Out-of-Body Experiences and Threat Sensitivity

An out-of-body experience (OBE) can be defined as having the impression of being consciously aware and out of one's physical body in an extrapersonal location. Recent research has suggested that OBEs are often a response to physical and/or psychological threat. However, because the OBE does not occur for everyone even when in the same type of threatening situation, it has been further postulated that such an experience is associated with the differences of each individual psyche interacting with differing circumstances. This includes a possibility that perhaps a higher sensitivity to threat might be one important idiosyncratic factor in some cases. This paper describes research based on this hypothesis. The Threat Sensitivity Scale (TSS) was utilized to compare 105 participants who have had at least one OBE in their life in which they had the impression of seeing their physical body from an extrapersonal location (referred to as an autoscopic OBE) with 150 who have not. It was found that there was a significant higher mean score on the TSS between those who have had an autoscopic OBE and those who have not, which remains the case even if having experienced one or more imminent life-threatening situations is also considered as a variable. These findings suggest that autoscopic OBEs are associated with higher levels of threat sensitivity.