Anthropological Research on Social Learning of Psychological States

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Dr. Tanya Luhrmann (Stanford University) will undertake research on how some Americans learn to make judgments about experiences they label spiritual. The researcher draws upon prior ethnographic fieldwork that found that there are at least two distinct kinds of learning involved: the acquisition of cultural knowledge, or "discourse," and the development of specific psychological skills through prayer practice that change how people experience their minds and bodies. By focusing on the importance of learning in a social setting, the research will contribute to scientific understanding how some people learn to have intimate spiritual experiences and how powerful that learning experience can be in shaping the ways in which the world is experienced.The current project is framed around the hypotheses that (1) spiritual experience is shaped by combination of belief, proclivity, and practice; (2) that specific forms of learned kataphatic or imagination-based prayer increase mental imagery and unusual sensory experiences; and (3) that some individuals, who report more phenomena in the first place and score higher on an absorption scale, change more than others. Research methods include experimental prayer training followed by evaluation; intensive interviews about spiritual experience; and technical discourse analysis of taped reports of spiritual experiences. Data analysis will employ cyber-enabled text analysis and other methods used to systematically analyze qualitative data.