Conceptions about the mind-body problem and their relations to afterlife beliefs,paranormal beliefs,religiosity, and ontological confusions

We examined lay people’s conceptions about the relationship between mind and bodyand their correlates. In Study 1, a web survey (N = 850) ofreflective dualistic, emergentistic, and monistic perceptions of the mind-bodyrelationship, afterlife beliefs (i.e., common sense dualism), religiosity,paranormal beliefs, and ontological confusions about physical, biological, andpsychological phenomena was conducted. In Study 2 (N = 73), weexamined implicit ontological confusions and their relations to afterlifebeliefs, paranormal beliefs, and religiosity. Correlation and regressionanalyses showed that reflective dualism, afterlife beliefs, paranormal beliefs,and religiosity were strongly and positively related and that reflective dualismand afterlife beliefs mediated the relationship between ontological confusionsand religious and paranormal beliefs. The results elucidate the contention thatdualism is a manifestation of universal cognitive processes related tointuitions about physical, biological, and psychological phenomena by showingthat especially individuals who confuse the distinctive attributes of thesephenomena tend to set the mind apart from the body.