Posted by:
spanner
(
)
Date: February 16, 2012 06:38PM
There are a number of well studied cognitive and memory phenomena that account for ALL of the stories you hear in church. The most common one I have seen in LDS settings is "imagination inflation". My old supervisor was one of the lead researchers in this area (I work in a related field). A short definition is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_errors#Imagination_inflationBasically the environment of the church - with the repetition of personal visions and revelations in F&T meeting - establishes a schema (or expectation of events, feelings etc) for such events, and makes them 'normal' for church members.
Then when something happens - like the father's prayer or the mother's fond thoughts of grandma - a seed is planted. Over time, with repeated rumination, the event changes in line with the LDS schema.
Memories are not set in concrete. Everytime you open up a memory it becomes plastic and capable of being altered if you are not careful (knowing this happens can help innoculate you against it, but even that is not foolproof). If you think of something frequently, it can very rapidly be molded to fit a desirable schema.
We know what the original event for the mother was, and it sounds like a classic case of imagination inflation; for the father it may have been that he thought about his dead brother (for whatever reason, maybe the brother went on a mission, or maybe he never got the chance) at about the time he was deciding to go on the mission. Subconciously he knew he needed to go, he thought of his brother, imagination did the rest. Attributing the direction to his brother preserves his own personal image (or schema) of himself as a rebel.
The event ronas describes above is similar to some I have had which are due to sleep paralysis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysisAs a preteen I combined sleep paralysis with imagination inflation and was convinced Satan was out to get me personally. It was years and a number of episodes later that I discovered what sleep paralysis was. It can be truly terrifying.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/16/2012 06:39PM by spanner.