People who are more mindful—characterized by receptive attention to present experience—show less defensive responding after being reminded of their own death. Seven experiments found that less mindful individuals displayed stronger worldview defense and self-esteem striving after mortality salience, whereas more mindful individuals did not defend values associated with mindfulness. More mindful participants wrote about their death for longer, which partly explained their reduced worldview defense, and they suppressed death thoughts less immediately after the reminder. The findings suggest mindfulness reduces typical defensive reactions to death awareness by altering conscious processing of threat.
Out-of-body experiences (OBEs), where individuals feel detached from their physical bodies, often lead to lasting increases in pro-social behaviors such as tolerance and empathy. This article proposes that these changes occur through ego dissolution—a sense of unity and interconnectedness similar to that induced by psychedelics. The authors examine potential brain mechanisms, focusing on the temporoparietal junction and the Default Mode Network, to explain how OBEs might enhance empathy. The work synthesizes existing ideas to illuminate the relationship between altered states of consciousness and empathic improvement.
Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) sometimes involve reports of veridical perception—accurate information obtained from a vantage point outside the body without conventional sensory input. While case collections and early laboratory studies suggest this possibility, replication under standard protocols has been challenging. This review argues that typical target-identification paradigms, conducted in sterile settings with inexperienced participants, misalign with the dynamics of the OBE state. Five key determinants constrain laboratory outcomes: the participant's mental/emotional state, the participant-researcher relationship, researcher intention, variability in participant skill, and the intrinsic purpose of the experience. Reframing methodology around these determinants and complementing lab tasks with rigorously vetted spontaneous cases can increase ecological validity while preserving falsifiability, offering a pathway toward more effective investigation of veridical perception in OBEs and implications for models of consciousness.