Friday, October 5, 2007

ESP in the USA

I was curious; is there reliable data showing how prevalient belief in ESP in the USA? Judging by new TV shows, I thought that it must be rampant. Here is what I found:

- Poll (2002): 57% Americans believe in paranormal phenomena like ESP [1]
- Poll (2005): "About three in four Americans profess at least one paranormal belief, according to a recent Gallup survey" [2].
- Article (1997?): New Poll Points to Increase in Paranormal Belief [3]

Most articles quote and compare two Gallop polls (1976 and 1986) but unfortunately I cannot get access to the actual poll numbers. USA Today and CBS seem to also have done some inquiry and then, of course, all the other non-scientific sources one can find as links to MySpace quizzes and so on. I am surprised that this data is not readily available online! I may have to investigate this phenomena myself.

-Safari Bob


References
[1] http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/04/29/opinion/polls/main507515.shtml
[2] http://home.sandiego.edu/~baber/logic/gallup.html
[3] http://www.csicop.org/articles/poll/

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