Scientists have identified the characteristics that can make a person more likely to claim to hear the voices of the dead.
According to new research, a predisposition to high levels of task absorption, unusual hearing experiences in childhood and a high susceptibility to auditory hallucinations occur more strongly in self-described clairaudient mediums than in the general population.
The discovery may help us better understand the disturbing auditory hallucinations that accompany mental illnesses like schizophrenia, the researchers say.
Spiritist experiences of clairvoyance and clairaudience – 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 for anthropologists who study religious and spiritual experiences, and for scientists who study pathological hallucinatory experiences.
In particular, researchers would like to better understand why some people with hearing experiences report a spiritual experience, while others find them more distressing and receive a mental health diagnosis.
“Spiritists tend to report unusual hearing experiences that are positive, start early in life and are often able to control,” explained psychologist Peter Moseley, from Northumbria University, UK.
“Understanding how they develop is important because it can help us understand more about distressing or uncontrollable experiences of hearing voices as well.”
He and his fellow psychologist Adam Powell of Durham University in the UK recruited and researched 65 clairaudient mediums from the UK National Spiritist Union and 143 members of the general population recruited via social media to determine what differentiated spiritists. of the general public, who do not (usually) report having heard the voices of the dead.
Overall, 44.6% of spiritists reported hearing voices daily, and 79% said that the experiences were part of their daily lives. And although the majority reported hearing the voices inside their heads, 31.7% reported that the voices were also external.
The research results were impressive.
Compared to the general population, Spiritists reported a much greater belief in the paranormal and were less likely to care what other people thought of them.
Spiritists in general had their first young hearing experience, with an average 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 how effective an individual is in disconnecting from the world around him.
In addition, they reported that they were more likely to experience hallucinations. The researchers noted that they had generally not heard of Spiritism before their experiences; instead, they found it while searching 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 therefore unlikely to be the result of peer pressure, a positive social context or suggestibility due to belief in the paranormal. Instead, these individuals adopt Spiritism because it aligns with their experience and is personally meaningful to them.
“Our findings say a lot about ‘learning and longing’. For our participants, the principles of Spiritism seem to make sense both of the extraordinary experiences of childhood and of the frequent auditory phenomena they experience as practicing mediums,” said Powell.
“But all of these experiences can result more from certain initial tendencies or skills than simply believing in the possibility of contacting the dead if we try hard enough.”
Future research, they concluded, must explore a variety of cultural contexts to better understand the relationship between absorption, belief and the strange spiritual experience of ghosts whispering in someone’s ear.
The research was published in Mental health, religion and culture.