📄 social_science

Spiritual and Religious Interpretations of Psychotic-Like Experiences Are Associated with More Positive Perceived Life Impact

This study of 7,368 individuals reveals that interpreting psychotic-like or dissociative experiences through religious or spiritual frameworks is consistently associated with more positive perceived life impacts, regardless of experience frequency or religious affiliation.

Original authors: Larissa Hartle, Ronald Fischer

Published 2026-07-29

📖 5 min read🧠 Deep dive

CC BY 4.0

Original authors: Larissa Hartle, Ronald Fischer

Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). ✨ This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer

Imagine your mind is a vast, bustling city. Sometimes, strange things happen in this city: you might hear a voice when no one is there, feel a presence behind you, or sense that an inanimate object has a secret life. In the world of science, these are often called "psychotic-like experiences." For a long time, doctors and researchers treated these events like a fire alarm going off in a building that might be on fire. They assumed that if you heard a voice or saw something impossible, it meant the building was burning down—that you were sick and needed immediate help.

But here is the twist: sometimes, the alarm is just a prank, a piece of art, or a message from a friend. In fact, millions of people around the world have these experiences but live happy, healthy lives. The big question scientists are asking is: why does the same strange event make one person feel terrified and broken, while making another person feel inspired and connected? The answer might not be in the event itself, but in the "story" the person tells themselves about it. It's like hearing a loud crash in the night; if you think a monster is breaking in, you panic. If you think it's just a tree branch hitting the window, you might just go back to sleep. This paper dives into that difference, specifically looking at how seeing these experiences through a "spiritual lens" changes the story.

The Great Meaning-Making Experiment

In a recent study, researchers Larissa Hartle and Ronald Fischer decided to investigate this mystery using a massive dataset from Brazil, a country known for its incredible mix of religions and spiritual beliefs. They looked at nearly 7,400 reports of "nonordinary experiences" (NOEs) from over 1,500 people. These weren't just random thoughts; they were specific, weird sensations like hearing voices, feeling a presence, seeing lights, or sensing that your body wasn't quite your own.

The researchers used a clever trick to separate the "what" from the "why." First, they asked people to describe the raw experience using neutral words, like "I heard a sound" or "I felt a presence," without using scary medical terms or holy words. Then, they asked a second question: "Do you think this was a spiritual or religious experience?" Finally, they asked, "How did this experience affect your life? Was it a good thing, a bad thing, or something in between?"

The Big Discovery: The Spiritual Filter

The results were as clear as a bell. People who interpreted their strange experiences as spiritual or religious reported a much more positive impact on their lives. In fact, those who said "Yes, this was spiritual" gave their life impact scores about 0.65 points higher on a 5-point scale compared to those who said "No." To put that in perspective, that's a huge jump in how happy or meaningful they felt the experience was.

Here is the most fascinating part: it didn't matter how often the experience happened. Even if someone heard voices or felt a presence every single day, if they viewed it as a spiritual message, they still felt better about it than someone who had the same experience only once but thought it was a sign of illness. The "spiritual story" acted like a shield, turning a potentially scary event into something meaningful.

What It's NOT About

The study also ruled out a few things that people might guess. First, it wasn't just about being part of a specific church or religion. Whether someone was Catholic, Evangelical, or followed Afro-Brazilian traditions, the specific label of their religion didn't predict how happy they felt about the experience nearly as well as their personal belief that the experience was spiritual did. It's not about which team you wear the jersey for; it's about how you personally interpret the game.

Second, being unsure didn't help. People who said "I don't know if this was spiritual" felt the same way as those who said "No, it wasn't." You really had to commit to the spiritual interpretation to get the positive boost.

The Shape of the Experience

The researchers also noticed that the "spiritual boost" wasn't the same for every type of weird experience. It was strongest for experiences that changed how people felt about themselves, like feeling like their sense of self was fading or that there was another "self" inside them. These deep, identity-shifting moments got a massive positive boost when viewed spiritually.

However, the boost was weaker for sensory things, like hearing voices or seeing strange lights. In fact, hearing voices was the least likely to be seen as spiritual and the least likely to be seen as positive. This suggests that while a spiritual story helps with almost everything, some experiences (like voices) are so strongly linked to "sickness" in our culture that it's harder to rewrite the story for them.

The Takeaway

This study suggests that the raw experience of hearing a voice or seeing a ghost isn't the whole story. The real magic lies in the interpretation. If you can weave a strange experience into a story of meaning, connection, or spirituality, it tends to feel like a gift rather than a curse. The researchers aren't saying this fixes everything or that everyone should become spiritual, but they do suggest that when people have these weird experiences, the way they make sense of them is just as important as the experience itself. It's a reminder that our minds are powerful storytellers, and the story we choose to tell can change everything.

Technical Summary: Spiritual and Religious Interpretations of Psychotic-Like Experiences

Problem Statement
Phenomenological features resembling clinical psychosis—such as hallucinations, ego distortions, and delusions of control—are not exclusive to psychiatric disorders. These "nonordinary experiences" (NOEs) occur frequently in the general population and can be interpreted through various frameworks, ranging from psychopathology to religious or spiritual narratives. While existing literature acknowledges that these experiences can lead to either distress or positive outcomes (e.g., personal growth, meaning), the mechanisms driving this divergence remain unclear. Specifically, it is uncertain whether interpreting these raw phenomenological events through a spiritual or religious lens serves as a protective buffer against distress or influences the perceived life impact of the experience. Previous research has often conflated the experience itself with its interpretation or focused heavily on clinical populations, leaving a gap in understanding how meaning-making processes affect non-clinical individuals in diverse cultural contexts.

Methodology
This study utilized a cross-sectional design with data from a Brazilian survey ( $N = 1,506$ participants), a context chosen for its high religious diversity and the widespread cultural acceptance of spiritual explanations for anomalous phenomena. The analysis focused on a subset of 12 specific NOEs that share phenomenological overlap with psychotic-like experiences (PLEs), such as sensed presence, auditory anomalies, and self-disturbances.

The study employed a two-stage assessment strategy to disentangle the raw phenomenon from its cognitive appraisal:

Phenomenological Reporting: Participants reported the lifetime frequency of 12 neutral, non-pathological descriptions of NOEs using the Inventory of Nonordinary Experiences (INOE).
Interpretive Appraisal: For each endorsed experience, participants indicated whether they considered it "spiritual or religious" (Yes/No/Don't know) and rated its perceived long-term life impact on a 5-point scale (1 = very negative to 5 = very positive).

Statistical analysis involved a series of linear mixed-effects models (estimated via restricted maximum likelihood in R) on 7,368 participant-experience observations. The models treated spiritual/religious interpretation as a three-level categorical predictor. The analysis sequentially controlled for:

Experience frequency.
Religious affiliation (categorized into seven groups, including Catholic, Evangelical, Kardecist Spiritist, Afro-Brazilian religions, etc.).
Random intercepts for participants and experience types to account for non-independence.
Random slopes to examine variation across specific experience types.

Key Results
The analysis yielded several robust findings regarding the relationship between interpretation and perceived life impact:

Positive Association: Interpreting an experience as spiritual or religious was consistently associated with a significantly more positive perceived life impact ( $b = 0.67$ , $p < .001$ ) compared to those who did not.
Independence from Frequency and Affiliation: This association remained statistically significant and largely unchanged after controlling for the frequency of the experience and the participant's broader religious affiliation.
Uncertainty vs. Rejection: Participants who were uncertain ("Don't know") whether an experience was spiritual did not differ significantly from those who explicitly rejected a spiritual interpretation.
Variation by Experience Type: While the overall trend was positive, the magnitude of the association varied. The strongest positive associations were found for experiences involving altered senses of self (e.g., "another self within the body," "diminished sense of self"). The weakest associations were observed for perceptual anomalies, particularly auditory experiences (hearing voices), which showed the lowest average positive impact and the smallest proportion of spiritual interpretations.
Religious Affiliation: While specific affiliations (Kardecist Spiritism and Afro-Brazilian religions) showed a trend toward more positive impacts, the individual effects of affiliation were not statistically reliable predictors when compared to the specific interpretation of the experience. The interpretation of the specific event proved more informative than the participant's general religious identity.

Key Contributions

Phenomenological Distinction: The study successfully operationalizes a method to separate the raw phenomenological features of NOEs from their subsequent cognitive and cultural interpretations, addressing a measurement conflation in prior research.
Contextual Nuance: By utilizing a Brazilian sample, the research highlights how cultural and religious pluralism (specifically the coexistence of Christian, Spiritist, and Afro-Brazilian traditions) provides a framework where anomalous experiences can be integrated as meaningful rather than pathological.
Predictive Value of Meaning: The findings demonstrate that the subjective meaning attributed to an experience is a stronger predictor of perceived life impact than the frequency of the experience or the individual's formal religious affiliation.

Significance and Claims
The paper posits that spiritual and religious interpretations are associated with more positive appraisals of phenomenologically similar experiences, potentially explaining why comparable experiences result in markedly different life consequences for different individuals. The authors suggest that cultural frameworks do not merely provide post-hoc explanations but may shape how experiences are noticed, described, and integrated into life narratives.

The study claims that these findings support the inclusion of spiritual and religious meaning-making in the assessment and formulation of psychotic-like experiences. Rather than viewing such experiences solely through a psychopathological lens, clinicians and researchers are encouraged to explore the personal belief systems and explanatory models individuals use to contextualize these events. The authors caution that while the association is robust, the cross-sectional design precludes causal claims, and "positive perceived life impact" does not equate to objective mental health functioning. However, the results suggest that understanding how individuals make sense of unusual experiences is as critical as documenting the experiences themselves.

Technical Summary: Spiritual and Religious Interpretations of Psychotic-Like Experiences

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