Jump to content

[survey] Tulpamancy Research Study and Thinking About Thinking


Dre_coop

Recommended Posts

Do you have 20 minutes to answer questions for our study about unusual experiences and metacognition? We are specifically interested in the experiences of Tulpamancers. [https://www.isurvey.soton.ac.uk/34760

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I took the survey.

 

There was one question about trusting other people's opinions about my experiences. For the survey I assumed you meant other tulpamancers.

Meow. You may see my headmates call me Gray or sometimes Cat.

I used to speak in pink and Ranger used to speak in blue (if it's unmarked and colored assume it's Ranger). She loves to chat.

 

Our system account

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I hope questions like "Have you ever experienced the sensation that someone was there when they weren't" and many similar, weren't trying to ask about experiences of Tulpamancy itself. Tulpamancy is generally very intentional, and all the questions that were an easy "No" like feeling like I've been touched or whatnot, were also relatively easy "Yes"s if we count intentional mind-trickery like (the Tulpamancy skill) imposition. That stuff takes practice, time and effort though, it's very different from if you experience those things without intending to.

 

Edit: I hope you guys aren't putting high "Yes"s due to the experience of having a tulpa at all. Try to only answer based on unintentional experiences - including "tulpa"-related ones if your tulpas were natural and do stuff more on their own, maybe, but not if you've simply worked hard at accomplishing imposition and such.

 

Or, if otherwise, we'd need the surveyor to specify, since if that wasn't the intent it's far too vague. That'd be like someone reporting seeing illusions... after staring at an eye-tricking image/video

Edited by Luminesce

Hi! I'm Lumi, host of Reisen, Tewi, Flandre and Lucilyn.

Everyone deserves to love and be loved. It's human nature.

My tulpas and I have a Q&A thread, which was the first (and largest) of its kind. Feel free to ask us about tulpamancy stuff there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The questions are all from standard psychological survey instruments and weren't written for this study:

 

Beck Cognitive Insight Scale
Metacognitions Questionnaire-30
Multi-Modality Unusual Sensory Experiences Questionnaire
Peters et al Delusions Inventory
Brief Core Schema Scales

 

The advantage of this is that tulpamancer responses can be easily compared to larger populations that have previously taken the surveys, both populations diagnosed with various mental illnesses and those not. Anecdotal evidence suggests that therapists and doctors can readily distinguish tulpamancers from delusional and schizophrenic patients, but it would be interesting to see if tulpamancers are also distinguishable with a simple written instrument.

 

The disadvantage is that the surveys were not written with any consideration of the possible existence of non-disordered plurality or intentional overriding of physical perceptions. So many of the questions seem odd or uncomfortable. They aren't likely to produce results that are insightful on the plural experience, independently of comparison with other populations.

 

As far as I can tell, "other people" means everybody you know or encounter, considered in aggregate.

 

There was one question that amused me. "Do your thoughts ever feel alien to you in some way?" No, *my* thoughts never do. But, of course, most of the thoughts I hear aren't mine.

 

Since we still haven't gotten anywhere with imposition, our results came out looking very mundane, regardless of how the questions are interpreted.

 

-Ember

I'm not having fun here anymore, so we've decided to take a bit of a break, starting February 27, 2020. - Ember

 

Ember - Soulbonder, Female, 39 years old, from Georgia, USA . . . . [Our Progress Report] . . . . [How We Switch]

Vesper Dowrin - Insourced Soulbond from London, UK, World of Darkness, Female, born 9 Sep 1964, bonded ~12 May 2017

Iris Ravenlock - Insourced Soulbond from the Winter Court of Faerie, Dresdenverse, Female, born 6 Jun 1982, bonded ~5 Dec 2015

 

'Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you.' - The Velveteen Rabbit

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm still worried people will mistake "Have you ever sensed something that wasn't there"-type questions as "Do you even have a tulpa at all". To the point where I'm not even sure the results will be reliable..

Hi! I'm Lumi, host of Reisen, Tewi, Flandre and Lucilyn.

Everyone deserves to love and be loved. It's human nature.

My tulpas and I have a Q&A thread, which was the first (and largest) of its kind. Feel free to ask us about tulpamancy stuff there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 hours ago, Ember.Vesper said:

The advantage of this is that tulpamancer responses can be easily compared to larger populations that have previously taken the surveys, both populations diagnosed with various mental illnesses and those not. Anecdotal evidence suggests that therapists and doctors can readily distinguish tulpamancers from delusional and schizophrenic patients, but it would be interesting to see if tulpamancers are also distinguishable with a simple written instrument.

If that's the case, asking people in the context of a tulpamancy community is a waste of time. If a therapist gave this to me, my responses would depend heavily on whether or not I'm comfortable telling my therapist about tulpas. If it was on an anonymous survey given to the general population, I'd answer yes to a lot of questions on the basis of my plurality. But here, it's about subject/experimenter expectations. I thought the questions were about pathological psychosis and not about tulpas (whether or not tulpas are technically a form of psychosis, it's much harder to argue that they are pathological). So I said "Nope, no weird sensations of other people being around me!" because that's the answer I thought I wanted, and not because it's how I actually felt. Inasmuch as this survey will tell us anything, it tells us that tulpamancers know they are outside the norm, which you didn't need a survey to establish.

We are
Uncannyfellow: host - 12/07/1992
Kanade: tulpa - 9/16/2018
Cornelia: tulpa - 9/31/2018
Nikki: soulbonded walkin - 5/6/2023

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The survey questions asked for the occurrence of each symptom rather than the intensity of the symptoms, and I think that's a weakness of this survey. I assumed feeling the presence of other people didn't really mean me detecting Ranger's presence when I'm lonely but instead vividly hallucinating people grabbing you uncontrollably like people with schizophrenia or psychosis may experience, so I believe I replied no to those questions. I felt like this test seemed like it was screening for schizophrenia or psychosis, and I'm really confident I don't have either of those disorders.

I talked to my therapist a lot about tulpamancy, and she told me that labeling tulpamancy as schizophrenia is like putting a circle peg in a square hole. It will fit in, but it's not a good fit. There is some overlap, especially if you account for more advanced imposition, but it doesn't act as a good fit because tulpamancy in of itself does not create tons of distress. I'm not paranoid other people are going to hurt me, and I don't feel disturbed by Ranger being around. My distress about tulpamancy mostly stems from me feeling closeted in a way and too afraid to talk about it to my friends in fear of being shunned. As for the negative symptoms, I have some of those because I'm autistic, but I doubt other people have those. Disorganized thinking might be related to tulpamancy, but tulpamancy doesn't make it harder for me to focus because I can tell Ranger to leave me alone (and now that we can switch, I don't bother Ranger anymore).

I think it's important to test if tulpamancers have schizophrenia and or psychosis, but I was also a little disappointed the survey was not looking for anything else.

Meow. You may see my headmates call me Gray or sometimes Cat.

I used to speak in pink and Ranger used to speak in blue (if it's unmarked and colored assume it's Ranger). She loves to chat.

 

Our system account

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I did the survey. Though I don't have a psychotic illness, I feel like my autism skewed a number of the answers I gave in the sensory experiences section.

Michen, host or "main" / Amantha, anthro arctic fox tulpa

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's fine, it's not like anyone with abnormal answers can't take the survey, and if they didn't there'd be no point in doing it at all. My only concern was people misinterpreting the "sensing stuff that wasn't there" questions, everything else is fair game

Hi! I'm Lumi, host of Reisen, Tewi, Flandre and Lucilyn.

Everyone deserves to love and be loved. It's human nature.

My tulpas and I have a Q&A thread, which was the first (and largest) of its kind. Feel free to ask us about tulpamancy stuff there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It would be hard to do a test comparing tulpamancers to non-tulpamancers without making a specific effort to recruit tulpamancers. But apparently the pre-test orientation was insufficient if different systems are replying differently for the same experiences.


At the very least we have:


*Cat assuming "other people" meant tulpamancers while I assumed it meant the general public.


*Lumi assuming imposition shouldn't count for unusual perceptions while I assumed it should.


*UF and Cat discounting headmate presence as being a sensation of other people present, when I assumed it did.


This is why researchers will often do follow-up interviews to refine their methodology.


In the context the questions were originally written, yes, they were screening for things like delusion, paranoia, and hallucination. On the other hand, the intro says:


"You have been asked to participate in this research because you have identified yourself as having a Tulpa, have not previously been diagnosed with any psychotic disorder, nor have a family history of a psychotic illness (e.g. mother or father), and are aged 18 or above."


This implies that any unusual responses are assumed by the current researcher to have a reasonable possibility of not being a sign of mental illness even if most other researchers using the same instruments would assume those responses to be suggestive of mental illness.


-Ember

I'm not having fun here anymore, so we've decided to take a bit of a break, starting February 27, 2020. - Ember

 

Ember - Soulbonder, Female, 39 years old, from Georgia, USA . . . . [Our Progress Report] . . . . [How We Switch]

Vesper Dowrin - Insourced Soulbond from London, UK, World of Darkness, Female, born 9 Sep 1964, bonded ~12 May 2017

Iris Ravenlock - Insourced Soulbond from the Winter Court of Faerie, Dresdenverse, Female, born 6 Jun 1982, bonded ~5 Dec 2015

 

'Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you.' - The Velveteen Rabbit

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...