Scientists have identified traits 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 absorption in pregnancies, unusual hearing experiences in childhood and a high susceptibility to auditory hallucinations occur more strongly in self-described clairaudiente environments than the general population.
The discovery could help us better understand the annoying auditory hallucinations that accompany mental illness, such as schizophrenia, the researchers say.
The 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 – is of great scientific interest, both to anthropologists studying religious and spiritual experiences and to scientists studying hallucinatory pathological experiences.
In particular, researchers would like to better understand why some people with hearing experiences report a spiritualistic experience, while others find them more painful and receive a mental health diagnosis.
“Spiritualists tend to report unusual hearing experiences that are positive, start early in life, and are often then able to control them,” said psychologist Peter Moseley of Northumbria University in the United Kingdom.
“Understanding how they develop is important because it could help us understand more about painful or uncontrollable experiences of hearing voices.”
He and his fellow psychologist Adam Powell of Durham University in the UK recruited and surveyed 65 clairaudience media from the National Union of Spiritualists in the UK and 143 members of the general population recruited through social networks to determine what differentiated spiritualists by the general public, who do not (usually) report hearing the voices of the dead.
In total, 44.6 percent of spiritualists reported hearing voices daily, and 79 percent said experiences are part of their daily lives. And, while most reported hearing the voices in their heads, 31.7% reported that the voices were external as well.
The results of the survey were striking.
Compared to the general population, spiritualists reported a much greater belief in the paranormal and were less likely to care about what others thought of them.
In general, spiritualists had their first young auditory experience at an average age of 21.7 years and reported a high level of absorption. This is a term that describes total immersion in activities and mental activities or altered states and how effective the individual is in regulating the world around them.
In addition, they reported being more prone to hallucinatory-like experiences. Researchers noted that they had not usually heard of spiritualism before their experiences; rather, they had met him as they searched for answers.
In the general population, high levels of absorption have also been 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 spiritualism because it aligns with their experience and is significantly personal to them.
“Our findings say a lot about ‘learning and longing.’ 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 environments of practice, ”said Powell.
“But all of these experiences may result more from having certain tendencies or early abilities than from simply believing in the ability to contact death if someone tries hard enough.”
Future research, they concluded, should explore a variety of cultural contexts to better understand the relationship between absorption, faith, and the strange, spiritual experience of ghosts whispering in someone’s ear.
The research was published in Mental health, religion and culture.