Using The Paranormal to Engage Critical Thinking

This presentation discusses paranormal events and beliefs in terms of critical analysis and thinking in a way that may provide educators with additional tools to engage student critical thinking in a variety of environments, with an emphasis on the social sciences. Learning objectives include an understanding of historical context, confirmation bias, illusory correlations, hindsight bias, and the availability heuristic, by understanding these concepts in terms of mediumship, telepathy, psychometry, clairvoyance, precognition and retrocognition.

The popularity of such television shows as Ghost Adventures With Zak Bagans, Eli Roth Presents: A Ghost Ruined My life, Conjuring Kesha, Fright Club with Jack Osbourne and the Ghost Brothers and Ghost Hunters With Jason Hawes (which averaged about three million viewers per episode at its peak) suggests that many people in the U.S. connect and have an interest in paranormal events. A 2005 Gallup poll suggests the following percentages of Americans who believe in:

• Extrasensory perception, or ESP 41%
• That houses can be haunted 37%
• Ghosts/that spirits of dead people can come back in certain places/situations 32%
• Telepathy/communication between minds without using traditional senses 31%
• Clairvoyance/the power of the mind to know the past and predict the future 26%
• Astrology, or that the position of the stars and planets can affect people's lives 25%
• That people can communicate mentally with someone who has died 21%

Our presentation will use lecture, audio/video and discussion to explore the possibility of using these avenues of interest as a method to connect students to scientific tools of appraisal, while maintaining a respect for individual belief and the understanding that there may someday be ways of scientifically approaching aspects of nature that we do not yet comprehend.

Presenters: Dr. Greg Shealy (History) and Tyler Hudson (Psychology), Social Science

Room T-204B

Session 1