Abstract
In the early 1990s, questionnaire surveys of the rate of anomalous experiences were conducted for 5184 medical workers and 684 students and reported in the literature. In the present paper, the author has investigated the rate of anomalous experiences for students of the 2010's, and compared them in order to examine how the rates of anomalous experiences have changed with time for students. In comparing the students' data from 2013 to 2018 (the 2010's, valid data: 1126 persons) with the data of the year 1990 (valid data: 684 persons), the experience rates changed. The reported occurrence of the déjà vu experience increased from 53% to 71%, that of the ESP experience increased from 24% to 39%, and that of the out-of-body experience increased from 6% to 11%. Furthermore, the belief of the existence of a sixth sense decreased from 71% to 56% (all p-values < 0.001). On the other hand, the occurrence rate of sleep paralysis hardly changed (from 34% to 36%) and seeing signs of ghosts also hardly changed (from 17% to 18%). It was considered that these results supported the hypothesis that anomalous experiences are experience-based, not culture-based.
