The researchers could identify no plausible cause for the small but statistically significant effect.
JAMES FELTON
Edited by Laura Simmons
A new study looking at reports of reincarnation claims to have found an odd correlation between the manner of death of a person and the claimed “rebirth” of an individual who remembers this “past life” in some way. Since this is October, the spookiest of all the months, we thought we’d take a look.
The first study
In 1988, psychologist N.K. Chadha and psychiatrist Ian Stevenson conducted a small study on reports of reincarnation, and focusing on the cause of death of the “previous person”, (PP) or the person whom it is claimed a second person is reincarnated from.
Looking at a pool of “326 cases suggestive of reincarnation”, the team claimed to have found that where the supposed “previous person’s” death had been violent, the time until a claimed “reincarnation” was shorter than if the claimed “previous person’s” death had been natural.
“The effect was found in all cultures studied (except Sri Lanka), but reached statistical significance in only one individual culture (India) and for the group taken as a whole,” the team wrote in their study.
“The age of the subject when first speaking about the previous life was also found to be significantly lower with violent death (compared with natural death).”
Let’s be frank; we’re not talking hard science here, and the researchers drew much broader conclusions than their data could necessarily support.
“We ourselves cannot think of any plausible normal hypothesis to account for our data on the intermission period, and so we provisionally interpret it to mean that, if reincarnation occurs, persons dying violently tend to be reborn more quickly than those dying naturally,” that team wrote in their paper, for example, whilst clarifying that this is if reincarnation occurs.
“This accords with traditions of Hinduism, according to which, every action in our lives, both of body and mind, is stored in the form of a Samskara or impression in our minds. Desires persist after death as strongly as before and ultimately lead to a new birth.”
Of course you might question why this effect would only reach statistical significance in one country, and wonder why reincarnation appears to be respecting Sri Lanka’s borders and not delivering those who died by violence in the numbers seen elsewhere.
But in short, it was quite a small study, and with so many variables in how these “cases” are collected and reported, it doesn’t tell you much. As the team explains, it is pretty difficult to eliminate information transfer between families and communities, so all that these are documents of is claims, not confirmed cases.
New investigations
Now a new team from the University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies have attempted to look into this claimed effect, to see if it holds up in a larger dataset.
The team looked at a database of reports put together by the Division of Perceptual Studies, which encompasses 2,254 cases, 74 percent of which the investigators felt that the details of a “past life” provided by the supposedly reincarnated person matched the details of another previously deceased person.
This includes plenty of details of variables in the cases, such as how the supposed PP died, information on whether the supposed reincarnated child had been fed details of the PP by the family or during investigation, as well as how many details the “reincarnated” supplied which the investigators deemed “matched” with a PP.
Small but significant effect
“There had been an earlier published report suggesting a relationship between violent death and a shorter time between death and birth,” lead author Saeedeh Sadeghi, PhD, said in a statement.
“We wanted to test that relationship more systematically and see whether it could be explained by cultural or psychological influences. To our surprise, the relationship was still there when we tested it in a much larger number of cases, and the social and psychological factors we examined did not explain it away.”
The effect they found was small, but statistically significant.
The team found that the median time between the death and claimed rebirth was 16 months, but with unexpected deaths the turnaround time to get back at human shenanigans could be cut down by 40 percent.
However, the team stresses that the association was small, accounting for approximately 2–3 percent of the variance in “intermission time” between death and supposed reincarnation.
“This is the largest systematic study to date of temporal patterns in reported past-life memories,” Sadeghi added.
“Individual cases can leave room for different interpretations, but patterns across many cases are much harder to explain as exaggeration, fantasy or fabrication.”
Interestingly (though please don’t take this as an endorsement of reincarnation) the team found that this effect still existed when the child involved did not make any claims about remembering their deaths.
So, that’s reincarnation confirmed?
No. It’s worth really stressing that these are not clean cut cases of people clearly being reincarnations of someone else.
The possibility of information transfer within and between communities is extremely difficult to rule out, and provides a much more plausible explanation than reincarnation in many cases, whilst you can’t really rule out biases either, as much as you might try.
Plus there is the problem that a person claiming to have been reincarnated could provide a few details, and with plenty of deaths out there to choose from you can post-select the person who sounds most similar.
News of violent deaths travels wider than natural deaths, and this could certainly be a factor that complicates the picture. If hints of this person then gets back to the claimant, for example by their family, well then you’ve doubled your investigative problems.
What can we conclude from this? As with the first study, you’re placing a lot of trust in what investigators have deemed a plausible match between supposed “parent persons” and the supposedly reincarnated. These cases are pretty murky, with plenty of possibility for memory contamination and other plausible explanations that don’t require reincarnation.
We know that sounds annoying to people who want to believe in reincarnation (and you’re absolutely free to) but as the researchers make clear, the scientific evidence here is not strong enough to make any claims of reincarnation. Nevertheless, claims of these things are always interesting, even if you suspect what they are really studying is cultural beliefs and the transfer of information in communities.
“We hope this work encourages researchers to look beyond individual cases and ask whether there are broader patterns that can be tested systematically,” Marieta Pehlivanova, PhD, added.
“The mechanisms underlying these findings are currently unclear, but that gives us even more reason to keep looking, not to look away.”
The study is published in Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research and Practice.
