Magical Ideation Scale (MIS)

Thirty true-or-false statements describe beliefs about unusual forms of causation: that one's thoughts can affect events at a distance, that others can read one's mind, that numbers or objects carry personal messages, that one has had premonitions that came true, or that good-luck charms work. Some describe everyday superstitions; others describe more unusual convictions about hidden influence and special meaning.

Eckblad and Chapman (1983) developed the scale in the Wisconsin research program on psychosis proneness, following Meehl (1962), who proposed that vulnerability to schizophrenia might appear in milder, nonclinical forms. Magical ideation was intended to capture one such form, resembling in a mild way the unusual beliefs that occur in psychotic conditions. A long-term follow-up found that people with high scores on this scale, especially together with high perceptual aberration, were more likely to develop psychotic disorders (Chapman et al., 1994).

Statements answered in the keyed direction are counted. Higher totals describe more frequent and more firmly held beliefs in unconventional causation; lower totals describe a more conventional view of cause and effect. Many people with high scores never develop any disorder, and cultural and religious context matters in interpreting the answers.

The scale is used in research on schizotypy, creativity, paranormal belief and psychosis risk, and in clinical assessment by professionals. On this site, the Perceptual Aberration Scale describes unusual perceptual experiences from the same tradition, the Revised Social Anhedonia Scale describes reduced pleasure in social contact, and the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5) includes a Psychoticism domain.

On this platform the scale is administered only through a clinician patient link, and an elevated standing is a research-derived risk indicator, not a diagnosis.

“I have occasionally had the silly feeling that a TV or radio broadcaster knew I was listening to him.”

Illustrative only. During administration items are presented one screen-set at a time; response-key direction is never shown to respondents.

Item responses are summed within each scale (reverse-keyed items recoded first) and expressed as a percent of the maximum possible score. No normative percentile is applied — there is no verbatim-matched published norm for this exact item set.