Originally posted by Zakath
It's possibly a learned behavior. I'll refer you to N.P. Spanos' article in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology Vol. 95 pg 26 in 1986
Here's a summary...
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N.P. Spanos et al begin their article with a neat encapsulation of the status of psychological research into glossolalia:
"Glossolalia (i.e., speaking in tongues) is vocalization that sounds languagelike but is devoid of semantic meaning or syntax. In the Christian tradition this vocalization pattern is associated with the ideas of possession by the Holy Spirit and communication with God through prayer or prophecy. Some scientific investigators conceptualize glossolalia as the product of an altered or dissociated state of consciousness, whereas others view it as symptomatic of psychopathology.
"The available empirical data fail to support either of these hypotheses. For example, both ethnographic observations and experimental findings indicate that glossolalia can occur in the absence of kinetic activity, disorientation, and other purported indexes of trance, and that experienced glossolalics do not differ from nonglossolalic controls on measures of absorption in subjective experience and hypnotic susceptibility. Relatedly, the available empirical data fail to support the hypothesis that glossolalics suffer higher levels of psychopathology than nonglossolalics."
Spanos et al then go on to detail their own research, in which they tried to teach glossolalia as a learnable skill. First, 60 subjects listened to a 60-second sample of genuine glossolalia. All subjects then tried to speak in tongues for 30 seconds. Some 20% spoke in tongues immediately without further training. The subjects were then divided into a control group and a group that received various kinds of training. Tests then showed that 70% of the trained subjects were now fluent (?) in glossolalia. Glossolalia, therefore, seems likely to be a type of learned behavior rather than a special altered state of mind.
(Spanos, Nicholas P., et al; "Glossolalia as Learned Behavior: An Experimental Demonstration," Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95:21, 1986.)
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In another example,
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"Werner Cohn, at the University of British Columbia, took naïve students to Pentecostal churches to hear glossolalia and then asked the students to speak in glossolalia in the laboratory. They were able to successfully do so. Their recordings were then played to glossolalists who described the glossolalia as beautiful examples."
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Link to entire article The fact that experienced Christian tongues speakers identified Cohn's students (some of whom were atheists) as "speaking in tongues" is highly suspicious to me.
If glossolalia were a supernatural gift from the Christian deity, then it would be highly unlikely that it would show up in decidedly non-Christian religious worship. Glossolalia has also been observed in non-Christian religions including:
- the Peyote cult among the North American Indians,
- the Haida Indians of the Pacific Northwest,
- Shamans in the Sudan,
- the Shango cult of the West Coast of Africa,
- the Shago cult in Trinidad, the Voodoo cult in Haiti,
- the Aborigines of South American and Australia,
- the aboriginal peoples of the subarctic regions of North America and Asia,
- the Shamans in Greenland,
- the Dyaks of Borneo,
- the Zor cult of Ethiopia,
- the Siberian shamans,
- the Chaco Indians of South America,
- the Curanderos of the Andes,
- the Kinka in the African Sudan,
- the Thonga shamans of Africa,
- Tibetan monks.
Source: Jennings, George J. "An Ethnological Study of Glossolalia" Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation. March 1968.
