Comparing psychedelic and meditation experience reports with Natural Language Processing
Konsta Kallio-Mannila, Rosa Salmela, Jussi Jylkkä 2 citations preprint
Reports of personally meaningful experiences from psychedelic substances and meditation are highly similar in semantic and lexical content, with both groups expressing positive emotions on average. However, psychedelic experience reports are more emotionally charged, showing higher levels of both positive and negative sentiments compared to the more neutral meditation experiences. This suggests emotional intensity may be a distinguishing factor between the two types of experiences. The study used Natural Language Processing methods to analyze open-ended narratives from 197 participants, but challenges with the methods and dataset limit the conclusions that can be drawn.