Can a Mystical Experience be Emulated by AI-Generated Rationality?
Summary
Artificial intelligence can evoke subjective sacred experiences in users through specific interaction contexts, even though it cannot possess spirituality. Spiritual believers reported lower perceived sacredness and trust when informed about AI involvement, while non-believers showed no difference. Oral conversation was found to enhance perceived sacredness compared to touch-screen interactions, but question types did not significantly affect sacred experiences. This study highlights the importance of interaction design in AI-assisted spiritual services.
Study at a glance
| Design | experimental study |
|---|---|
| Population | spiritual believers and non-believers participating in tarot divination experiments |
| Key finding | Spiritual believers report lower perceived sacredness when aware of AI involvement, while oral conversation enhances perceived sacredness compared to touch-screen interaction. |
Abstract
This study investigates whether artificial intelligence can emulate human mystical experiences through algorithmic rationality, focusing specifically on the generative mechanisms of “Perceived Sacredness” within AI-assisted tarot divination. Grounded in the original “Triadic Framework for Human-AI Spiritual Interaction,” three sequential experiments systematically examine how sacredness perception is shaped by three contextual layers: “who speaks” (agent subjectivity), “how it speaks” (interaction modality), and “what is spoken” (question typology). Study 1 reveals that spiritual believers report significantly lower perceived sacredness, service quality, and trust when explicitly informed that AI is involved, whereas non-believers show no such difference—supporting the “in-group bias” hypothesis. Study 2 demonstrates that oral conversation significantly enhances perceived sacredness compared to touch-screen interaction, aligning with Media Richness and Social Presence theories. Study 3 found no significant difference between open-ended and closed-ended questions in eliciting sacred experiences. Collectively, while AI cannot intrinsically “possess” spirituality, it can effectively “evoke” subjective sacred experiences through carefully designed interaction contexts. This research provides empirical grounding for understanding the reconfiguration of spiritual experience in the technological age and offers critical implications for the ethical and experiential design of AI in spiritual service domains.