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I'd like to post this in a totally different forum, because those people are the ones who really need to read this, but doing so would only start a flame war and not actually educate those people I think need to hear this most:
Tendency could explain why some cling to implausible reincarnation claims
By Melinda Wenner, LiveScience
Updated: 12:53 p.m. ET April 6, 2007
People who believe they have lived past lives as, say, Indian princesses or
battlefield commanders are more likely to make certain types of memory errors,
according to a new study.
The propensity to make these mistakes could, in part, explain why people cling
to implausible reincarnation claims in the first place.
Researchers recruited people who, after undergoing hypnotic therapy, had come
to believe that they had past lives.
Subjects were asked to read aloud a list of 40 non-famous names, and then,
after a two-hour wait, told that they were going to see a list consisting of
three types of names: non-famous names they had already seen (from the earlier
list), famous names, and names of non-famous people that they had not
previously seen. Their task was to identify which names were famous.
The researchers found that, compared to control subjects who dismissed the idea
of reincarnation, past-life believers were almost twice as likely to
misidentify names. In particular, their tendency was to wrongly identify as
famous the non-famous names they had seen in the first task. This kind of
error, called a source-monitoring error, indicates that a person has difficulty
recognizing where a memory came from.
Power of suggestion
People who are likely to make these kinds of errors might end up convincing
themselves of things that aren't true, said lead researcher Maarten Peters of
Maastricht University in The Netherlands. When people who are prone to making
these mistakes undergo hypnosis and are repeatedly asked to talk about a
potential idea - like a past life - they might, as they grow more familiar with
it, eventually convert the idea into a full-blown false memory.
This is because they can't distinguish between things that have really happened
and things that have been suggested to them, Peters told LiveScience.
Past life memories are not the only type of implausible memories that have been
studied in this manner. Richard McNally, a clinical psychologist at Harvard
University, has found that self-proclaimed alien abductees are also twice as
likely to commit source monitoring errors.
Creative minds
As for what might make people more prone to committing such errors to begin
with, McNally says that it could be the byproduct of especially vivid imagery
skills. He has found that people who commonly make source-monitoring errors
respond to and imagine experiences more strongly than the average person, and
they also tend to be more creative.
"It might be harder to discriminate between a vivid image that you'd generated
yourself and the memory of a perception of something you actually saw," he said
in a telephone interview.
Peters also found in his study, detailed in the March issue of Consciousness
and Cognition, that people with implausible memories are also more likely to be
depressed and to experience sleep problems, and this could also make them more
prone to memory mistakes.
And once people make this kind of mistake, they might be inclined to stick to
their guns for spiritual reasons, McNally said. "It may be a variant expression
of certain religious impulses," he said. "We suspect that this might be kind of
a psychological buffering mechanism against the fear of death."
© 2007 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17982545/=
By Melinda Wenner, LiveScience
Updated: 12:53 p.m. ET April 6, 2007
People who believe they have lived past lives as, say, Indian princesses or
battlefield commanders are more likely to make certain types of memory errors,
according to a new study.
The propensity to make these mistakes could, in part, explain why people cling
to implausible reincarnation claims in the first place.
Researchers recruited people who, after undergoing hypnotic therapy, had come
to believe that they had past lives.
Subjects were asked to read aloud a list of 40 non-famous names, and then,
after a two-hour wait, told that they were going to see a list consisting of
three types of names: non-famous names they had already seen (from the earlier
list), famous names, and names of non-famous people that they had not
previously seen. Their task was to identify which names were famous.
The researchers found that, compared to control subjects who dismissed the idea
of reincarnation, past-life believers were almost twice as likely to
misidentify names. In particular, their tendency was to wrongly identify as
famous the non-famous names they had seen in the first task. This kind of
error, called a source-monitoring error, indicates that a person has difficulty
recognizing where a memory came from.
Power of suggestion
People who are likely to make these kinds of errors might end up convincing
themselves of things that aren't true, said lead researcher Maarten Peters of
Maastricht University in The Netherlands. When people who are prone to making
these mistakes undergo hypnosis and are repeatedly asked to talk about a
potential idea - like a past life - they might, as they grow more familiar with
it, eventually convert the idea into a full-blown false memory.
This is because they can't distinguish between things that have really happened
and things that have been suggested to them, Peters told LiveScience.
Past life memories are not the only type of implausible memories that have been
studied in this manner. Richard McNally, a clinical psychologist at Harvard
University, has found that self-proclaimed alien abductees are also twice as
likely to commit source monitoring errors.
Creative minds
As for what might make people more prone to committing such errors to begin
with, McNally says that it could be the byproduct of especially vivid imagery
skills. He has found that people who commonly make source-monitoring errors
respond to and imagine experiences more strongly than the average person, and
they also tend to be more creative.
"It might be harder to discriminate between a vivid image that you'd generated
yourself and the memory of a perception of something you actually saw," he said
in a telephone interview.
Peters also found in his study, detailed in the March issue of Consciousness
and Cognition, that people with implausible memories are also more likely to be
depressed and to experience sleep problems, and this could also make them more
prone to memory mistakes.
And once people make this kind of mistake, they might be inclined to stick to
their guns for spiritual reasons, McNally said. "It may be a variant expression
of certain religious impulses," he said. "We suspect that this might be kind of
a psychological buffering mechanism against the fear of death."
© 2007 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17982545/=
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Date: 4/10/07 08:02 pm (UTC)From:Regarding the text, interesting to say the least. Glad to find some brainfood in this desert of ranting emotions ;-)