vital Exhaustion questionnaire. The participants were 24-50-year-olds during the measurement years. The cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between exhaustion and paranormal thinking were examined using linear regression analyses. The analyses were adjusted for participants’ gender and age, and participants’ and their parents’ socioeconomic status. The associations of different developmental trajectories of vital exhaustion (i.e., consistently high, consistently low, increasing, or decreasing exhaustion over the 11-year follow-up) with paranormal thinking were examined using analyses of variance. Results and conclusion: The results of this study showed that high exhaustion was cross-sectionally associated with higher levels of paranormal thinking. Further, high vital exhaustion predicted higher development of paranormal thinking over the 11-year follow-up. Additionally, participants with consistently high exhaustion over the 11-year follow-up had higher levels of paranormal thinking, when compared to those without exhaustion or those with increasing levels of exhaustion over the 11-year follow-up. The findings provide novel evidence on the associations between exhaustion and paranormal thinking that had not been investigated before. Future research could examine whether paranormal thinking could act as a psychological coping strategy among exhausted individuals.