How important are people's paranormal beliefs to them?
When you ask the question, "do you believe in the paranormal?" and you give a range of different examples and people say yes, no, don't know, then one of the things that that's masking is that people's paranormal beliefs can differ in terms of for some people, they are absolutely central. It's the most, one of the most aspects of their lives, they live their lives in terms of their paranormal beliefs, they maybe would never make an important decision without consulting their psychic or their astrologer or they believe that they've got some special gift, maybe they themselves actually make a living from their belief in the paranormal. So on the one hand you've got those people. You've got other people who have maybe had the occasional experience that they think probably was paranormal, and you get others who might never have had a direct personal experience like that, but they've read books, they've seen documentaries, they've read newspapers, and on that basis they think the evidence does support the idea that paranormal forces are real. It would be much easier to convince someone in the latter category that maybe they're wrong, maybe paranormal forces don't exist, than someone for whom that belief is a central and important part of their lives, because basically you're saying well you know, you have, you've based your whole life on something that isn't true, and people therefore will get very emotional and you do find that this is one of those areas, like religion and like politics, where people have a very strong emotion investment often and will kind of get very very angry if you actually suggest that maybe paranormal forces don't exist. The short answer to your question is that people differ with respect to how important those paranormal beliefs are in their lives, and for a lot of people they're not that central, but for a sizable minority, they are.
