How Do Belief Systems Influence the Categorization of Ambiguous Stimuli?

Previous research has shown a connection between paranormal beliefs and a tendency to attribute meaning to ambiguous stimuli in signal detection paradigms. However, whether this bias is general or specific to certain stimulus categories remains unclear. To address this issue, we used a face/house categorization task to investigate how paranormal believers and skeptics perceive human agents versus non-natural objects amidst varying levels of visual noise. Our behavioral data, along with drift-diffusion modeling (DDM), revealed that paranormal believers outperformed skeptics in categorizing ambiguous stimuli, including both faces and houses. This study highlights the impact of belief systems on perceptual and visual processing.