Absorption (psychology)

Relationship to other personality traits

Absorption is strongly correlated with openness to experience. Studies using factor analysis have suggested that the fantasy, aesthetics, and feelings facets of the NEO PI-R Openness to Experience scale are closely related to absorption and predict hypnotisability, whereas the remaining three facet scales of ideas, actions, and values are largely unrelated to these constructs. Absorption is unrelated to extraversion or neuroticism. One study found a positive correlation between absorption and need for cognition. Absorption has a strong relationship to self-transcendence in the Temperament and Character Inventory.

Emotional experience

Absorption can facilitate the experience of both positive and negative emotions. Positive experiences facilitated by absorption include the enjoyment of music, art, and natural beauty (e.g. sunsets) and pleasant forms of daydreaming. Absorption has also been linked to forms of maladjustment, such as nightmare frequency and anxiety sensitivity (fear of one's own anxiety symptoms), and dissociative symptoms. Absorption may act to amplify minor somatic symptoms, leading to an increased risk of conditions associated with hypersensitivity to internal bodily sensations, such as somatoform disorders and panic disorder. People may have a particular risk of the aforementioned problems when they are prone to both high absorption and to personality traits associated with negative emotionality.

Altered states of consciousness

A core feature of absorption is an experience of focused attention wherein: "objects of absorbed attention acquire an importance and intimacy that are normally reserved for the self and may, therefore, acquire a temporary self-like quality. These object identifications have mystical overtones." This capacity for focused attention facilitates the experience of altered states of consciousness. In addition to individual differences in hypnotizability, absorption is associated with differential responses to other procedures for inducing altered states of consciousness, including meditation, marijuana use, and biofeedback. A review of studies on differential response to the drug psilocybin found that absorption had the largest effect of all the psychological variables assessed on the intensity of individual experiences of altered states of consciousness. Absorption was strongly associated with overall consciousness alteration and with mystical-type experiences and visual effects induced by psilocybin. Researchers have suggested that individual differences in both absorption and responsiveness to hallucinogenic drugs could be related to the binding potential of serotonin receptors (specifically 5-HT_2A) which are the main site of action of classic hallucinogens, such as LSD and psilocybin.

A series of studies has found that people higher in absorption have a greater propensity towards having religious experiences (also known as spiritual experiences), which may have a sensory-like character (e.g., reporting the Holy Spirit "rush" through them). Higher levels of absorption have been found to predict people reporting more and stronger mystical experiences when wearing a placebo version of a God helmet—that is, a helmet that supposedly induces spiritual experiences through magnetic stimulation of the temporal lobes of the brain but in fact provides no magnetic stimulation. Furthermore, in most studies people higher in absorption report experiencing greater levels of awe when viewing vast landscapes, art exhibitions, and other potentially awe-inducing things. Given these findings on spiritual experiences, placebo god helmets, and awe, the authors of a 2019 research paper suggest that higher levels of absorption may give individuals a greater "talent" for "experienc[ing] as real what must be imagined". The authors argue that this is a key aspect of most religious or spiritual traditions, while noting that they are not necessarily dismissing the reality of what is reported in spiritual experiences. Absorption is also found to be related to experiences of communication with spirits.

Dream recall

Research has found that frequency of dream recall is associated with absorption and related personality traits, such as openness to experience and proneness to dissociation. A proposed explanation is the continuity model of human consciousness. This model proposes that people who are prone to vivid and unusual experiences during the day, such as fantasy and daydreaming, will tend to have vivid and memorable dream content, and hence will be more likely to remember their dreams.