Timeline for Is there a scientific explanation for dramatic body shaking and trembling in religious settings? (see videos for illustrative examples)
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
31 events
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| May 17, 2021 at 1:36 | history | edited | Tony Mobbs | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Added laughing and drunkenness to the exhibited behaviours.
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| Apr 7, 2021 at 18:04 | history | edited | Tony Mobbs | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Apr 7, 2021 at 12:27 | comment | added | user25376 | Tony, remember to update also the part about which hypotheses have and have not been dismissed. As it stands right know, it sounds as if attention seeking, dissociative disorder and divine intervention are all accepted as valid candidate explanations. | |
| Apr 7, 2021 at 5:39 | history | edited | Tony Mobbs | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Nov 25, 2020 at 15:46 | history | edited | Tony Mobbs | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Nov 25, 2020 at 15:38 | history | edited | Tony Mobbs | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Added placeholder for dissociative disorders
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| S Aug 26, 2020 at 2:23 | history | suggested | user25376 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
fixed a few typos (eight instead of six/seven, etc.)
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| Aug 26, 2020 at 2:00 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Aug 26, 2020 at 2:23 | |||||
| Aug 24, 2020 at 1:57 | history | edited | Tony Mobbs | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Added a new hypothesis - attention seeking.
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| Aug 23, 2020 at 5:17 | comment | added | Tony Mobbs | Let us continue this discussion in chat. | |
| Aug 23, 2020 at 5:17 | comment | added | Tony Mobbs | Hypothesis 4 includes both the performance of the behaviours and the reporting of emotions such as happiness and joy. It is likely (or at least conceivable) that the individuals do feel positive emotions due to feelings of friendship and inclusiveness. Each of the religious sects seem to have their own unique variant of behaviours indicating that the behaviours are learnt rather than an involuntary or innate response to a particular or strong emotion. If the behaviours were involuntary reactions to hysteria (or some other emotion), the behaviours would be the same across all religious sects. | |
| Aug 23, 2020 at 4:56 | history | edited | Tony Mobbs | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Aug 23, 2020 at 3:31 | comment | added | user25376 | There are people reporting feelings of love and peace accompanying these behaviors too (link, link). Taken together, all seems to indicate the presence of strong emotional manifestations accompanying the external behaviors. If conforming to social norms / peer pressure is the cause, you would expect emotions like fear, stress, anxiety, frustration. You would not expect individuals reporting electricity, fire, peace, love, ecstasy or crying in hysterical states. | |
| Aug 23, 2020 at 3:29 | comment | added | user25376 | (We will probably have to move this to a chat) I find it hard to believe that the following people rehearsed their behaviors to meet their groups' expectations: link, link, link. And abnormal behaviors aside, as I said before, there is an emotional component to the phenomenon also. You have people reporting electricity and in tears at the same time (link), people shaking and crying hysterically (link), etc. | |
| Aug 23, 2020 at 2:44 | comment | added | Tony Mobbs | Shaking and jerking behaviours are easy to learn and trivial to perform on command. Although unusual, such behaviours are not complicated or extraordinary. The parsimonious explanation is that the individuals are merely performing behaviours so as to conform to group norms (hypothesis 4). Conforming behaviours are often useful (driving on the same side of the road, stopping at red lights, & brushing our teeth) but that does not imply that the emotions and behaviours align. For example, stopping at red lights when driving is sometimes frustrating, but we do so as to conform to societal norms. | |
| Aug 23, 2020 at 1:15 | comment | added | user25376 | Another possibility is that people who are acting hysterical, crying, shaking and trembling, etc. are just faking it all, i.e. they are basically actors displaying a fake performance out of social pressure. However, this would require everyone to be an outstanding actor (either trained or amateur, although not paid, as was argued in hypothesis 6), which I also find hard to believe. | |
| Aug 23, 2020 at 1:15 | comment | added | user25376 | These emotions and behaviors are much more complicated to feel and perform. So what is still missing in my layman opinion is an explanation of how peer pressure can trigger these non-trivial emotions and behaviors in people. Is there a known mechanism by which peer pressure can make someone become hysterical, shake, jerk or contort convulsively? | |
| Aug 23, 2020 at 1:15 | comment | added | user25376 | Granted, but I still think there is a difference in this phenomenon with respect to those 4 examples. In those examples, peer pressure is acting as a strong influence on people's rationality and decision making process, and the behaviors involved are not "extraordinary": drinking, pushing a button, holding an object/animal, playing the role of a prisoner or a guard, these are not complicated things to do. In contrast, in videos like the one I just shared, we see people in hysterical states, crying, shaking, jerking, collapsing, convulsing, contorting like in the Exorcist, etc. | |
| Aug 22, 2020 at 22:50 | comment | added | Tony Mobbs | On the contrary: The Milgram experiment, Stanford prison experiment, religious snake handling and religious drinking of poison show that some individuals will go to extremes to conform to social norms (even unto death). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_handling_in_religion en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_the_Kool-Aid | |
| Aug 22, 2020 at 19:19 | comment | added | user25376 | I found another very disturbing video where people exhibit very extreme and dramatic behaviors including body contorting reminiscent of scenes of the Exorcist movie. This video is crazy. I'm having a hard time believing "conforming to social norms" can explain it. Toward the end of the video we can even observe what appear to be children experiencing this. I'm puzzled. | |
| Aug 17, 2020 at 4:47 | comment | added | user25376 | This video uploaded a few days ago compares and identifies interesting similarities between manifestations that have occurred in the Toronto Blessing, current Charismatic sects and Hindu Shaktipat. The uploader is Christian, so there is an evident bias to label these manifestations as demonic, but subjective interpretations aside, the similarities identified in the video might be worth considering. Maybe there is an underlying common phenomenon going on that can explain these similarities? | |
| Aug 16, 2020 at 3:04 | history | edited | Tony Mobbs | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Responding to comments
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| Aug 15, 2020 at 23:18 | comment | added | Tony Mobbs | What makes the original question interesting is explaining the incongruence between the self-reported emotions and the exhibited behaviours. The emotions of stress, anxiety, fear, trauma, and confusion are congruent with collapsing, fainting, trembling, jerking and shaking. Testing whether (and under what circumstances) some individuals conform to social norms and the directions of authority figures out of fear, confusion, stress and anxiety is itself and interesting hypothesis? The YouTube testimonials suggest that this is the case. An interesting line of future investigation. | |
| Aug 15, 2020 at 7:21 | comment | added | user25376 | Not sure if this is worth being considered an 8th hypothesis, but during informal conversations with people in other sites someone put forward the idea that maybe the shaking / trembling is just the body's natural way of releasing pent up stress / anxiety / trauma, like this polar bear. I don't know if this phenomenon has a name, how common it is in humans and to what extent it could account for the details and nuances of the manifestations exhibited in the OP's examples. | |
| Aug 15, 2020 at 6:06 | comment | added | Tony Mobbs | Hypnosis added as a seventh hypothesis and five testimonials included. | |
| Aug 15, 2020 at 6:02 | history | edited | Tony Mobbs | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Responding to comments
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| Aug 15, 2020 at 3:44 | comment | added | user25376 | 2) In hypothesis 4 you talk about abundant cases of former experiencers of shaking and trembling who eventually ceased to have these behaviors. I think it would be helpful for the reader to explicitly reference a few examples, say, the best 3 or 4 testimonials you found on this. | |
| Aug 15, 2020 at 3:43 | comment | added | user25376 | Thanks for the super complete answer. In short the phenomenon has not been the subject of rigorous scientific research yet, the real causes of the phenomenon remain a mystery and the best we have today is educated guesses. I just have a few comments: 1) given the prevalence in most videos of an authority figure performing some form of signal that triggers these dramatic somatic reactions in people, do you think hypnosis is playing a role in all of this and should be included among the hypotheses? | |
| Aug 15, 2020 at 2:09 | vote | accept | CommunityBot | ||
| Aug 15, 2020 at 2:09 | history | bounty ended | CommunityBot | ||
| Aug 15, 2020 at 0:06 | history | answered | Tony Mobbs | CC BY-SA 4.0 |