Name: Hearing voices differs by culture, according to stanford study
Uploaded: 2025-06-21T16:46:49.000Z
Duration: 3 min 8 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hey, remember how you told me that hearing voices is super common?

One in ten people hear voices at some point in their lives, it's me, I'm one in ten.

Oh, there he is, hello handsome, he's obsessed with me.

Well, according to new Stanford research, hallucinatory voices are shaped by your country's culture.

Oh, yes, I read that study, although the sample size was small, it had some fascinating findings.

While other cultures had predominantly positive experiences with their voices, not one American did.

Oh, you promise, you tease, he loves dirty talk.

Yeah, the United States subjects were more likely to report experiences as hateful, and they didn't know who spoke to them and had less of a personal relationship with their voices.

We could be so much closer if you'd let me in.

Whereas in India or Ghana, more than half heard voices of their family members commanding them to do tasks.

Oh my god, no, awful, I don't ever want to talk to my dad.

And their experiences were predominantly positive.

The anthropologist of the study believes it's because of cultural perspective, so Europeans and Americans tend to see themselves as individuals motivated by a sense of self-identity.

Whereas outside the West, people imagine the mind and the self as interwoven, so here in the West, we see voices as a violation of the mind.

The study also said that to alleviate the voices, you can name them and build a relationship with them.

Oh yeah, I've been trying to get Hitler to commit to me for years.

See, I don't get why he won't be my boyfriend, he calls me a nine all the time.

Wait, Benji, Hitler calls me a nine, but he won't commit, Hitler will not be my boyfriend.

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But finding the right therapist, it can kind of be like dating.

Someone who could be so off the mark for me, may be perfect for you.

The most important part of therapy is that you find someone who you resonate with, whose advice you value and who can offer you nuanced tools that are suited to your life.

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Hearing voices differs by culture, according to stanford study

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fascinating