A TECHNICAL NOTE - THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PARANORMAL BELIEF AND SOME VARIABLES RELEVANT TO TYPE-A BEHAVIOR PATTERN

A series of five studies was conducted (N = 246) in order to examine t he hypothesis that disbelievers in psychic phenomena (''goats'') are m ore likely than ''sheep'' to display certain characteristics of the Ty pe A Behavior Pattern-in particular, hurried impatience, and a tendenc y to harbor suspicions. In all five studies the 13-item Australian She ep-Goat Scale was administered as a measure of belief in paranormal ph enomena. In Study 1, the Jenkins Activity Survey (Student form) was us ed to measure hurried impatience, but goats did not score significantl y higher than sheep on it. In Studies 2 through 5, Factor L was taken from the Cattell Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire as a measure of the tendency to harbor suspicions: in Study 2, there was a suggest ion that goats might be more suspicious than sheep, but over the remai ning three studies the size of the correlation progressively declined and then reversed in sign, giving a combined result for the four studi es of r = .01 (N = 187). It was thus concluded that, within the sample s surveyed, no support was obtained for the original hypothesis.