Women more likely than men to believe in the spiritual and supernatural - why?

Great Debates
1

http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=359

(Although it is an “internet poll” by method, it looks fairly accurate and reliable. They adjust for the fact that some people have a greater propensity to be online, and they chose a cross-section of adults to poll. Having made the adjustment for online-propensity, I see no reason why it would be any less reliable than a phone poll, it was simply conducted through a different technology. That out of the way…)

They took eleven supernatural/spiritual beliefs, and asked very simply for each one, “Do you believe in ______?” The beliefs asked about include some traditional Christian beliefs, some general religious beliefs, and a few “new age” sort of beliefs. Here’s the whole list: God, survival of the soul after death, miracles, heaven, the resurrection of Christ, the Virgin birth, hell, the devil, ghosts, astrology, reincarnation.

Women had a higher rate of belief for every category by at least 7%. The highest female vs. male gaps are on the belief in ghosts (58 to 43), heaven (89 to 75), and miracles (90 to 77). Why do you suppose this might be?

At first I thought it may be connected to education level. All of those beliefs seem to drop off (some by quite a bit, some by only a little) as education level increases. The gap in higher education between men and women has all but disappeared, but it might still be indicated by lower education levels in the older female population. Yet blacks show no such consistent preference for spiritual/supernatural beliefs, and their access to higher education was limited far more severely than that of women, and unlike women, blacks continue today to attend higher education in fewer numbers (proportionally) than whites do. So if education level was the underlying reason, we would expect all historically disadvantaged groups to show the same tendency, which is not evidenced here.

I am therefore tempted to conclude that women are simply more likely than men to hold beliefs in religious, spiritual, and supernatural subjects. If this is so, the obvious question is: why?

Other fun facts from the poll…
Republicans more likely than Democrats to hold traditional religious beliefs (with a wide discrepancy on the nastier aspects of religion, such as hell.)
Democrats more likely than Republicans to believe in ghosts, astrology, and reincarnation.
A shocking 4% of self-identified Christians do not believe in the resurrection of Christ, and 1% do not believe in god!
Only 1% of those who said they believe in the survival of the soul after death thought their soul was heading to hell.

2

They should have added homeopathy to that list.

(Which, incidentally, also seems to be more popular with women than with men, from what I can tell.)

3

Women have traditionally had less of an affinity for logic and rationality than men.

While most of that belief was merely prejudice, its effects may have lingered. I suspect that, just as women are more likely to view mathematics as something they’re simply “not good at” (despite women showing an increasing presence in mathematics), they may consider rational thinking to be unwomanlike.

I really have no idea. It’s an excellent question.

4

I’ll add my .02, that’s about all it’s worth.

Women (I am generalizing) seem to be intuitive. Whether about their husbands, boyfrieds, children whatever. I personally had an outstanding recond of predicting the appearance of the highway patrol, always in time for the driver to slow down, and once I was able to alert a driver that a deer was going to jump from the woods into the road ahead, before anyone saw anything. My SO always asks for my gut feelings before hiring any employee, and my character judgement has been correct 10/10. This, I believe, is the reason more women than men believe in the “supernatural”. There have been too many incidences where intuition proved right. Therefore it is not a vast leap of faith to believe in otherworldly things.

5

For any observable difference between the sexes, Carol Gilligan probably has a theory to explain it.

6

I think it probably has something to do with the way women are socialized. Girls are usually taught early in childhood that it is impolite to question or criticize others’ beliefs, while boys can argue openly without any negative reaction from their peers or parents.

The consequences extend to other areas as well: I have a hard time getting my female students to make any comments on their peers’ papers that might be perceived as criticism, even when doing so would clearly benefit the author of the paper.

7

No doubt you men will want a detailed response with facts and cites and a logical argument. Something about our historical role as social nesters versus hunters, or perhaps our tendency to be right-brain dominant. The biochemistry of motherhood could be discussed, along with implications of being hard-wired to handle pregnancy. Or simply the acts of mothering, the use of myths and legends required to nurture children. Perhaps our traditional role as healers could come into play - consider the placebo effect.

But I’ll give you the quick response. Women are more intuitive and spiritual and belief-oriented because we’re just plain smarter ;).

8

Urge to smite… rising… rising…

9

Since this is GD, somebody’s going to come along and ask for a cite. To save them the trouble, I found a metastudy here that speaks both for your claim and its negation, inasmuch as it distinguishes among several types of intelligence.

10

Shoot, here’s your evidence right here - who’s gonna respond to an annoying post by popping themselves upside the head? Not a woman, I’ll tell you that!

:wink: :smiley:

11

Thank you, amore ac studio. That was fascinating.

12

Well, at least we know now that fessie isn’t female…

13

Sorry in advance for the continued hijack, Rex, but it’s really a response to your phrase

which strikes me as hilarious. By the nature of your question you’ve already decided that spiritual and supernatural (and I’ll add intuitive, since that’s been thrown into the mix already) knowledge is always inherently inferior to logic. Pffft!

There’s a subtext I see frequently at SDMB that assumes once we’ve got everything figured out logically & everyone’s on board, then the human race will be improved. Hogwash. Not that I’d like to go back to the Dark Ages, but there’s far more to being human than factual, linear thinking. It seems that a majority of you don’t believe in God(s), but you sure as Hell believe in technology.

[/hijack]

14

That’s some hard-core hijacking I wouldn’t touch with a 10 foot pole.

I read a tv guide article (it’s gotta be true!) about The Dead Zone and its growing popularity. The producers commented that the fan base was predominantly female, because women are more in tune with the supernatural.

It must be true, because half the women I know are huge fans/believers of John Edwards, or whatever his name is, and I don’t know a single guy (me included) that thinks he’s anything other than a confidence man.

Each to her own, as it were.

15

What exactly is spiritual and supernatural knowledge fessie?

BTW, where do you see that Rex implied that spiritual and supernatural knowledge is always inherently inferior to logic? He simply showed that a poll showed that women were more likely to believe in the supernatural than men.

I don’t know whether or not the majority of Dopers are atheists (as you say they are -did you come to this conclusion using spiritual and supernatural knowledge?) or not, but those of us that are don’t believe in technology, we’re already sure it exists.

16

Interesting thread. Nothing to say yet - always the best policy, I suspect :wink:

Help me out on one thing though, was that a mild flounce, fossie cos we don’t get a whole bunch of those in GD. Well, not girlie flounces, anyway . . .

17

fessie, even. Sorry!

18

There’s also factual, parallel thinking.

Also: I don’t believe in technology, regardless of what others here say. I believe that all our mechanical devices are actually being run by invisible, magic gnomes. Sometimes their songs hurt our minds, unless we block them out by wrapping our heads in tinfoil – like so.

19

Whereas you women will instead divine your response from a Ouija board, right? :wink:

20

Here’s a guy who thinks John Edward is the Real Thing [TM].