Scientist believe they may have stumbled across why some people are prone to hear voices or carry the traits that lead to claims of hearing the dead or other voices. Those traits include unusual auditory experiences in early childhood, easily prone to hallucinations and a complete "all-in" mentality when it comes to mentally based tasks.

Hearing experiences minus the external stimulus that's often attributed to the spirits of the dead is important in attempting to understand why some people with sensitive auditory traits report positive experiences - like spiritualists and clairvoyants versus those who find the auditory experiences frightening, stressful or bothersome.

"Spiritualists tend to report unusual auditory experiences which are positive, start early in life and which they are often then able to control," explained psychologist Peter Moseley of Northumbria University in the UK. Understanding how these develop is important because it could help us understand more about distressing or non-controllable experiences of hearing voices too." - SCIENCE ALERT

The study done by psychologist Adam Powell at Durham University in the UK recruited 65 clairaudient mediums and 143 members from the general population to determine what differentiated Spiritualists from the general public, who don't report hearing the voices of the dead.

Some conclusions form the study included:

Spiritualists claim to have been auditory sensitive from an early age

Spiritualists chose Spiritualism because it aligned with the experience that was personally meaningful to them

Spiritualists did not care what others thought of their hearing the dead

Spiritualists experience heavy mentally immersion into mental tasks

"Our findings say a lot about 'learning and yearning'. For our participants, the tenets of Spiritualism seem to make sense of both extraordinary childhood experiences as well as the frequent auditory phenomena they experience as practicing mediums," Powell said. But all of those experiences may result more from having certain tendencies or early abilities than from simply believing in the possibility of contacting the dead if one tries hard enough." - SCIENCE ALERT

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