![]() To compare, 95% percent of people on average agreed about what the voice said when they heard actual speech. So suggesting a paranormal research topic mattered only when the audio was ambiguous.įurther, when people said they heard a voice in the EVP, only 13% agreed about exactly what the voice said. For real human speech, all participants nearly always heard a voice (99% “yes” responses), and for noise all participants almost never heard a voice (1% “yes” responses). The EVP and speech-in-noise sounds were inherently ambiguous – they sort of sounded like a voice was present and sort of did not.Ĭompared to the control condition, the suggestion of a paranormal research topic made people more likely to report hearing voices for both the EVP (48% versus 34% “yes” responses) and the voices hidden in noise (58% versus 40% “yes” responses). Across the study, participants heard the purported EVP, recordings of actual human speech, recordings of human speech obscured in noise, and recordings of only noise. If they responded “yes,” they reported what they thought the voice had said. In a study trial, participants heard a sound and were asked if they detected a voice in the stimulus. The other half were told that we were studying speech perception in noisy environments – a typical (if perhaps boring) perceptual psychology experiment. ![]() Half of participants were told that the experiment was part of a research project on paranormal EVP. We asked three questions: Do people perceive alleged EVP to be voices under controlled conditions? If they hear voices, do they agree about what the voices are saying without being told what they’re supposed to hear? And finally, does it matter whether or not they think the research topic is paranormal? Our EVP were audio recordings from a ghost-hunting reality show. In my lab, we recently conducted an experiment to examine how expectations might influence the perception of purported EVP. Valerie Everett, CC BY-SA EVP in the perceptual research lab Interpretations of speech in noise – a situation similar to EVP where the alleged voice is difficult to discern – can shift entirely based upon what the listener expects to hear.īut if it’s not a ghost…. People’s expectations about what they’re supposed to hear can result in the illusory perception of tones, nature sounds, machine sounds, and even voices when only acoustic white noise – like the sound of a detuned radio – exists. Research in mainstream psychology has shown that people will readily perceive words in strings of nonsensical speech sounds. EVP websites advise paranormal researchers to ask themselves, “ Is it a voice…are you sure?” or to “Share results among fellow investigators and try to prevent investigator bias when reviewing data.” Therein lies a methodological difficulty. Paranormal investigators typically decode the content of EVP by arriving at consensus among themselves. The critical leap in EVP research is the point at which odd sounds are interpreted as voices that communicate with intention. What are the possible explanations for these sounds? Other research, however, has suggested that EVP have been captured under acoustically controlled circumstances in recording studios. In some instances, alleged EVP are the voices of the investigators or interference from radio transmissions – problems that indicate shoddy data collection practices. The chain of evidence for most purported EVP makes hoaxes difficult to rule out, but let’s assume that many of these sounds are not deliberate fraud. ![]() Perceived contents of EVP range from threatening (“You’re going to hell”) to bizarre (“ Egypt Air”). The sounds are generally brief – most examples consist of single words or short phrases. These purported communications have been dubbed electronic voice phenomena (EVP). The premise is that audio recording devices can register otherwise inaudible communications from discarnate entities. Later, the audio recordings are scoured in search of messages from spirits. Microphones capture ambient sounds during the investigation. Anecdotal evidence even suggests that ghost-hunting reality shows have increased public openness to paranormal research, which usually entails a small group traipsing through reportedly haunted locales at night with various ghost-hunting technologies.Īudio recorders figure prominently in paranormal researchers’ toolkits. These beliefs have spawned thousands of groups dedicated to investigating paranormal phenomena and a proliferation of ghost-hunting entries in the reality television market. Nontrivial numbers of Americans believe in the paranormal.
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