480. The Skeptically Prone Personality

480.   The Skeptically Prone Personality

Once more I finally found other people's concept expressing something, which I have been pondering over myself since a long time.  

In entries 17 and 372 I already mentioned my speculation of a special personality type, which I got aware of by reading information about autism and Asperger's syndrome, both being a clinical diagnosis.    But I had come to the conclusion, that both diagnoses have two components, a non-clinical personality type, and additional symptoms, which are severe enough to be a disability or an impairment.   

I also got aware of the existence of people with this personality type while free of any detrimental symptoms causing any impairment.  This kind of a personality distinguishes a minority of people from the majority, without making them in any way dysfunctional.    I see this personality in myself.   

 

One core trait is rationality and being guided by logic and the absence of the gullibility preventing beliefs in anything without being convinced by evidence and reasoning.    This kind of innate rationality allows people to gain the insight, that believing in a god or any irrational claim is preposterous.  While such beliefs are a step in the development of the immature brain of children, people with this personality outgrow irrational beliefs when becoming adults.   People with such a personality are determined by their brains to become atheists and skeptics like caterpillars are determined to become butterflies.   So far my own thinking concerning this personality. 

Today I discovered this personality described under the name of The Skeptically Prone Personality. 

http://www.skepdic.com/skeptimedia/skeptimedia129.html

 

While I usually do not copy large quotes, this warrants to make an exception.   According to the author, Robert T. Carroll,

"A skeptically-prone personality (SPP) has at least 17 of the [following] characteristics.

1. They are nearly impossible to hypnotize;
2. As children they questioned the existence of Santa Claus and God;
3. As adults they continued to doubt the existence of Santa Claus and all forms of supernatural creatures;
4. As children they played make-believe games, but they recognized the difference between make-believe and reality;
5. As adults they do not spend more than 50% of their time fantasizing;
6. They rarely experience hypnagogic or hypnopompic hallucinations (waking dreams), including those involving monsters from outer space or figures from religious traditions);
7. They rarely pretend to be somebody they're not;
8. They are mistrustful of memory and consider vividness to be irrelevant to the accuracy of a memory
9. They are mistrustful of interpretations of sense experiences;
10. They have little faith in eyewitness testimony;
11. They can rarely have an orgasm just by using their imagination;
12. They are mistrustful of tradition and tend to think that the older some idea or practice is the less likely it is to be true or worth engaging in;
13. They think there is a naturalistic explanation for everything, even if we don't know what it is;
14. They think people who think they've had a paranormal experience are deluding themselves;
15. They rarely have out-of-body experiences;
16. They believe that once you're dead you're dead and can't talk anymore;
17. They don't engage in automatic writing, Ouija board games, or séances;
18. They don't believe in magical healing powers, but follow the advice of those promoting science-based medicine;
19. They trust the results of well-designed controlled studies over beliefs based solely on personal experience;
20. They haven't experienced spirits or ghosts (see 13);
21. They tend to dislike intensely those who lie, defraud others, or promote self-serving nonsense as if it were infallible truth;
22. They don't feel handicapped by their skepticism; on the contrary, they feel empowered by their devotion to reason, logic, critical thinking, empirical evidence, and science;
23. They don't like lists, unless backed by scientific studies and footnotes, and they're fond of concepts like the fantasy-prone personality and cognitive dissonance."

This is a very good description of myself.   My mindmate to be found shares this personality with me.