Cognitive Styles and Psi: Psi Researchers Are More Similar to Skeptics Than to Lay Believers

Here's a common assumption: people who study psychic phenomena must be fuzzy thinkers who've abandoned scientific rigor. This study from the University of Virginia's Division of Perceptual Studies puts that idea to the test — and the results are striking. Researchers surveyed four groups: academic psi researchers, everyday psi believers, academic skeptics, and everyday skeptics. They measured two key thinking traits: 'actively open-minded thinking' (basically, how willing you are to consider new evidence and change your mind) and 'need for closure' (how much you crave definitive, black-and-white answers). The headline finding? Psi researchers scored identically to academic skeptics on open-minded thinking — both groups landed at 4.5 out of 5. They were statistically indistinguishable. Lay believers, on the other hand, scored noticeably lower. On need for closure, all four groups were basically the same. This directly challenges what's called the 'cognitive deficit hypothesis' — the idea that believing in psi signals sloppy reasoning. The researchers who actually study these phenomena think just as critically and open-mindedly as the people who dismiss them. One particularly neat wrinkle: the relationship between open-mindedness and skepticism only showed up among skeptics themselves. Among psi researchers, being open-minded had zero connection to what they believed. This was the first study to directly compare these groups, funded by the Bial Foundation and using a validated scale for measuring psi beliefs and experiences.