Does experience of the 'occult' predict use of complementary medicine? Experience of, and beliefs about, both complementary medicine and ways of telling the future

This study looked at the relationship between ratings of the perceived effe ctiveness of 24 methods for telling the future, 39 complementary therapies (CM) and 12 specific attitude statements about science and medicine. A tota l of 159 participants took part. The results showed that the participants w ere deeply sceptical of the effectiveness of the methods for telling the fu ture which factored into meaningful and interpretable factors. Participants were much more positive about particular, but not all, specialties of comp lementary medicine (CM). These also factored into a meaningful factor struc ture. Finally, the 12 attitude to science/medicine statements revealed four factors: scepticism of medicine; the importance of psychological factors; patient protection; and the importance of scientific evaluation. Regression al analysis showed that belief in the total effectiveness of different ways of predicting the future was best predicted by beliefs in the effectivenes s of the CM therapies. Although interest in the occult was associated with interest in CM, participants were able to distinguish between the two, and displayed scepticism about the effectiveness of methods of predicting the f uture and some CM therapies. (C) 2000 Harcourt Publishers Ltd.