Projektleiter: PD Mag. Dr. Christian ROMINGER
Finanzierung: BIAL Foundation
Laufzeit: 2025-2028
Abstract:
Synchronicity experiences take place in everyday life. They involve the sudden perception of a meaningful connection between a thought and an external event, such as receiving a phone call from a friend at the exact moment we were thinking about them. The frequency with which people perceive meaningful coincidences is associated with both positive and negative affect, as well as life satisfaction. Furthermore, changes in people's brain activation patterns and structural changes are associated with these meaningful coincidences. Synchronicity experiences have attracted the attention of numerous thinkers, such as Paul Kammerer, Klaus Conrad, and Carl Gustav Jung. Jung, in particular, described the role of synchronicity experiences in therapeutic settings, proposing an acausal principle as an explanation for synchronicity or the experience of meaningful coincidences. Conrad suggested that synchronicity experiences (e.g., apophenia) could be a prodromal syndrome of schizophrenia. Despite the existence of anecdotal collections of synchronicity experiences (e.g., 'Das Gesetz der Serie' by Kammerer), no study has systematically and empirically investigated how and when people perceive synchronicity (or meaningful coincidences) in their daily lives, i.e., from moment to moment. Therefore, this project aims to develop an ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to collect data on synchronicity experiences and meaningful coincidences over the course of a whole week. Applying such an EMA approach would allow for the investigation of potential mechanisms underlying people's perception of sudden and causal connections between thoughts and events. In addition to capturing moments of synchronicity experiences, we will record ambulatory heart rate variability (HRV), movement parameters, body position, as well as affective states, feelings of safety, and other relevant environmental and psychological variables. The project plans to assess data from a total sample of 200 participants. This approach will enable the study of potential physiological mechanisms, such as changes in HRV as an indicator of brain-body interaction, and psychological variables, such as affect, to uncover potential reasons and mechanisms for why and when people perceive synchronicity experiences in their daily lives. Since science is not able to experimentally manipulate the moments people experience synchronicity, conducting EMA studies to assess where and when meaningful coincidences take place is one way to investigate potential mechanisms that might help explain why we all experience synchronicity to some extent in our daily lives. Understanding the mechanisms of meaningful coincidences has the potential implication of fostering the detection of meaning in people’s lives, which may help increase life satisfaction in the long run.