Scientists have identified traits that can make a person more likely to claim to hear the voice of the dead.
According to new research, predisposition to high levels of absorption at home, unusual auditory experiences in childhood, and a high susceptibility to auditory hallucinations occur more strongly in self-describing clairaudient environments than the general population. .
The findings may help us better understand the annoying auditory hallucinations that accompany mental illnesses such as schizophrenia.
Spiritualist experiences of clairvoyance and clairvoyance – the experience of seeing or hearing something in the absence of an external stimulus and attributed to the spirits of the dead – are of great scientific interest, both to anthropologists studying religious and spiritual experiences and to scientists studying pathological hallucinatory experiences.
In particular, researchers would like to better understand why some people with auditory experiences report a spiritualist experience, while others find them more distressing and receive a mental health diagnosis.
“Spiritualists tend to report unusual auditory experiences that are positive, that start early, and that they are often able to control,” explained psychologist Peter Moseley of Northumbria University in the UK.
“Understanding how these things develop is important because it can also help us understand more about distressing or uncontrollable experiences of hearing voices.”
He and fellow psychologist Adam Powell of Durham University in the UK recruited and surveyed 65 clairvoyant media outlets of the National Union of Spiritualists in the UK and 143 members of the general population recruited through the networks. to determine what differentiated spiritualists from the general public. (usually) do not report hearing the voices of the deceased.
Overall, 44.6% of spiritualists reported hearing voices daily and 79% said experiences were part of their daily lives. And while most reported hearing the voices in the head, 31.7 percent reported that the voices were also external.
The results of the survey were astonishing.
Compared to the general population, spiritualists reported a much higher belief in the paranormal and were less likely to care what other people thought of them.
In general, spiritualists had their first young auditory experience, at a mean age of 21.7 years, and reported a high level of absorption. This is a term that describes total immersion in mental tasks and activities or altered states, and the effectiveness of the individual in fine-tuning the world around him.
In addition, they reported that they were more prone to hallucination-like experiences. The researchers noted that they had not normally heard of spiritualism before their experiences; rather, they had run into him while looking for answers.
In the general population, high levels of absorption were also strongly correlated with belief in the paranormal, but little or no susceptibility to auditory hallucinations. And in both groups, there were no differences in levels of belief in the paranormal and susceptibility to visual hallucinations.
These results, the researchers say, suggest that experiencing the “voices of the dead” is unlikely to be the result of peer pressure, a positive social context, or suggestibility due to belief in the paranormal. Instead, these individuals adopt spiritualism because it fits their experience and is meaningful to them personally.
“Our findings say a lot about‘ learning and yearning. ’For our participants, the principles of spiritualism seem to make sense of both the extraordinary experiences of childhood and the frequent auditory phenomena they experience as practicing media,” he said. Powell.
“But all of these experiences may result more from having certain tendencies or early skills than from simply believing in the possibility of contacting the dead if you put in enough effort.”
Future research, they concluded, should explore various cultural contexts to better understand the relationship between the absorption, belief, and strange spiritual experience of ghosts whispering in the ear.
The research has been published in Mental health, religion and culture.