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Basically the title. I would like to know if there are scientific studies on the phenomenon of experiencing sudden body shaking and trembling in religious settings, usually in response to the command of a person who represents a religious authority. Please take a look at the following examples for illustrative purposes: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U

Many people claim they are the result of a supernatural influence acting upon these individuals. Here are some quotes from first-hand experiencers of the phenomenon:

  • Testimony 1: this is by far the best testimony I know of. The context is the Brownsville Revival. In the video a lady testifies about her experience of body shaking and trembling allegedly as a manifestation of the Holy Spirit acting upon her. In fact she begins to shake and tremble on camera as she is narrating her testimony. At 6:46 the lady and the preacher begin to talk specifically about the causes of her tremors. At 7:12 she says "[...]like right now, I think the Glory of God is so strong up here, my body can't really take it and that's why I'm doing this [...]"
  • Testimony 2: The testimony as a whole is powerful, but regarding body shaking and trembling at 4:54 the guy describes his experience. Here a quote: "[...] my body started doing things that defied metaphysics, my body started doing things that I couldn't explain. I started levitating and bouncing off of the chair I was sitting in like a jack hammer [...]"
  • Testimony 3: "[...]I felt an electricity, a fire[...]" followed by the girl trembling and fainting in reaction to the command of the preacher. Then the preacher says "The power of God is the kingdom of God manifesting in our midst[...]".
  • Testimony 4: "[...]I felt an electricity all through my body, in all of my joints[...]", followed by the woman trembling and fainting in reaction to the command of the preacher (just like in the previous testimony).
  • Testimony 5: "[...]I felt a heat, and I felt a peace[...]", followed by the woman trembling and fainting in reaction to the command of the preacher (again).
  • Testimony 6: "[...]I felt a vibrating that I'm feeling right now[...]", followed by the guy fainting and feeling a sort of ecstasy based on his facial expression, in response to the preacher's command.
  • Testimony 7: "[...]I was burning all over, and I felt so free, He just embraces you and makes you feel so loved[...]", followed by the guy losing the equilibrium and fainting, in response to the preacher's command.

Many of these videos pertain to Andres Bisonni's ministry, who has run dozens of "miracle crusades" around the world. In this video he claims that his ministry is about "signs, wonders and miracles" and in this video he claims that his ministry started with a supernatural encounter with the Holy Spirit that changed his life. Andres Bissoni has a YouTube Channel with more than 375K subscribers, from which I borrowed most of the example videos above. Most of these videos are highlight video clips from "miracle crusades" and "Holy Spirit revival meetings" and are intended to showcase "the power of God". In particular, most of those highlight clips show instances of dramatic body shaking and trembling, so the claim that they are supernatural is obvious.

Likewise, Example C took place in an evangelistic campaign in Mexico led by the Hispanic pastor and evangelist Juan Carlos Harrigan, who also has a YouTube Channel with over 1 million subscribers. In the video the preacher says in Spanish "[...] está muy fuerte la unción sobre ella, agárrenla, está muy fuerte [...]" which in English translates to "[...] the anointing over her is very strong, hold her, it's very strong [...]", meaning that the dramatic body shaking and trembling the girl experienced is allegedly the result of God's anointing being poured over her.

So we have live recordings of people dramatically shaking and trembling, multiple first-hand testimonies and at least two very influential preachers claiming these manifestations are supernaturally caused.

So, are these manifestations necessarily of supernatural origin? Is the supernatural the only "reasonable" explanation? Are there scientific explanations? Are there scientific studies explaining the mechanics behind this phenomenon, rendering the "supernatural explanation" unnecessary?

Extra points to be given

  1. @PaulJohnson in Skeptics.SE objects that the question for necessity is trivially answerable with no since in principle everyone could be a paid actor, which would explain away everything. Although I agree with him in principle, in all honesty I really doubt this is the case. If these preachers have been hiring actors to fake these manifestations for so many years, by now there would be whistleblowers exposing them (e.g. someone saying "this preacher is a scammer, he hired me to perform in front of the audience"), but so far I haven't come across a single case (I'm talking about Andres Bisonni and Juan Carlos Harrigan specifically, I know there are scammer preachers out there).

    Moreover, even children are experiencing this (like here, here, here, here), very old people (like here, here) and even prison inmates, and I really doubt they are all paid actors. So there are clearly sincere people experiencing this stuff, and I don't find it reasonable to gratuitously disregard the phenomenon claiming they are all faking it.

  2. @PaulJohnson in Skeptics.SE also mentioned mass psychogenic illness, which is very interesting, and I thank him for sharing that, but I would really love it if he could elaborate more on that in a formal answer to the question (I wish it was reopened) instead of lightly mentioning it in the comment section. However, looking at the symptoms table in the article, none of the symptoms in the table corresponds to dramatic body shaking or trembling, the closest one is "nervousness" but equating that to "feeling a fire and electricity through your body that makes you shake and tremble, accompanied by feelings of love and peace" is a little bit of a stretch.

  3. @TonyMobbs presents two candidate hypotheses: H4) Conformance to social norms and H8) Attention seeking (since the other hypotheses were dismissed). These hypotheses in essence assert that people are actors intentionally faking it all (in H4 out of peer pressure, in H8 out of love for attention). In other words, H4 and H8 are equivalent to the "Paid Actors" hypothesis, except that without the "Paid" part (since the incentive is other than money). Although in principle this could explain the outer behavior (shaking, trembling, etc.), it fails to explain the multiple reports of very strong sensations and emotions that seem to co-occur with these experiences. In particular, there is a pattern of people reporting strong sensations that they describe with expressions such as "waves of electricity", "fire", "heat", "burning all over", sometimes in combination with "joy", "love", "peace", etc. This is confirmed by a peer-reviewed paper acknowledging that people report these overwhelming feelings and emotions. Also, here is an example testimonial in written form, and here are some example video clips of this: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M.

    There being so many reports of overwhelming emotions and sensations co-occurring with shaking/trembling, how do H4 and H8 account for them?

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    Just a note that the cross-post at https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/48121/39100 has been closed by their community for lack of any specific claim to review. – Chris Rogers Jul 16 '20 at 09:25
  • I wonder whether the combination of 'peer pressure' the 'need to belong' may play a role. Another example of this effect in a non religious setting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgKY71iiJsQ – Tony Mobbs Jul 18 '20 at 05:46

2 Answers2

8

The exhibited behaviours are episodic glossolalia, collapsing, fainting, trembling, jerking, convulsing, contorting, and shaking. The individuals performing these episodic behaviours report experiencing overwhelming emotions of love, peace, ecstasy and euphoria. The exhibited behaviours are inconsistent with the claimed emotions, so perhaps another way to understand the question is to explain why individuals behave in a manner that is inconsistent with their emotions. Examples of behaviour associated with euphoria do not generally include glossolalia, collapsing, fainting, trembling, jerking and shaking. The exhibited behaviours are more congruent with the emotions of stress, anxiety, fear, and confusion.

The exhibited behaviours and reported emotional experiences are observed in both religious and nonreligious settings including:

The adoption by some Christian sects of the exhibited behaviours, and other behaviours such as laughing and drunkenness, appears to be relatively recent with the "Toronto Blessing" in the 1990s appearing to be significant. In all cases exhibited, the behaviours and emotions appear to occur in the presence of, and behest of, a charismatic and captivating authority figure.

In the absence of peer reviewed literature on the topic, eight strawman hypotheses are proposed. In accordance with the principle of parsimony, the hypothesis without discrediting evidence and the least number of assumptions will be tentatively selected.

The strawman hypotheses identified are:

The behaviours and emotions may result from:

  1. an unidentified invisible force (e.g. a spirit or god) causing electro neurological impulses that result in such behaviour,
  2. a hysterical state induced by the leader or other Mass psychogenic illness,
  3. a hysterical state self-induced by the individual,
  4. the individuals are conforming to the directions of an authority figure and/or subject to peer pressure and conforming to the social norms of the group,
  5. the individuals suffering from a Functional Neurological Disorder (FND),
  6. the individuals being paid actors,
  7. the individuals being in a state of hypnosis,
  8. the individuals are attention seeking, or
  9. a Dissociative disorder.

Each of these strawman hypotheses will be examined in turn:

  1. Unidentified invisible force/Divine Intervention. No confirmatory evidence has yet been tendered supporting the existence of invisible forces, other than the four fundamental forces of gravity, electromagnetism and strong and weak nuclear forces. As the exhibited behaviours are widespread across non-intersecting religious and cultural groups, a further unanswered question is which of the unidentified invisible forces is capable of inducing the emotions and behaviours or whether all unidentified invisible forces are equally capable of inducing such emotions and behaviours. The Christian sects shown in the exhibited videos subscribe to their religion by way of faith, which is ordinarily defined as a belief in the absence of supporting evidence. There being no scientific evidence of the involvement of unidentified invisible force(s), this hypothesis is dismissed. For further discussions on divine intervention, see https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700802396106 , https://doi.org/10.5840/faithphil199714215 , https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2019.26106 , and https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501735295-074 .

  2. Hysterical state induced by the leader: The presence of a charismatic and captivating leader in all the videos provided suggests credence for this option. The causes of Mass Psychological Illness remain speculative. The psychological mechanism capable of inducing a hysterical state are not yet understood and the mechanisms used by the charismatic leader are not uniform between the ghost dance ceremonies, Hindu Kundalini Awakening ceremonies, particular martial arts and Christian sects. There being no identified scientifically established mechanism capable of inducing hysterical states, this hypothesis is dismissed.

  3. Hysterical state induced by the individual: No established mechanism by which an individual may self-induce a hysterical state was identified, therefore, this hypothesis is dismissed.

  4. Conformance to the social norms: There is strong evidence that individuals seek to conform with the directions of authority figures and social norms. Conformance is due to the desire to avoid behaviours that would exclude them from the group(Burger, 2019; Milgram & Gudehus, 1978; Philippe & Durand, 2011; Schmidt et al., 2019). YouTube records examples of individuals participating in such behaviours but later ceasing the behaviours. These individuals report conforming to the behaviours due to social and situational pressure. It seems inconceivable that individuals who can participate in activities (in some cases for many years) that reliably induce feelings of love, peace, ecstasy and euphoria would ever seek to depart from such behaviours, yet the internet abounds with stories of individuals ceasing to perform such behaviours. The prevalence of individuals reporting conformance to social and situational pressure and the abundance of established peer reviewed literature identifying the basis of socially conforming behaviour suggests that this hypothesis is not immediately dismissable and worthy of more rigorous scientific analysis. References to individuals departing from these behaviours can be found here, here, here, here and here.

  5. Functional Neurological Disorder (FND): Individuals suffering FND exhibit behaviours for many years and do not describe the concurrent emotions as love, peace, ecstasy and euphoria. There being no similarity between FND and the relevant behaviours and emotions, this hypothesis is dismissed.

  6. Paid actors: Given the number of observed occurrences of the exhibited behaviours, it seems inconceivable that at least one paid actor would not have published their experiences in either paid media or a blog. The absence of individuals claiming to be paid actors discredits this hypothesis and it is therefore dismissed.

  7. Hypnosis: Hypnosis is defined as a human condition involving focused attention, reduced peripheral awareness, and an enhanced capacity to respond to suggestion. It is unclear from the exhibited behaviours that the process of hypnosis matches the behavioural expectations of hypnosis (Williamson, 2019; Mayo Clinic) and nor does the hypnotic induction process appear to match those in the exhibited videos. For these reasons, this hypothesis is therefore dismissed.

  8. Attention seeking: Attention seeking seems very likely given the nature of the YouTube based individual testimonies. Attention seeking and Conformance to the social norms appear to be related when the individual seeks to draw attention to their conformance to the social norm (see DOI:10.1111/bjso.12196, DOI:10.1353/jip.2021.0002).

  9. Dissociative disorder: It seems less likely that anyone with a dissociative disorder would post (or would be able to) post on YouTube.

Of the nine strawman hypotheses, only Conformance to the social norms and Attention seeking avoided immediate dismissal. Both hypotheses that avoided dismissal undoubtedly requires more formal scientific assessment, presumably by way of surveying a substantial number of individuals who have previously participated in such behaviours.

Note: No peer reviewed research was identified in the preparation of this response. All research was therefore restricted to Wikipedia and YouTube (except where specifically identified).

A sample of resources accessed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossolalia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slain_in_the_Spirit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kundalini

https://www.recoveringfromreligion.org

https://www.restorationcounselingseattle.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_seeking

https://youtu.be/SwjCuyuKf3s

https://youtu.be/F6c4BxktCdU

https://youtu.be/bZIrU7m0gx0

https://youtu.be/1YTZkHKN6l4

https://youtu.be/kD3g5rg0CqE

https://youtu.be/WaT06FX85G4

https://youtu.be/FEYW2vqqNDQ

https://youtu.be/TUvNW0ZZoDw

https://youtu.be/8L1Fslf3g2M

https://youtu.be/Q5LpMxYfHn4

https://youtu.be/G22hZ81Vku0

https://youtu.be/LDRPOxqVw90

https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/hypnosis/about/pac-20394405

References

Tony Mobbs
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  • Thanks for the super complete answer. In short the phenomenon has not been the subject of rigorous scientific research yet, the real causes of the phenomenon remain a mystery and the best we have today is educated guesses. I just have a few comments: 1) given the prevalence in most videos of an authority figure performing some form of signal that triggers these dramatic somatic reactions in people, do you think hypnosis is playing a role in all of this and should be included among the hypotheses? –  Aug 15 '20 at 03:43
  • In hypothesis 4 you talk about abundant cases of former experiencers of shaking and trembling who eventually ceased to have these behaviors. I think it would be helpful for the reader to explicitly reference a few examples, say, the best 3 or 4 testimonials you found on this.
    • –  Aug 15 '20 at 03:44
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    Hypnosis added as a seventh hypothesis and five testimonials included. – Tony Mobbs Aug 15 '20 at 06:06
  • Not sure if this is worth being considered an 8th hypothesis, but during informal conversations with people in other sites someone put forward the idea that maybe the shaking / trembling is just the body's natural way of releasing pent up stress / anxiety / trauma, like this polar bear. I don't know if this phenomenon has a name, how common it is in humans and to what extent it could account for the details and nuances of the manifestations exhibited in the OP's examples. –  Aug 15 '20 at 07:21
  • What makes the original question interesting is explaining the incongruence between the self-reported emotions and the exhibited behaviours. The emotions of stress, anxiety, fear, trauma, and confusion are congruent with collapsing, fainting, trembling, jerking and shaking. Testing whether (and under what circumstances) some individuals conform to social norms and the directions of authority figures out of fear, confusion, stress and anxiety is itself and interesting hypothesis? The YouTube testimonials suggest that this is the case. An interesting line of future investigation. – Tony Mobbs Aug 15 '20 at 23:18
  • This video uploaded a few days ago compares and identifies interesting similarities between manifestations that have occurred in the Toronto Blessing, current Charismatic sects and Hindu Shaktipat. The uploader is Christian, so there is an evident bias to label these manifestations as demonic, but subjective interpretations aside, the similarities identified in the video might be worth considering. Maybe there is an underlying common phenomenon going on that can explain these similarities? –  Aug 17 '20 at 04:47
  • I found another very disturbing video where people exhibit very extreme and dramatic behaviors including body contorting reminiscent of scenes of the Exorcist movie. This video is crazy. I'm having a hard time believing "conforming to social norms" can explain it. Toward the end of the video we can even observe what appear to be children experiencing this. I'm puzzled. –  Aug 22 '20 at 19:19
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    On the contrary: The Milgram experiment, Stanford prison experiment, religious snake handling and religious drinking of poison show that some individuals will go to extremes to conform to social norms (even unto death). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_handling_in_religion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_the_Kool-Aid – Tony Mobbs Aug 22 '20 at 22:50
  • Granted, but I still think there is a difference in this phenomenon with respect to those 4 examples. In those examples, peer pressure is acting as a strong influence on people's rationality and decision making process, and the behaviors involved are not "extraordinary": drinking, pushing a button, holding an object/animal, playing the role of a prisoner or a guard, these are not complicated things to do. In contrast, in videos like the one I just shared, we see people in hysterical states, crying, shaking, jerking, collapsing, convulsing, contorting like in the Exorcist, etc. –  Aug 23 '20 at 01:15
  • These emotions and behaviors are much more complicated to feel and perform. So what is still missing in my layman opinion is an explanation of how peer pressure can trigger these non-trivial emotions and behaviors in people. Is there a known mechanism by which peer pressure can make someone become hysterical, shake, jerk or contort convulsively? –  Aug 23 '20 at 01:15
  • Another possibility is that people who are acting hysterical, crying, shaking and trembling, etc. are just faking it all, i.e. they are basically actors displaying a fake performance out of social pressure. However, this would require everyone to be an outstanding actor (either trained or amateur, although not paid, as was argued in hypothesis 6), which I also find hard to believe. –  Aug 23 '20 at 01:15
  • Shaking and jerking behaviours are easy to learn and trivial to perform on command. Although unusual, such behaviours are not complicated or extraordinary. The parsimonious explanation is that the individuals are merely performing behaviours so as to conform to group norms (hypothesis 4). Conforming behaviours are often useful (driving on the same side of the road, stopping at red lights, & brushing our teeth) but that does not imply that the emotions and behaviours align. For example, stopping at red lights when driving is sometimes frustrating, but we do so as to conform to societal norms. – Tony Mobbs Aug 23 '20 at 02:44
  • (We will probably have to move this to a chat) I find it hard to believe that the following people rehearsed their behaviors to meet their groups' expectations: link, link, link. And abnormal behaviors aside, as I said before, there is an emotional component to the phenomenon also. You have people reporting electricity and in tears at the same time (link), people shaking and crying hysterically (link), etc. –  Aug 23 '20 at 03:29
  • There are people reporting feelings of love and peace accompanying these behaviors too (link, link). Taken together, all seems to indicate the presence of strong emotional manifestations accompanying the external behaviors. If conforming to social norms / peer pressure is the cause, you would expect emotions like fear, stress, anxiety, frustration. You would not expect individuals reporting electricity, fire, peace, love, ecstasy or crying in hysterical states. –  Aug 23 '20 at 03:31
  • Hypothesis 4 includes both the performance of the behaviours and the reporting of emotions such as happiness and joy. It is likely (or at least conceivable) that the individuals do feel positive emotions due to feelings of friendship and inclusiveness. Each of the religious sects seem to have their own unique variant of behaviours indicating that the behaviours are learnt rather than an involuntary or innate response to a particular or strong emotion. If the behaviours were involuntary reactions to hysteria (or some other emotion), the behaviours would be the same across all religious sects. – Tony Mobbs Aug 23 '20 at 05:17
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    Let us continue this discussion in chat. – Tony Mobbs Aug 23 '20 at 05:17
  • Tony, remember to update also the part about which hypotheses have and have not been dismissed. As it stands right know, it sounds as if attention seeking, dissociative disorder and *divine intervention* are all accepted as valid candidate explanations. –  Apr 07 '21 at 12:27