The noetic quality: A multimethod exploratory study

Abstract

Religious, spiritual, and mystical experiences (RSMEs) are often described as having a noetic quality, or the compelling sense that the experience feels “real.” In this exploratory, multimethod study, 701 participants completed questions about the subjective qualities of their RMSEs, reported the impact of their RSMEs on various life domains, and provided written descriptions of their experiences for quantitative linguistic analysis. The majority of participants (69%) reported that their RSMEs felt “more real than their usual sense of reality.” This quality of realness was associated with positive self-reported impacts on family life (r = .16), health (r = .22), sense of purpose (r = .29), spirituality (r = .30), and reduced fear of death (r = .24). Participants who reported experiences as feeling more real used more language referring to connection, a greater whole, and certainty (“love,” “all,” “and,” “everything”) and fewer first-person pronouns, cognitive processes, and tentativeness (“I,” “me,” “think,” “probably”). These findings provide insight into the noetic quality, as well as the psychological characteristics that may underlie the noetic quality of RSMEs.

Full text

The Noetic Quality: A Multimethod Exploratory Study
David B. Yaden
University of Pennsylvania
Khoa D. Le Nguyen
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Margaret L. Kern
University of Melbourne
Nancy A. Wintering
Thomas Jefferson University
Johannes C. Eichstaedt
University of Pennsylvania
H. Andrew Schwartz
Stony Brook University
Anneke E. K. Buffone and Laura K. Smith
University of Pennsylvania
Mark R. Waldman
Loyola Marymount University
Ralph W. Hood Jr.
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Andrew B. Newberg
Thomas Jefferson University
Religious, spiritual, and mystical experiences (RSMEs) are often described as having a
noetic quality, or the compelling sense that the experience feels “real.” In this exploratory,
multimethod study, 701 participants completed questions about the subjective qualities of
their RMSEs, reported the impact of their RSMEs on various life domains, and provided
written descriptions of their experiences for quantitative linguistic analysis. The majority of
participants (69%) reported that their RSMEs felt “more real than their usual sense of
reality.” This quality of realness was associated with positive self-reported impacts on
family life (r⫽.16), health (r⫽.22), sense of purpose (r⫽.29), spirituality (r⫽.30), and
reduced fear of death (r⫽.24). Participants who reported experiences as feeling more real
used more language referring to connection, a greater whole, and certainty (“love,” “all,”
“and,” “everything”) and fewer first-person pronouns, cognitive processes, and tentative-
ness (“I,” “me,” “think,” “probably”). These findings provide insight into the noetic quality,
as well as the psychological characteristics that may underlie the noetic quality of RSMEs.
Everything else might be a dream, but not that
—William James, (1902/1985),
The Varieties of Religious Experience.
A general analysis of descriptions of reli-
gious, spiritual, and mystical experiences
(RSMEs; Beauregard, 2011) suggests that
among many factors that characterize such ex-
periences- such as perceptions of unity, ineffa-
bility, positive emotions, and sacredness- one
important element is the noetic quality, or the
David B. Yaden, Department of Psychology, Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania; Khoa D. Le Nguyen, Department
of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill; Margaret L. Kern, Melbourne
Graduate School of Education, University of Mel-
bourne; Nancy A. Wintering, Myrna Brind Center of
Integrative Medicine, Thomas Jefferson University; Jo-
hannes C. Eichstaedt, Department of Psychology, Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania; H. Andrew Schwartz, Com-
puter Science Department, Stony Brook University;
Anneke E. K. Buffone, Department of Psychology, Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania; Laura K. Smith, Department of
Psychology, University of Pennsylvania; Mark R. Wald-
man, Department of Business, Loyola Marymount Uni-
versity; Ralph W. Hood, Jr., Department of Psychology,
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga; Andrew B.
Newberg, Myrna Brind Center of Integrative Medicine,
Thomas Jefferson University.
This publication was made possible through the support
of grant 0048 from the Templeton Religion Trust.
The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the
authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the
Templeton Religion Trust.
Correspondence concerning this article should be ad-
dressed to David B. Yaden, Department of Psychology,
University of Pennsylvania, 3701 Market Street, Suite
200 Philadelphia, PA 19104. E-mail: dyaden@sas
.upenn.edu
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54

compelling sense that the experience feels
“real” (Griffiths et al., 2008;Griffiths, Richards,
McCann, & Jesse, 2006;Hood, 1975;James,
1902/1985;Stace, 1960;Yaden et al., 2015;
Yaden, Iwry, Slacl, et al., 2016;Yaden, Le
Nguyen, Kern, et al., 2016). To illustrate, the
quote that begins this article comes from an
individual insisting on the sense of realness— or
noetic quality—associated with his RSME in
James’s (1902/1985) classic study of the topic,
The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study
in Human Nature.
People can typically distinguish “real” expe-
riences from those experienced in dreams or
hallucinations. Although on their face, RSMEs
may seem closer to such hallucinatory or
dream-like states, these experiences are often
anecdotally described as feeling somehow more
real than other quotidian “real-life” experiences.
RSMEs and other mental states associated with
perceived changes in realness have been
grouped under the broader category of epistemic
states (d’Aquili & Newberg, 1993,2000), or
mental states associated with altered intuitions
about reality. Even though this feeling of real-
ness constitutes an important aspect of RSMEs
and other epistemic states (such as derealization
disorder; see Simeon & Abugel, 2006), few
empirical studies have sought to further under-
stand this noetic quality.
Historically, feelings of realness reported
during RSMEs have often been treated as
knowledge claims, or attempts to report them as
facts about the world (Russell, 1917). For ex-
ample, people often make statements following
their RSMEs such as, “all is one,” or about the
“inherent goodness” of the world. Scholars have
debated whether sensory information from
RSMEs is similar in kind to ordinary sensory
information, and thus a potentially valid source
of “true beliefs” about the world (e.g., Alston,
1991). But the unfalsifiable nature of many
statements that follow RSMEs has made the
claims of realness associated with these experi-
ences difficult to study. Regardless of whether
the content of mystical experiences can be ob-
jectively evaluated, the subjective feeling of
realness can be empirically studied and is the
topic of the present study.
William James (1902/1985) made a similar
distinction between subjective feelings of real-
ness and knowledge claims, writing “the feeling
of reality may be something more like a sensa-
tion than an intellectual operation properly so-
called” (p. 58). To operationalize this feeling of
reality, James suggested that a key criterion for
mystical experiences is that they have a noetic
quality, the sense that objectively true aspects of
reality have been revealed. But it is the feeling
quality of the experience that we are concerned
with, rather than the content or veracity of be-
liefs that may derive from RSMEs.
Feelings of realness are subject to change
during a number of different mental states, each
of which could therefore be considered an epis-
temic state (d’Aquili & Newberg, 1993,2000).
For example, alterations in realness occur in
clinical disorders such as derealization disorder,
in which existence can feel very unreal (Simeon
et al., 2000). Individuals with this disorder
might say things like “everything feels unreal to
me, like a dream” (Simeon & Abugel, 2006).
This dreamlike sense of unreality can be differ-
entiated; a factor analysis of derealization
symptom clusters included factors such as “un-
reality of self” or “unreality of surroundings”
(Simeon et al., 2008). More generally, most
altered states seem less real. For example, for
most people, dreams usually feel real only dur-
ing sleep, hallucinations from fever fade with a
return to health, and paranoid delusions disap-
pear with treatment. Most altered states of con-
sciousness—though seemingly real while they
occur—are described as less real in hindsight.
RSMEs appear to be an exception.
A recent resurgence of interest in using
RSMEs in interventions (e.g., meditation, re-
treats, psychedelic substances) underscores the
urgency of better understanding the qualities of
these states, including their sense of realness
(e.g., Griffiths et al., 2006;Yaden, Le Nguyen,
Kern, et al., 2016;Yaden, McCall, & Ellens,
2015). RSMEs can be elicited in retreat settings
(Hood, 1977), through meditation (Newberg et
al., 2001), under conditions of sensory isolation
(Hood, Morris, & Watson, 1990), with psyche-
delic drugs (Griffiths et al., 2006,2008;Hood,
2014), and perhaps in the near future, with
noninvasive brain stimulation (Yaden, Ander-
son, Mattar, & Newberg, 2015;Yaden, Iwry, &
Newberg, 2016;Yaden & Newberg, 2014). Be-
yond intentional interventions, RSMEs also oc-
cur spontaneously. Taking intentional and spon-
taneous experiences into account, reviews of
survey research report that about 33% of Amer-
55THE NOETIC QUALITY
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icans have had intense spiritual experiences
(Hood, Hill, & Spilka, 2009).
Noetic quality has been measured with scales
such as the Mysticism Scale (M-Scale; Chen,
Yang, Hood, & Watson, 2011;Hood, 1975;
Hood & Williamson, 2000) and the Mystical
Experience Questionnaire (MEQ; MacLean,
Leoutsakos, Johnson, & Griffiths, 2012). How-
ever, these scales do not measure the full range
of feelings of realness associated with the noetic
spectrum, spanning from unreal (which might
capture instances of derealization), to an ordi-
nary sense of realness, to realer than real. Fur-
ther understanding of the factors that influence
the feeling of realness could provide informa-
tion regarding the nature of RSMEs, as well as
more basic aspects of the human perception and
evaluation of reality.
Beyond these questionnaire measures, writ-
ten descriptions may capture more information
regarding noetic qualities and psychological
processes underlying the special sense of real-
ness associated with RSMEs. In the current
study, we first analyzed psychometric responses
about RSMEs to determine how real partici-
pants’ RSMEs felt compared with normal real-
ity and how this feeling subsequently affected
various life domains. We then explored linguis-
tic features associated with ratings of realness
using computational linguistic analysis. In line
with the existing literature, we expected that
RSMEs would be reported as feeling more real
than usual reality and would have a positive
impact on various life domains. Although we
did not have specific predictions about what
linguistic features would be associated with the
feeling of realness, we performed linguistic
analysis to elucidate factors that characterize
real-feeling RSMEs.
Method
Participants
A website hosted by the University of Penn-
sylvania was used to explicitly survey spiritual
experiences. Of 2,718 respondents who began
the online survey, 701 participants (25.8%)
completed both the relevant survey items and
wrote at least 25 words about their RSMEs.
This drop-off of responses is consistent with
other online surveys requiring multiple choice
and written responses.
The included sample was generally middle so-
cioeconomic status (SES) and White (Lower
SES ⫽12.98%, middle ⫽75.32%, upper ⫽
9.12%; White ⫽82.74%, Black ⫽2.57%,
Asian ⫽2.14%, Hispanic ⫽3.71%, other ⫽
7.14%). There were slightly more men (52.78%)
than women (43.94%), and a large number of
participants indicated their religious affiliation as
other (32.38%) or atheist (26.39%). Other reli-
gious affiliations included Christian (18.40%),
Jewish (2.00%), Islamic (0.29%), Hindu or Bud-
dhist (7.56%), Pagan (3.00%), and Unitarian Uni-
versalist (2.43%).
Compared with those who were excluded due
to their insufficient responses, the included sam-
ple scored higher on mysticism (3.28 vs. 3.02
out of 4), t(1093) ⫽4.99, p⬍.001, d⫽.29, but
did not significantly differ from the excluded
sample in how real they felt their RSMEs were
at the time, t(480) ⫽1.92, p⫽.055 or in
hindsight, t(423) ⫽.59, p⫽.56, or in terms of
SES, ␹
2
(2) ⫽4.80, p⫽.09, gender, ␹
2
(1) ⫽
.19, p⫽.66, or ethnicity, ␹
2
(7) ⫽8.71, p⫽.27.
Measures
Participants completed various scales
through an online survey, a subset of which is
included in the current study.
1
The University
of Pennsylvania’s Institutional Review Board
approved all procedures.
Epistemic State. Participants answered
two items about the realness of their RSME on
a 5-point scale (1 ⫽much less real,5⫽much
more real): “When you had the experience how
did it compare to your usual reality?” (measur-
ing perceived realness during the experience)
and “Looking back at your experience— how
real do you consider it now?” (measuring per-
ceived realness in hindsight).
Death Transcendence Scale: Mysticism
subsection. The Mysticism subsection of the
Death Transcendence Scale (Hood & Morris,
1983) is based on Hood’s (1975) Mysticism
Scale (M-Scale), a well-established measure of
mystical experiences (Hood, et al., 2001). The
1
Other scales included the Quest Scale (Batson & Schoe-
nrade, 1991), the Religiousness Measure (Sethi & Selig-
man, 1993), the Intrinsic Religious Motivation Scale (Hoge,
1972), and the Index of Core Spiritual Experiences (Kass et
al., 1991). As the focus of the current study was on mystical
experiences, these measures were not analyzed here.
56 YADEN ET AL.
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Mysticism subscale (five items; Cronbach’s
␣⫽.90) measured experiences of unity, includ-
ing items such as, “I have felt at one with all
things.”
RSME Impact. Participants rated six sin-
gle-item questions on a 5-point scale (1 ⫽much
worse,5⫽significantly better) on how the
experience changed their “family,” “fear of
death,” “health,” “sense of purpose,” “religious-
ness,” and “spirituality.”
RSME Writing Prompt. An open-ended
writing prompt asked participants to
describe in detail the various spiritual and/or religious
experiences that you have had and how they have
affected you. If you have had a specific religious or
spiritual experience(s), please describe it in as much
detail as possible—as long or as short as you wish.
Participants wrote a total of 322,813 words
(M⫽460.5, SD ⫽692.64, median ⫽234,
range ⫽25– 6,776 words per entry).
Data Analyses
To test whether the realness of RSMEs was
related to the extent that the experience was
reported as “mystical,” we first correlated Epis-
temic State with the Mysticism subscale of the
Death Transcendence Scale (Hood & Morris,
1983). To test the relationship between the re-
alness of the experience and how positive the
experience was perceived to be, we correlated
the Epistemic State items with the RSME Im-
pact questions. We also calculated the partial
correlations between the realness of RSMEs and
the above variables, controlling for SES, gen-
der, ethnicity, and religious affiliation.
Then, to explore the qualities underlying
these responses, we drew on methods from
computational linguistics. First, the Linguistic
Inquiry and Word Count program, 2001 version
(LIWC2001; Pennebaker, Francis, & Booth,
2001) tokenized (i.e., split text into separate
words) and counted how often words from 64
different categories (e.g., social processes, func-
tion words, work, pronouns) occurred in each
participant’s writing. We then considered the
relative frequency of each word in each LIWC
dictionary and correlated them with the Epis-
temic State items. We used Bonferoni-corrected
pvalues as a heuristic for identifying meaning-
ful patterns and words.
Results
Descriptive Statistics
Most participants (69.62%) reported that
their RSMEs at the time felt much more real
(47.22%) or somewhat more real (23.40%) than
their usual reality (see Figure 1). Very few
participants (12.41%) rated their RSMEs as
somewhat or much less real than usual reality.
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
Much less
real (%)
Somewhat
less real (%)
Same (%) Somewhat
more real (%)
Much more
real (%)
Perceived realness relative to usual reality
Perceived Realness of RSMEs
During
In Hindsight
Figure 1. Perceived realness associated with Religious, spiritual, and mystical experiences
(RSMEs). Participants were asked to remember how real their RSME felt compared with their
usual reality, both during the experience and how real it remained to them in hindsight.
57THE NOETIC QUALITY
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In hindsight, the perceived realness of RSMEs
somewhat decreased, with 52.07% reporting
that their RSMEs felt much more real (35.95%)
or somewhat more real (16.12%) than usual
reality. Few participants rated their RSME as
less real in hindsight (8.70%).
Perceived realness during RSMEs was posi-
tively correlated with items in the Mysticism
subscale (Hood & Morris, 1983), as well as with
most of the RSME Impact items. Despite some-
what small effect sizes, the strongest correla-
tions were found with the sense of purpose and
spirituality variables (see Table 1). Perceived
realness in hindsight showed a similar pattern of
correlation. Associations remained almost the
same after controlling for SES, gender, ethnic-
ity, and religious affiliations.
Language Results
Table 2 reports significant correlations be-
tween the LIWC2001 (Pennebaker et al., 2001)
categories and the Epistemic State Scale. Par-
ticipants reporting that their RSMEs felt more
real at the time than their usual reality used
more language from the certainty category, r⫽
.16, p⬍.001, including words such as “all,”
“everything,” and “every,” and less language
from the first-person pronoun category, such as
“I” and “me,” r⫽⫺.17, p⬍.001. In hindsight,
the sense of realness related to using more “in-
clusive” words such as “and” and “we,” r⫽.12,
p⬍.01 and fewer “tentative” words such as
“probably” and “might,” r⫽⫺.10, p⬍.05.
Table 2 also reports specific words within cat-
egories that significantly correlated with the
Epistemic State items. For perceived realness
during the experience, the words “love,” “ev-
erything,” and “all” correlated with realness,
whereas the words “I,” “think,” and “not” cor-
related with “unrealness.” In hindsight, “and,”
“we,” “must,” and “love” correlated with real-
ness, while “probably,” “might,” “or,” and
“not” correlated with unrealness.
Discussion
First, the results from this study support find-
ings that RSMEs often include a noetic quality,
or a sense of realness (e.g., Hood, 1975;Hood
& Williamson, 2000;MacLean et al., 2012).
The noetic quality was reported during RSMEs
as well as in hindsight, measured on a scale
ranging from unreal to realer than real. Second,
the sense of realness correlated with a number
of positive outcomes. Third, feelings of realness
during RSMEs were associated with language
suggesting inclusiveness (e.g., “all,” “every-
thing”) and emotional connection (e.g., “love”),
and negatively associated with self-oriented
language (e.g., “I,” “me”) and indicative of cog-
nitive processing (e.g., “think”). In hindsight,
realness was positively associated with inclu-
siveness (e.g., “and,” “we”) and negatively as-
sociated with tentative language (e.g., “proba-
bly” and “might”). Taken together, these
findings provide some empirical insights into
the role the sense of realness plays in RSMEs.
The finding that RSMEs were rated as real—
and that very few participants rated their experi-
ences as unreal—is notable, as RSMEs have
Table 1
Correlations and Partial Correlations Amongst Epistemic States, Impact of RMSEs, and
Mystical Experiences
Factors 123456789
1. Epistemic State: Realness during the experience .45
ⴱⴱⴱ
.15
ⴱⴱⴱ
.24
ⴱⴱⴱ
.22
ⴱⴱⴱ
.28
ⴱⴱⴱ
.08
ⴱ
.30
ⴱⴱⴱ
.23
ⴱⴱⴱ
2. Epistemic State: Realness after the experience .46
ⴱⴱⴱ
.18
ⴱⴱⴱ
.25
ⴱⴱⴱ
.26
ⴱⴱⴱ
.30
ⴱⴱⴱ
.15
ⴱⴱⴱ
.28
ⴱⴱⴱ
.19
ⴱⴱⴱ
3. RSME Impact: Family .16
ⴱⴱⴱ
.18
ⴱⴱⴱ
.27
ⴱⴱⴱ
.31
ⴱⴱⴱ
.32
ⴱⴱⴱ
.24
ⴱⴱⴱ
.26
ⴱⴱⴱ
.11
ⴱⴱ
4. RSME Impact: Less fear of death .24
ⴱⴱⴱ
.25
ⴱⴱⴱ
.27
ⴱⴱⴱ
.39
ⴱⴱⴱ
.41
ⴱⴱⴱ
.04 .37
ⴱⴱⴱ
.18
ⴱⴱⴱ
5. RSME Impact: Health .22
ⴱⴱⴱ
.25
ⴱⴱⴱ
.32
ⴱⴱⴱ
.40
ⴱⴱⴱ
.44
ⴱⴱⴱ
.16
ⴱⴱⴱ
.26
ⴱⴱⴱ
.17
ⴱⴱⴱ
6. RSME Impact: Purpose .29
ⴱⴱⴱ
.31
ⴱⴱⴱ
.32
ⴱⴱⴱ
.45
ⴱⴱⴱ
.45
ⴱⴱⴱ
.22
ⴱⴱⴱ
.55
ⴱⴱⴱ
.08
7. RSME Impact: Religiousness .09
ⴱ
.15
ⴱⴱⴱ
.24
ⴱⴱⴱ
.05 .15
ⴱⴱⴱ
.22
ⴱⴱⴱ
.29
ⴱⴱⴱ
⫺.03
8. RSME Impact: Spirituality .30
ⴱⴱⴱ
.29
ⴱⴱⴱ
.26
ⴱⴱⴱ
.38
ⴱⴱⴱ
.29
ⴱⴱⴱ
.55
ⴱⴱⴱ
.27
ⴱⴱⴱ
.20
ⴱⴱⴱ
9. Mystical Experience .23
ⴱⴱⴱ
.17
ⴱⴱⴱ
.12
ⴱⴱ
.19
ⴱⴱⴱ
.18
ⴱⴱⴱ
.08
ⴱ
⫺.02 .21
ⴱⴱⴱ
Note. RSME ⫽Religious, spiritual, and mystical experience. Pearson correlations are below the diagonal; partial
correlations controlling for socioeconomic status (SES), gender, ethnicity, and religious affiliations are above the diagonal.
ⴱ
p⬍.05.
ⴱⴱ
p⬍.01.
ⴱⴱⴱ
p⬍.001.
58 YADEN ET AL.
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asometimes been conflated with episodes of dere-
alization and depersonalization. For example,
Simeon and Abugel (2006) describe RSMEs as a
form of derealization episode, which “manifests
itself as unpleasant more often than not. People
subjected to it are not looking for a visionary
experience, nor an opportunity to detach from
their previous selves. The result is much more
hellish than heavenly” (p. 149). This view is chal-
lenged by the results of the current study, in which
RSMEs were consistently perceived as more real
than one’s usual sense of reality—not as less real,
as in cases of derealization episodes.
In hindsight, a number of participants adjusted
their impressions of the relative realness of their
RSMEs, which makes more sense when we con-
sider the analogy of dreams. Consider a dream
that seems to contain a prediction about the future.
Many people might report that their dreams
seemed real as they were happening, but many
would, after reflection, reduce their assessments of
how real the dreams seemed in hindsight. Notably,
even in hindsight, few participants indicated that
their RSMEs felt unreal.
The association between the feeling of real-
ness and positive impacts from the experience is
another point of contrast between derealization
episodes and RSMEs found in this study.
Whereas derealization episodes are associated
with maladaptive outcomes such as a lack of
empathy and a sense of disconnection from
other people (Hunter, Sierra, & David, 2004),
RSMEs correlated with positive changes in
family life, reduced fear of death, better health,
and a greater sense of purpose, which aligns
with other research on RSME outcomes (Koe-
nig, King, & Carson, 2012). Although patho-
logical instances of RSMEs, some requiring
therapeutic care, have been described exten-
sively in the clinical literature (Lukoff, Lu, &
Turner, 1992), our findings suggest that RSMEs
more often result in adaptive outcomes. This
provides compelling evidence for future studies
on the connection between RSMEs and well-
being, making the present findings relevant to
positive psychological research (Seligman &
Csikszentmihalyi, 2000;Seligman, 2015). Fu-
ture studies might explore the aspects of those
experiences that contribute to well-being while
also exploring narrative, relational, and contex-
tual factors.
Our linguistic analysis correlating linguistic
features with the Epistemic State items identified
inclusive language related to connection with a
larger whole. Language associated with feelings
of realness included more words such as “all” and
“everything,” and fewer first-person pronouns
such as “I” and “my.” Words such as “all” and
Table 2
Language Categories Associated With Epistemic States
LIWC categories Words
Feeling of realness during the
spiritual experience
Positive correlations Certainty (r⫽.16)
ⴱⴱ
All (r⫽.10)
ⴱ
, everything (r⫽.08)
⫹
Quant (r⫽.10)
ⴱ
All (r⫽.10)
ⴱ
Sexual (r⫽.10)
ⴱ
Love (r⫽.11)
ⴱ
Negative correlations I (r⫽⫺.17)
ⴱⴱ
I(r⫽⫺.16)
ⴱⴱ
,me(r⫽⫺.10)
ⴱ
Verb (r⫽⫺.12)
ⴱⴱ
Think (r⫽⫺.16)
ⴱⴱ
, made (r⫽⫺.09)
⫹
, I’m (r⫽⫺.09)
⫹
,
died (r⫽⫺.08)
⫹
,do(r⫽⫺.08)
⫹
, went (r⫽⫺.07)
⫹
Negate (r⫽⫺.10)
ⴱ
Not (r⫽⫺.11)
ⴱ
Feeling of realness in hindsight
Positive correlations Inclusive (r⫽.12)
ⴱ
And (r⫽.10)
ⴱ
,we(r⫽.08)
⫹
Certainty (r⫽.08)
⫹
Must (r⫽.08)
⫹
Sexual (r⫽.07)
⫹
Love (r⫽.09)
⫹
Negative correlations Tentative (r⫽⫺.10)
⫹
Probably (r⫽⫺.13)
ⴱⴱ
, might (r⫽⫺.08)
⫹
,or(r⫽⫺.08)
⫹
,
someone (r⫽⫺.08)
⫹
Negate (r⫽⫺.08)
⫹
Not (r⫽⫺.09)
⫹
Note. LIWC ⫽Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count. LIWC linguistic correlates of the feeling of realness. This table
excludes categories in which words were used fewer than 50 times. The “Words” column includes single words within each
corresponding LIWC category most correlated with the Epistemic State measure.
⫹
p⬍.10.
ⴱ
p⬍.05.
ⴱⴱ
p⬍.01.
ⴱⴱⴱ
p⬍.001.
59THE NOETIC QUALITY
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“everything” may refer to a greater whole, as in
“at one with all things” or “everything felt alive.”
RSMEs commonly involve, and are sometimes
defined by, a connection to a greater whole and a
diminished sense of self (Hood et al., 2001).
Fewer first-person pronouns may reflect the oft-
reported sense of self fading away into a state of
unity during such experiences (Hood et al., 2009).
This phenomenological interpretation is theoreti-
cally consistent with the nature of RSMEs, espe-
cially the emphasis of selfless unity often found in
mystical experiences (Hood et al., 2001;Newberg
et al., 2001).
An alternative, qualification interpretation of
the language findings is that respondents who
reported heightened realness may have ex-
pressed more assurance in their language,
whereas those with lower realness hedged more.
This seems plausible given that the noetic qual-
ity—the feeling quality or any other subjective
contents associated with the experience— could
reasonably be the subject of doubt and skepti-
cism. Realness was correlated with words such
as “must” and “sure,” which are associated with
making definitive claims that communicate as-
surance in a particular view or belief. On the
other hand, the tentative language category
(e.g., “probably,” “might,” “or”) was negatively
correlated with realness in hindsight. Other
studies examining degrees of certainty have also
found inverse correlations between these two
categories (e.g., Cordova, Cunningham, Carl-
son, & Andrykowski, 2001). The phenomeno-
logical and qualification interpretations are both
plausible explanations of the language data, as
is some combination of both.
Limitations
Although this study found that RSMEs are of-
ten reported as more real than usual reality, several
limitations should be kept in mind. Participants
voluntarily completed an online survey on spiri-
tual experiences and may not represent the
broader population. The degree of “others” and
“atheists” in this sample is above the U.S. average.
As the feeling of realness in RSMEs is generally
associated with spirituality and religion, we be-
lieve that RSMEs would be rated as even more
real in a more religious or spiritual sample. Future
studies should include more diverse and represen-
tative samples and determine the extent to which
findings generalize or are specific to this sample.
The Epistemic State items used in this study
have not been fully validated and it is possible that
the framing of the questions could impact re-
sponses. The abstract nature of the noetic quality
makes it difficult to develop straightforward ques-
tions about one’s sense of realness. Further, our
analysis was limited to the questions available on
the survey. Future researchers should consider
what “realer than real” means to participants, in-
cluding additional measures that capture other
qualities related to noetic experiences, such as
emotional intensity. In addition, studies might ex-
amine what experiences people compare RMSEs
with, determining the baseline of comparison and
how RMSEs differ from that baseline.
The quantitative linguistic analysis performed
on participants’ writing provided some insight
into the underlying psychological processes re-
lated to the feeling of realness. However, our
interpretations of these data are necessarily spec-
ulative and theory-driven, and exploratory in na-
ture. There was an adequate sample size (over 700
individuals), and we drew on automated textual
analysis techniques, but calculated many correla-
tions, some of which may be significant by chance
alone. Also, although our language-effect sizes
were within the typical range for linguistic analy-
sis techniques (Schwartz et al., 2013), they repre-
sent a small amount of the overall variance and
should be interpreted accordingly. Future studies
should provide more specific hypothesis testing in
addition to qualitative research to disambiguate
our interpretations of the language findings.
Finally, this study focused on RSMEs and the
feeling of realness, an aspect of the noetic qual-
ity often associated with this category of expe-
rience (James, 1902/1985;Stace, 1960;Hood,
1975;MacLean et al., 2012). We have argued
that, although there may be some overlap be-
tween RSMEs and derealization episodes, evi-
dence from this study suggests that they are
distinct mental states with different conse-
quences. However, future researchers should
test these two distinct mental states directly to
provide further information regarding the rela-
tionship between epistemic states like derealiza-
tion, RSMEs, and other varieties of experience.
Conclusion
Our perception of reality is, in at least one
sense, a feeling— one that is subject to change
during certain mental states. The present study
60 YADEN ET AL.
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suggests that RSMEs represent a nonordinary
mental state that often feels “realer than real.”
Although the veracity of any knowledge claims
that accompany this feeling (e.g., “all is one” or
“everything is inherently good”) comprises ques-
tions for philosophy and theology rather than so-
cial science, the data suggest that the feeling of
realness in RSMEs is associated with generally
adaptive outcomes, with self-reported positive im-
pacts across multiple life domains. We hope that
this study can provide a basis for future studies
exploring the feeling of realness—the noetic qual-
ity—in RSMEs and other epistemic states.
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Accepted July 12, 2016 䡲
62 YADEN ET AL.
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