PARANORMAL EXPERIENCE RELATED TO IMPROVING ACADEMIC MOTIVATION OF SLOVAK UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Currently, at the beginning of the 21st century‘s third decade, scientific attention must be focused on modern topics. These challenges include also the paranormal experience of university students. However, many of university executives either downplay it or even reject it. With this behavior, they fail to reveal the important potentials that are contained in the intra-motivational system of each student. In this way, they lose the opportunity to properly target the university's motivational efforts and programs aimed at strengthening academic motivation. The aim of paper is to fulfill this gap. It analyzes, compares and synthesizes theoretical views in the field, and completes them in terms of positive and negative impacts on intrapsychic balance and motivation of the student. In an effort to increase the scientific relevance of paper, two hypotheses are set. H1: There exist relevant relations among searched paranormal phenomena, H2: Occurrence of paranormal phenomena depends on the gender. The empirical part presents the results of a unique survey participated by Slovak HE students. With the use of frequency analysis, χ2 test and Product-Moment Correlation, the most important findings include that among paranormal events, students experience the most especially déjà vu, presentiment, and 6th sense belief. The most frequently un-experienced events are: out of body experience, telepathy, and signs of ghosts. Almost half of the phenomena show significant relationships. Also, the statistical significance of gender dependence was approved for 4 of 8 searched phenomena: déjà vu, telepathy, 6th sense belief, and signs of ghosts. Confirming both hypotheses, it can be deduced that consider for anomalousness could be a great inspiration for academic motivation increase. Several ways for improvement of motivation are suggested, and recommendations for the university management with regard to master the negative impacts of these phenomena are formulated in the conclusion.