Are people who believe in the afterlife more likely to react to a supernatural event — say, the sudden appearance of a ghostly apparition — than those who say they don’t?
Psychologist Jesse Bering and his colleagues at the University of Otago tested this very question, according to a recent study. And in their attempts to unravel the connection between our beliefs in the afterlife and behavior regarding the supernatural, the scientists weren't afraid to take a spookily creative approach.
The Ghost in the Lab
After being recruited for an apparent "mindfulness" task, one hundred volunteers were asked a series of questions evaluating their belief in the afterlife, their religious identity, and their belief in God. They then listened to a popular 9-minute mindfulness recording in a small, private, closed-door room. In the target condition of the study, participants were casually told that a janitor had recently passed away in that room, and that "one of the PHD students swears they saw a ghost in the room."
After listening to the mindfulness recording, volunteers were asked to remain in the room for 6-minutes and to visualize a problem they were facing at the time, applying the meditation techniques they had heard in the recording. Three minutes into the exercise, the experimenter used a bluetooth kit to remotely turn the light off in the room for exactly seven seconds, plunging the small room into complete darkness.
