Natural Wonders Make Us Believe in Ghosts, Demons, and God

No wonder some people say the Grand Canyon is haunted: Seeing majestic waterfalls, canyons, and other awe-inspiring natural sights at least temporarily increases people’s belief in supernatural beings such as ghosts, demons, and angels, according to a new study by researchers at Claremont McKenna College.

In a series of five short experiments, volunteers were asked to watch short videos. One group watched scenes from the BBC series Planet Earth, “composed primarily of grand, sweeping shots of plains, mountains, space, and canyons,” another group watched comedic nature clips from BBC’s Walk on the Wild Side, and a third group watched a 1959 news interview by Mike Wallace. People who watched the Planet Earth clip reported feeling more awe than the other two groups and were also more likely to say afterward that they believed in God, curses, ghosts, miracles, demons, and angels. People who watched the other two clips, on average, were much less likely to believe in those things.

Piercarlo Valdesolo, lead author of the report, published in the journal Psychological Science, said people’s tendency to believe in the supernatural stems from the uncertainty associated with viewing majestic images.

“When you feel uncertain, you start to want to try to explain the world around you. When we’re in the presence of something big and powerful, we try to explain it by believing in these powers,” he said.

On average, people were more likely to believe in “negative” supernatural entities such as curses and demons, perhaps because the feeling of awe can often be “uncomfortable and threatening,” Valdesolo said.

Besides being an interesting study, Valdesolo says that this and future work can help researchers understand the pull of religion and certain acts associated with it, and the feeling of “awe” in general, which can be a difficult emotion to nail down. In this study, participants were asked to rank their feeling of “awe” on a scale from 1-10 after viewing the video, but Valdesolo says that his and previous studies have found that the emotion is one of the more complex ones.

“It’s a complicated emotion because there’s a lot going on, but there’s always a feeling of uncertainty and a feeling of submission and powerlessness,” Valdesolo said. “Beyond that, there’s some variability. It feels different to different people.”

That feeling of “submission” is important when it comes to religion and may be important when it comes to belief during certain rituals. A follow-up study is being planned to measure the feeling of awe during prayer and while performing other religious acts.

“We’re seeing how different body postures associated with religious rituals might make us more prone to experience awe. That feeling of being small and submissive, next to something powerful,” he said. “We’re seeing if putting people in postures like kneeling or being hunched over makes them more likely to experience awe and believe in the supernatural.”