Religiosity, Paranormal Beliefs, and Psychopathological Symptoms in Two Ethnic Samples

Abstract

This study was carried out to determine the influence of religiosity and paranormal beliefs on the development of psychopathological symptoms among groups of people from two different ethnic origin. A survey research was adopted using a purposive sampling method to draw the sample from Igbo and Yoruba ethnic groups. The sample consisted of two hundred and four respondents with the age range of 14 and 65 years. 101 were females and 103 were males; 6 traditional, 66 Islamic and 132 Christian religious adherents. 98 Igbo and 106 Yoruba all with minimum educational qualification of Junior Secondary School Certificate responded to Religious Affiliation Scale (Omoluabi, 1995) Revised Paranormal Belief Scale (Tobacyk, 1988) and General Health Questionnaire (Goldberg, 1978). Analysis of Variance, Independent t-test, and Multiple Regression were used to analyse the data and results indicated that paranormal beliefs significantly influenced only anxiety dimension of psychopathology but do not influence other dimension. No significant effect of religiosity was discovered on any dimension of psychopathology. There was a significant difference between Igbo and Yoruba on Paranormal Beliefs, depression and anxiety dimensions of psychopathology but no significant difference was discovered on religiosity. It was concluded that paranormal beliefs partially influence psychopathology but religious beliefs do not have any influence on psychopathology in this study.