Have you ever come across a person who claimed to have been abducted by aliens? Do you know anyone who believes that they had a past life? If the answer is yes to any of these question then a new study has the answer to why these people may feel this way. This new study conducted by Maarten Peters of Maastrcht University in the Netherlands showed that people who have memories of their past lives are more susceptible to misremembering or misattributing the source of any given information.
In this study, Peters tested patients of “reincarnation therapist” who used hypnosis in order to remember the details of their past lives. These subjects were given a memory test called a false fame paradigm, which asked the subjects to recite a list of unfamiliar names. The day after their exposure to names, they were shown a list that included the unfamiliar names, new names, and the names of famous people. The result of this test was that those who believed they had a previous life were more likely to believe that that the unfamiliar names belonged to famous people. This means that they are more likely to make a source monitoring error, which is an error in determining the original source of memory. In terms of this test, the subjects are “misremembering the source-themselves- of non-famous names. Psychologists believe that making this error is one of the things that lead to the formation false memories, which may explain why these people may believe that they were abducted by aliens. Peters states “Once familiarity of an event is achieved, this can relatively easily be converted into a belief that the event did take place. A next possible step is that individuals interpret their thoughts and fantasies about the fictitious event as real memories”
Jim Tucker, a psychiatrist from the University of Virginia Medical Center is skeptical about these findings because he believes that people who are getting help from a reincarnation therapist may have psychological problems and may be more susceptible to hypnosis. I agree with Tucker because “Earth Angel” a man that I saw on the 6 train who claimed that he came from the heavens and is now on Earth to warn us, seemed to have a couple of screws loose. I also feel like this study does not take into account the reasons the subjects might have these memories. They might be using these memories as a defense mechanism for something traumatic that happened in their lives.
In this study, Peters tested patients of “reincarnation therapist” who used hypnosis in order to remember the details of their past lives. These subjects were given a memory test called a false fame paradigm, which asked the subjects to recite a list of unfamiliar names. The day after their exposure to names, they were shown a list that included the unfamiliar names, new names, and the names of famous people. The result of this test was that those who believed they had a previous life were more likely to believe that that the unfamiliar names belonged to famous people. This means that they are more likely to make a source monitoring error, which is an error in determining the original source of memory. In terms of this test, the subjects are “misremembering the source-themselves- of non-famous names. Psychologists believe that making this error is one of the things that lead to the formation false memories, which may explain why these people may believe that they were abducted by aliens. Peters states “Once familiarity of an event is achieved, this can relatively easily be converted into a belief that the event did take place. A next possible step is that individuals interpret their thoughts and fantasies about the fictitious event as real memories”
Jim Tucker, a psychiatrist from the University of Virginia Medical Center is skeptical about these findings because he believes that people who are getting help from a reincarnation therapist may have psychological problems and may be more susceptible to hypnosis. I agree with Tucker because “Earth Angel” a man that I saw on the 6 train who claimed that he came from the heavens and is now on Earth to warn us, seemed to have a couple of screws loose. I also feel like this study does not take into account the reasons the subjects might have these memories. They might be using these memories as a defense mechanism for something traumatic that happened in their lives.
The article can be found here:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleId=A430214C-E7F2-99DF-3EEED6B0410A5114&chanId=sa013&modsrc=most_popular
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