White noise evokes White Christmas if you think about it

Harald Merckelbach and Vincent van de Ven of Maastricht University published a study back in 2001 entitled ‘Another White Christmas: fantasy proneness and reports of ‘hallucinatory experiences’ in undergraduate students’ in the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, which, for whatever reason, has been brought to Improbable Research’s attention this week.

Forty-four undergraduate students were asked to listen to white noise and instructed to press a button when they believed hearing a recording of Bing Crosby’s White Christmas without this record actually being presented. Fourteen participants (32%) pressed the button at least once…. hallucinatory reports obtained during the White Christmas test [might] reflect a non-specific preference for odd items rather than schizophrenia-like, internal experiences.

In my neck of the woods, we used to sing “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, and all the cars stuck in the snow.” And in case you’ve never heard this great Christmas classic, here it is.

(Link: improbable.com)

This entry was posted on Friday, August 31st, 2018 at 2:12 pm and is filed under Music, Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Tags: Christmas, Maastricht University, study, white noise