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Abstract: Although belief in paranormal phenomena has long been studied as if it were a psychological trait, many commentators recently have preferred to define beliefs as a psychological state. Somewhat surprisingly, the psychometric decomposition of a belief into state and trait components has yet to be undertaken. To this end, we invited a sample of 584 American adults to complete a questionnaire measure of paranormal and traditional religious beliefs on four occasions at monthly intervals. An application of latent state-trait models to the data showed both paranormal belief and traditional religious belief to be predominantly trait-like constructs, with a small but significant state-like component. These findings may have specific implications for the assessment of paranormal beliefs, as well as general implications for a state theory of beliefs.