EXPRESS: The psychological role of music and attentional control for religious experiences in worship

This study investigated the psychological dynamics during worship experiences under the influence of different music conditions. 60 believers were recruited to participate in experiments where they were asked to engage in worship and to connect with God while continuously ranking how strongly they sensed the presence of the divine. After each condition, they were asked to rate how well they were able to focus on God during the worship procedure. Based on a previously published feedback loop model that portrays global psychological mechanisms in worship, we deduced two hypotheses: (i) the ability to focus on God is positively associated with how strong the subjective religious experience becomes; (ii) and the different musical conditions yield varying degrees in the intensity of the felt presence of God. Our statistical analyses on the current sample demonstrate that both alternative hypotheses can be accepted. For the latter thesis, two further assumptions were at play: (a) we speculated that religious worship songs were associated with stronger divine experiences than with secular ones; and (b) it was assumed that if they could worship to their own selection of songs, the experience would be more powerful than with the ones that were provided by the research team. Whereas upon our investigation the former assumption can be deemed correct, the latter shows a positive but insignificant association.

Varieties of felt presence: Three surveys of presence phenomena in the general population and their relations to voice-hearing.

Experiences of felt presence (FP) are well documented in neurology, neuropsychology, and bereavement research, but systematic research in psychiatry is limited. Reports of FP are a feature of body disruption in psychosis, hypnagogic and hypnopompic experiences, solo pursuits, and spiritual encounters, yet systematic research comparing these phenomena is rare. Here we present a mixed-methods analysis from three online surveys as part of a comparative analysis of FP across three diverse contexts: a population sample which included people with experience of psychosis and voice-hearing (study 1, N = 75), people with spiritual & spiritualist beliefs (study 2, N = 47), and practitioners of endurance/solo pursuits (study 3, N = 84). Participants were asked to provide descriptions of their FP experiences and completed questionnaires on FP frequency, hallucinatory experiences, dissociation, paranoia, social inner speech, and sleep. Hierarchical linear regression analysis indicated that FP frequency was predicted by a general tendency to experience hallucinations in all three studies, although paranoia and gender (female > male) were also significant predictors in sample 1. Qualitative analysis highlighted shared and diverging phenomenology of FP experiences across the three studies, including a role for immersive states in FP. These data combine to provide the first picture of the potential shared mechanisms underlying different accounts of FP, supporting a unitary model of the experience. Data and code for the study are available via OSF.

Movies on Our Minds

Why do we enjoy popular movies? This book explores perceptual, cognitive, and emotional reasons for our engagement. It considers effects of camera lenses and the layout of images. It outlines the types of transitions between shots, and it traces their historical functions and changes. It classifies different kinds of shots and the changes in them across a century. It explains the arcs of scenes and how they fit into the larger structure of sequences, and then it explores scene- and sequence-like units that have become increasingly prevalent in recent years. It then breaks movies into larger, roughly half-hour parts and provides psychological evidence for them. Finally, it explores the rhythms of whole movies, first observing the flow of physical changes—shot durations, luminance, motion, and clutter—as it has developed over time, and then how cinematic polyrhythms have come to match aspects of those in the human body. Overall, this book focuses on how the narration, the manner in which the story is told, has come to reinforce the structure of the narrative, the story proper. It uses several hundred popular movies released over a century and embeds its exploration in discussions of evolution, culture, and technological change. The changes in movies have contributed to viewers’ engagement by sustaining attention, promoting understanding of the narrative, heightening emotional commitment, and fostering their felt presence in the story. Examples of cinematic effects in particular movies are given at every turn.

On The Corporeality Of Atmosphere

Space is a constant inhabited medium which is inseparable from its role as a lived human environment. Both defined and undefined by concrete matter, it possesses an innate ability to envelop the body in deep spatial experiences. These experiences can be intense, even poetic. This naturally felt presence is a profound relationship between body and surrounding; the vehicle for this experience is atmosphere. Atmosphere is the mode of providing experiential space within architecture, feeding one’s presence in their world; without consideration for atmospheric conditions renounces built form void of these experiences. By conceiving architecture through the embodied experience of atmospheres, space can intrinsically permit the body to experience its surrounding. This work is a continuous exploration of designing architecture through its atmosphere; as such, a focus will be redirected back to a bodily experience by activating the innate relationship between atmosphere and the body.

On The Corporeality Of Atmosphere

Space is a constant inhabited medium which is inseparable from its role as a lived human environment. Both defined and undefined by concrete matter, it possesses an innate ability to envelop the body in deep spatial experiences. These experiences can be intense, even poetic. This naturally felt presence is a profound relationship between body and surrounding; the vehicle for this experience is atmosphere. Atmosphere is the mode of providing experiential space within architecture, feeding one’s presence in their world; without consideration for atmospheric conditions renounces built form void of these experiences. By conceiving architecture through the embodied experience of atmospheres, space can intrinsically permit the body to experience its surrounding. This work is a continuous exploration of designing architecture through its atmosphere; as such, a focus will be redirected back to a bodily experience by activating the innate relationship between atmosphere and the body.

Perceiving those who are gone: Cultural research on post-bereavement perception or hallucination of the deceased

Experiencing the continued presence of the deceased is common among the bereaved, whether as a sensory perception or as a felt presence. This phenomenon has been researched from psychological and psychiatric perspectives during the last five decades. Such experiences have been also documented in the ethnographic literature but, despite the extensive cross-cultural research in the area, anthropological data has generally not been considered in the psychological literature about this phenomenon. This paper provides an overview aimed at bridging these two areas of knowledge, and approaches the post-bereavement perception or hallucination of the deceased in cultural context. Ongoing debates are addressed from the vantage point of ethnographic and clinical case study research focusing on the cultural repertoires (in constant flux as cultures change) from which these experiences are labelled as desirable and normal, on the one hand, or as dangerous and pathological, on the other.

Intrinsic Religiosity Attenuates the Negative Relationship Between Social Disconnection and Meaning in Life

Positive social connections are integral to people’s experience of meaning in their lives. As such, social isolation can make life seem meaningless. Chan, Michalak, and Ybarra (2019, Journal of Personality) provided evidence that religious beliefs (not just participation in corporate religious life) can provide an alternative source of meaning for people who feel socially isolated. We tested whether this phenomenon was specific to (a) intrinsic vs. extrinsic orientations toward religion, and (b) experiencing meaning in one’s life at present vs. actively searching for meaning. In a sample of undergraduates, high levels of intrinsic—but not extrinsic—religiosity attenuated the relationship between social disconnection and decreased meaning in life. Moreover, this attenuation was specific to felt presence of meaning in life, rather than active search for meaning. These results corroborate and expand Chan et al.’s findings and suggest that future research should explore mechanisms by which religious beliefs themselves serve meaning-making functions.

Motherhood in Wordsworth: A Psychoanalytic Study of his Poetics

By definition, the Romantic ego is a male; the creator of language which helps him to establish “rites of passage toward poetic creativity and toward masculine empowerment.”1 The outlet for a male quest of self – possession in Romantic poetry is women. For the Romantic poets , the “true woman was emotional, dependent and gentle –a born flower”2 and “the Ideal mother was expected to be strong , self- reliant , protective and efficient caretaker in relation to children and home.”4 With emphasis on the individual in Romantic literature and ideology, mothers are depicted as good when they are natural or unnaturally bad. In the Romantic period then, women’s maternal function equals the “foundation of her social identity and of her sexual desire.”5 Consequently, “convinced that within the individual and autonomous and forceful agent makes creation possible”, the Romantic poets “struggle to control that agent and manipulate its energy.”6 In a number of William Wordsworth’s (1770-1850) poems, this creative agent who possesses the powers of creation and imagination becomes a female character who is also often a mother. Nonetheless, when critics examine mothers in Wordsworth’s poetry, they also explore the child/poet’s relationship. Events in Wordsworth’s life surely influenced his attention to mothers. From a psycho-analytic perspective this interest might be an unconscious desire to resurrect the spirit of his dead mother Ann Wordsworth who died when the poet was almost eight. Thus in his poetry, the mother is the counterpart of the genuine faculty of the imagination of the poet and has a strong and felt presence within the poet’s poetic system. In The Prelude, Wordsworth acknowledges his mother’s deep influence on him. He associates her death with the break within his own poetic development; a sign that the poet relies upon in his creative power .It is through her that the young poet came first in contact with the genial current of the natural world. Nevertheless, without his mother, the male child’s connection to nature not only stands, it grows stronger:

Pasolini, Pier Paolo (1922–1975)

Known in North America mainly as a provocative filmmaker, Pier Paolo Pasolini (March 6, 1922–November 2, 1975) is also celebrated in his native Italy as a significant poet, novelist, essayist, and public intellectual. Pasolini left a rich body of work that has grown in stature since his ignoble death at the hands of a hustler in 1975. Born in Bologna to lower-middle-class parents—a career military officer and an elementary school teacher—Pasolini’s biography is replete with scandal (charges of "obscene acts," all-but-open homosexuality) and accomplishment (innumerable awards, including one from the Vatican itself). Noted early in his career for his poetry in dialect rather than standard Italian, Pasolini’s writing, or, really, his "discursive production," is often more important for how things are said than for what is said. Particularly valuable is his theory of a "cinema of poetry," developed both on paper and celluloid: cinema that stresses the "felt presence" of the director (for instance with hand-held camera work or clearly personal choices in framing).