A person is more likely to claim to hear the voices of the dead if they have certain characteristics.
According to research published in 2021, a susceptibility to high levels of absorption in tasks is more common in self-proclaimed clairaudient medium than the general population.
Researchers say the finding could help them understand the upsetting auditory hallucinations that accompany mental illnesses.
Both anthropologists and scientists are interested in the spiritualist experiences of clairvoyance and clairaudience, which are attributed to the spirits of the dead.
Researchers would like to better understand why some people are more likely to get a mental health diagnosis than others.
When the study first came out, psychologist Peter Moseley of the UK's Northumbria University said that spiritualists tend to report positive auditory experiences which start early in life and which they are able to control.
Understanding how these develop is important because it could help us understand more about hearing voices that aren't controlled.
He and his colleague psychologist Adam Powell of Durham University in the UK recruited and surveyed 65 clairaudient mediums from the UK's Spiritualists' National Union, and 143 members of the general population, to determine what differentiated Spiritualists from the general public.
Almost half of the Spiritualists said they heard voices daily, and almost all said the experiences were part of their daily lives. 31.7 percent of people said that the voices were external too.
The results were shocking.
The spiritualists were more likely to believe in the supernatural and less likely to care what other people thought of them.
The average age of the spiritualists was 21.7 years and they had a high level of absorption. That's a term that describes how much time is spent in mental tasks and activities and how much time is spent in altered states.
They reported that they were more prone to hallucinating. They came across Spiritualism while looking for answers, and they hadn't usually heard of it before.
In the general population, high levels of absorption were correlated with belief in the supernatural, but not susceptibility to hearing voices. There were no differences in the levels of belief in the supernatural and the ability to see things that are not reality.
The results show that the 'voices of the dead' are unlikely to be a result of peer pressure, a positive social context, or belief in the supernatural. Spiritualism is meaningful to these individuals because they align with their experience.
The findings show a lot about learning and longing. Powell said when the study was published that the tenets of Spiritualism seem to make sense of both extraordinary childhood experiences as well as the frequent auditory phenomena they experience as practicing medium.
"But all of those experiences may result from having certain tendencies or early abilities than from simply believing in the possibility of contacting the dead if you try hard enough."
Future research should look at a variety of cultural contexts to better understand the relationship between absorption, belief, and the strange, spiritual experience of ghosts whispering in one's ear.
The research was published in religions and culture.
The first version of this article was published in January of 2020.
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