Paranormal beliefs of psychology students

The present study investigated individual differences in beliefs in the paranormal phenomena. Paranormal belief has been investigated by the researchers with high school and college students in various countries, USA, Finland, Latvia and South Africa. Such studies explored regarding its connection with magical thinking, sexual differences, fantasy proneness and narcissism. Turkish version of the PBS was translated by Sen and Yesilyurt (2014) with college students enrolled in several departments. A Turkish version of the Paranormal Belief Scale (PBS) was implemented to 235 Turkish Psychology Students at a university in Turkey. Statistical analysis of the study was carried out by SPSS 24. Participants were undergraduate psychology students enrolled at a mid-size university in central Anatolia. Most of the students defined themselves as believers in some sort of higher power. The main purpose of the study was to uncover important aspects of paranormal activities related to gender and academic levels. In addition, factor analysis was conducted in order to find if any dimensions exist. Results of the study indicated some differences among the students regarding gender and year in college. Beliefs in paranormal activity among academic levels showed that there was no evidence for a relationship with them. However, surprisingly, six subscales of the PBS emerged instead of eight as expected based on the findings.