When spirits speak: absorption, attribution, and identity among spiritualists who report "clairaudient" voice experiences

For mental health researchers and others committed to a bio-cultural understanding of religious experience, there is a need for empirical studies capable of shedding light on the interplay between beliefs, personalities, and the occurrence of anomalous sensory experiences. Absorption, a trait linked...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Mental health, religion & culture
Authors: Powell, Adam J. (Author) ; Moseley, Peter (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Taylor & Francis 2020
In: Mental health, religion & culture
Year: 2020, Volume: 23, Issue: 10, Pages: 841-856
Further subjects:B auditory verbal hallucinations
B clairaudience
B Absorption
B voice hearing
B Spiritualism
B Identity
B mediums
Online Access: Volltext (kostenfrei)
Description
Summary:For mental health researchers and others committed to a bio-cultural understanding of religious experience, there is a need for empirical studies capable of shedding light on the interplay between beliefs, personalities, and the occurrence of anomalous sensory experiences. Absorption, a trait linked to one’s tendency to become immersed in experience or thought, may be key for understanding that relationship. Spiritualist mediums (N = 65) completed an online questionnaire assessing the timing, nature, and frequency of their auditory (clairaudient) spiritual communications - including scales measuring paranormal beliefs, absorption, hallucination-proneness, and aspects of identity. These measures were compared to a general population group (N = 143), with results showing higher levels of auditory hallucination-proneness and absorption among the Spiritualists as well as correlations between spiritual beliefs and absorption, but not spiritual beliefs and hallucination-proneness, for the general population. Findings are discussed in relation to attribution models of religious experience and the complexity of "absorption" as a construct.
ISSN:1469-9737
Contains:Enthalten in: Mental health, religion & culture
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1080/13674676.2020.1793310