Social Locations of Secularization and Worldview (Dis)Enchantment: Education, Income, and Belief in Religious and Paranormal Phenomena

Abstract

Forces of secularization are theorized to disenchant an individual's worldview - i.e., erode an individual's belief in nonnatural beings, forces, or abilities. Tests of this proposition, though, have often failed to measure the variety of forms of worldview enchantment found among individuals. Drawing on the broader secularization literature, we theorize correlates of (dis)enchantment and test these predictions using a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults featuring a wide battery of enchanted beliefs. We identify four latent enchanted worldview dimensions and find, consistent with secularization theories, that education and income are consistently and negatively associated with all four worldview enchantment dimensions.