Scientists have identified the traits that make a person more likely to claim to hear the voices of the dead.
According to new research, a predisposition to a high degree of absorption on tasks, unusual childhood auditory experiences, and a high sensitivity to auditory hallucinations are all more prevalent in self-described clairaudient media than in the general population.
The finding could help us better understand the troubling auditory hallucinations associated with mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, the researchers say.
The spiritistic 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 to anthropologists who study religious and spiritual experiences and to scientists who study pathological hallucinatory experiences.
In particular, researchers would like to better understand why some people with auditory experiences report a spiritistic experience, while others find them more troubling and receive a diagnosis of mental health.
“Spiritists tend to report unusual auditory experiences that are positive, start early in life and then often manage,” explains psychologist Peter Moseley of Northumbria University in the UK.
“Understanding how these develop is important because it can help us understand more about troubling or uncontrollable experiences when hearing voices.”
He and fellow psychologist Adam Powell of Durham University in the United Kingdom recruited and surveyed 65 clairvoyant mediums from the British Spiritualists’ National Union and 143 members of the general population who were recruited through social media to determine what distinguished Spiritualists from the general public, who (usually) do not report hearing the voices of the dead.
Overall, 44.6 percent of spiritualists reported hearing voices daily, and 79 percent said the experiences were part of their daily lives. And while most reported hearing the voices in their heads, 31.7 percent said the voices were also external.
The results of the study were striking.
Compared to the general population, the spiritualists reported a much higher belief in the paranormal, and less likely to care what other people thought of them.
The spiritualists generally had their first auditory experience at a young age, with a mean age of 21.7 years, and reported a high degree of absorption. This is a term that describes total immersion in mental tasks and activities or altered states, and how effective the individual is in tuning the world around them.
In addition, they reported being more prone to hallucination-like experiences. The researchers noted that they usually had not heard of spiritism prior to their experiences; they had come across it before while looking for answers.
In the general population, high absorption levels were also strongly correlated with belief in the paranormal – but little or no sensitivity to auditory hallucinations. And in either group, there were no differences in the degree of belief in the paranormal and the susceptibility to visual hallucinations.
These results, the researchers say, suggest that experiencing the ‘voices of the dead’ is therefore likely not the result of peer pressure, a positive social context, or suggestibility due to belief in the paranormal. Instead, these individuals adopt spiritualism because it connects to their experience and makes sense to them personally.
“Our findings say a lot about ‘learning and desire.’ To our participants, the principles of spiritualism seem to make sense of both extraordinary childhood experiences and the frequent auditory phenomena they experience as practicing mediums,” Powell said.
“But all of those experiences may have resulted more from having certain tendencies or early abilities than from simply believing in the ability to contact the dead if one tries hard enough.”
Future research, they concluded, should explore a variety of cultural contexts to better understand the relationship between absorption, belief, and the strange, spiritual experience of spirits whispering in your ear.
The research is published in Mental Health, Religion and Culture.