Psychedelics Altering Beliefs About The Universe, Study Finds

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A study conducted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research found that a single psychedelic experience can significantly alter beliefs about consciousness, purpose, and the universe. The study showed that nonphysicalist beliefs, such as the universe being conscious and inanimate objects having experiences, increased after psychedelic experiences. Results also showed that beliefs increased in specific areas and that higher ratings of mystical experience were associated with greater changes in beliefs.


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Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research’s study found that a single psychedelic experience can significantly alter beliefs about consciousness, purpose, and the universe. The study showed that nonphysicalist beliefs, such as the universe being conscious and inanimate objects having experiences, increased after psychedelic experiences. The percentage of participants identifying as believers of a higher power rose from 29% to 59%. These changes remained consistent even years later.

This is the first time that scientists have studied the effects of psychedelics on belief systems.

Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers continue their exploration into psychedelics and how these drugs may produce a wide range of profound changes in perception, cognition and mood. In a recent study, published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, experts from the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research explored belief changes related to psychedelic experiences. They found that a single psychedelic experience increased a range of nonphysicalist beliefs as well as beliefs about consciousness, meaning and purpose. Further, the magnitude of belief changes was associated with qualitative features of the experience.

Participants also experienced visual and auditory changes after the psychedelic experience.

For the study, the researchers analyzed data gathered between August 2020 and July 2021 on 2,374 people who had a belief-changing psychedelic experience. Participants averaged 35 years of age and were predominately male (67%). Almost half of the participants (43%) indicated that the belief-changing psychedelic experience was their first.

For the survey, participants rated how they felt about 45 belief statements, from before to after they had the psychedelic experience, as well as at the time they filled out the survey. The results of the analysis revealed the beliefs were divided into five factors: The Nature of Reality, Consciousness and Its Nature, Meaning and Its Source, Purpose and Its Source, and Superstition.

While belief changes increased, superstition changes were less prominent.

Results of the analysis revealed increases in beliefs related to the first four factors. In contrast, belief changes for superstition were not as significant. Examples of increases in nonphysicalist beliefs included increased belief in: the universe having consciousness, inanimate objects having experiences, and consciousness existing beyond biological life.

"Up to this point we have undertheorized and underemphasized psychedelic-induced belief changes," says Sandeep Nayak, M.D., lead investigator and assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "Guardrails against certain belief changes in clinical use are important, but the extent to which such nonnaturalistic beliefs may be therapeutic is unclear. There’s much more to learn here." .

The belief changes measured in this study are highly associated with the qualitative features of the psychedelic experience.

The percentage of participants who identified as "believers" (e.g., in ultimate reality, a higher power and/or God, etc.) increased from 29% before the psychedelic experience to 59% after the experience. At both the factor and individual item level, higher ratings of mystical experience were associated with greater changes in beliefs. Belief changes assessed after the experience (on average eight years later) remained largely unchanged at the time of the survey.

The study surveyed belief changes of 2,374 people who have had a psychedelic experience.

"The magnitude of belief changes is strongly associated with mystical experience ratings, which are assessed without reference to supernatural beliefs," says Roland Griffiths, Ph.D., the Oliver Lee McCabe III, Ph.D., Professor in the Neuropsychopharmacology of Consciousness at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and founding director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousnees Research.

Long-term effects of psychedelics on belief changes need more research.

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