The near-death experience is one of the most challenging phase states to study. The vast majority of research consists of surveys of survivors, and scientists are forced to draw conclusions solely from the words of the subjects. The truthfulness of such accounts is always in question. Linguists from Iran, Shima Solati, Ali Izanloo, and Azam Estaji, unexpectedly proposed an interesting method for discerning false accounts: liars use far fewer words than people telling the truth.
The authors selected 50 stories from survivors featured in the television show Life After Life and recruited 50 volunteers, whom they asked to invent a story about their purported near-death experiences. The accounts of both liars and the (potential) real survivors were studied in terms of the complexity of the constructions used and the amount of extra information provided.
The researchers noted that truthful individuals complicate the narrative significantly. They mention irrelevant details, use metaphors and comparisons, and repeat some thoughts. Meanwhile, liars focus on the coherence and strength of their story – a truthful person does not concern themselves with these matters and adds whatever details their memory allows.
The authors’ method offers mathematical precision: speech is converted into written text, and the computer counts the number of words. For example, in this case, the group of liars uttered half as many words as the group of survivors (28,000 versus 56,000 words).
Would such a method of confirming the truthfulness of a narrative convince you that someone has really had a near-death experience?
The article was published in January 2024 in the Journal of Researches in Linguistics.
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