Out-of-Body Experiences and Hallucinatory Experiences: A Psychological Approach

Abstract

In an out-of-body experience (OBE), the “self,” or center of awareness, seems to temporarily occupy a position spatially remote from one's body. In support of previous studies, undergraduate students reporting OBEs ( N = 132) showed a higher level of cognitive-perceptual schizotypy, absorption, dissociation, fantasy, and hallucination proneness, and visual imagery than did non-OBErs ( N = 516). Absorption and cognitive-perceptual schizotypy were the best discriminators for visual and tactile hallucinations ( p < .001). The results support a dissociation model of OBEs. Some persons reported beneficial adaptive effects from their OBEs. Despite the widespread occurrence of anomalous perceptual experiences, including OBEs, in the general population, the term hallucination still has pejorative overtones. The present results are in agreement with other studies in which measures of fantasy proneness seemed to be successful predictors of psychic phenomena (Myers, Austrin, Grisso, & Nickeson, 1983; Wilson & Barber, 1982). Such findings suggest that OBEs may be related to fantasy proneness and cognitive-perceptual schizotypy, which are correlated with each other. Future research should focus on the role of different types of OBEs in personality and cognitive processing.