Week 5 - Religious Experiences & Rituals

What is a Religious/Spiritual Experience?

• Religious experience

  • Encounter with supernatural being(s) experienced as reality

  • May involve altered state of consciousness (hallucination, trance, etc.)

  • Need not be under voluntary control

    • someone could be called to handle serpents without wanting/meaning to

• Spiritual experience

  • More idiosyncratic, not necessarily tied to organized religion

• Subjectivity in interpretation

  • No clear consensus on what is/isn’t

    • same event may be characterized by one person or group as religious/spiritual experience but not by others

    • What is religious/spiritual to one person may be interpreted as anomalous/weird to another

  • DSM-IV cautionary note

    • GOOD TEST QUESTION - WHO IS MOST LIKELY TO HAVE RELIGIOUS/SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE? DESCRIBE EVIDENCE

What Predicts These Experiences?

(Luhrmann et al., 2020)

• 5-country study (US, China, Thailand, Vanuatu, Ghana)

• Cultural models of the mind

  • Porosity: Boundary between “mind” and “world” is permeable

    • Less common in secular cultures

• Personal orientations toward the mind

  • Absorption: ”Losing oneself” in sensory or imagined events

    • More individual than cultural difference

• Porosity, absorption both predicted reported spiritual experiences

Examples of Spiritual Experiences

• American Christian

  • This time, I was in my car, I was driving home, and I just felt the presence of God, overwhelming. Sure, I had on worship music low, but this was just like, He must have been resting right on top of me, in my car or whatever. It was so powerful, it was hard for me to drive the car. . . He was there so intensely, and it was so real.

• Thai Buddhist

  • One night, I saw a man and a woman in front of the autopsy room. I saw them and wasn’t afraid, [I just thought,] oh, those are the people who donated their body.

Religious Imagery Study (Hood & Morris, 1981)

• 20 intrinsically and 20 extrinsically religious participants

  • Placed in sensory deprivation tank nude for 1 hour

• Instructed to imagine either religious or cartoon figures

  • Afterward: Reports of religious, cartoon, meaningful, geometric, light imagery

• Intrinsic participants reported more cued religious imagery than extrinsic participants

  • No differences in cartoon or other imagery

Positive Emotions and Religious/Spiritual Experiences (Van Cappellen & Saroglou, 2012

• Certain positive emotions can increase receptivity to religious/spiritual experiences

  • Transcendent (vs. self-focused)

    • Example: Awe

• Participants (mostly Catholic, in Belgium) recalled awe, pride, or neutral experience

  • Then indicated willingness to visit Tibet (spiritual) and Haiti (non-spiritual)

Rituals

• Defining features

  • Rigid, formal, repetitive physical actions

  • Psychological elements enhance meaning

  • Link to purpose that is not self-evident

• Rituals can pave way for religious/spiritual experiences

  • But rituals do not always result in such experiences

Functions of Rituals (Hobson et al., 2018)

• Regulate emotions

  • Uncertainty/stress/anxiety predict more ritual participation (e.g., Israelis during Gulf War)

  • Rituals can reduce stress/anxiety (e.g., Catholics and Rosary)

• Regulate goals

  • Preparation for performance (e.g., praying before exam)

  • Self-regulation/self-control (e.g., religious concepts)

• Regulate social connection to others

  • Signals group affiliation, loyalty, trust

  • Can apply to both participating in and observing rituals

    • GOOD TEST QUESTIONS: FUNCTIONS OF RITUALS IN SCENARIO, GIVE A DESCRIPTION OF A PERSON OR GROUP PARTICIPATING IN RITUAL, IDENTIFY DIFFERENT FUNCTIONS

Example: Prayer (Van Cappellen et al., 2021

• Two common prayer positions in Christianity

  • Upward-expansive

    • Example: Raising hands

    • Most common among Baptists, nondenominational Christians, Black Protestants

    • More positive emotions, higher arousal, more positive God images

  • Downward-constrictive

    • Examples: Kneeling, bowing

    • Most common among Catholics

    • More humility, more confession-oriented prayers

Serpent-Handling

• Practiced in some Holiness sects in Appalachia

  • Justified by religious texts

  • One of five signs of obedience to God

• Five themes from taped sermons (Williamson & Pollio, 1999)

  • Anointment

  • Reality of being in presence of death

  • Separation between “us” and “them”

  • Power of true knowing

  • Intense joy/pleasure

Entheogens (E.G., Psychedelics)

• Can facilitate religious experiences

  • The Psychedelic Experience (Leary et al., 1964)

• Some faiths have incorporated as ritual

  • Peyote smoking in Native American religious services

  • Abrahamic religious traditions (consequences?)

• Fewer studies since 1970s, but interest growing again

  • Religion and transcendent feelings (Neitzke-Spruill & Glaser, 2018)

  • “God encounters” and identification as atheist (Griffiths et al., 2019)