The hypothesis was tested that belief in restricted or exclusionary knowledge interferes with strong inferential processing. Scores on Rotton's Paralogic Test, multiple-choice examinations (mutually interactive items), and the belief clusters from the Personal Philosophy Inventory were factor analyzed for 55 part-time university men and women. Subjects who endorsed more items concerning forbidden knowledge (i.e., there are some things that Science should not investigate) displayed poorer logical and inferential performance (25% explained variance). These results suggest that such beliefs may limit cognitive exploration of certain conceptual domains.
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