Human Centered Anthropology at the Borderlands of Experience
Feb 27, 2025
Tanya Luhrmann, a Stanford anthropologist and expert on unusual sensory experiences, shares her fascinating insights into the intersection of religion, psychology, and culture. She explores how training shapes religious experiences, revealing that practice often outweighs mere belief. Her work on voice-hearing connects these phenomena to broader questions of consciousness, while she argues for recognizing psychosis as a valid experience. With her unique blend of anthropological and psychological methods, Luhrmann crafts a compelling narrative on the richness of human experience.
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Experience Trumps Belief
- Tanya Luhrmann found that experience, not mere belief, determines how people come to perceive divinity.
- Training and practice shape the vividness of religious experiences across individuals.
Combine Ethnography With Psychology
- Integrate psychological methods when studying subjective experience to strengthen arguments.
- Use mixed methods: interviews, imagery tasks, randomized assignments, and multiple scales for robustness.
Absorption Predicts Vivid Experiences
- Luhrmann linked vivid religious experience to a psychological trait measured by the absorption scale.
- She combined interviews, imagery tasks, and surveys to show practice increases experiential vividness.
