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Abstract The purpose of this article is to find complications in Farsi discourse of Near-Death Experiences (NDE). We first examined the main categories of complications and then compared them in the stories of those who claimed to have near-death experience and those who were asked to fabricate a story about it. Through studying the stories of both groups, we found that complications in the discourses on near-death experience can be divided into three main categories: exemplifying, which is a secondary topic mentioned to make the main topic clear; potentializing, which is a secondary topic with a potential to turn into a main topic and, emphasis and scrutinizing; the former includes synonyms and repetitions, and the latter includes antonyms and words with overlapping meaning. Each of these categories were coded in the stories of 50 liars and 50 near-death experiencers from the TV program life after life. Except for the potentializing category and synonyms, statistics showed that there is a statistical difference between the two groups in terms of producing complications. We realized that liars produced fewer complications but near-death experiencers from the TV program produced more complications. Keywords: Complications, Lie, Near-death experience, Verbal cues to deception, Details. Introduction Near-death experience, shortly known as NDE, is sometimes reported after a life-threatening crisis. Basically, the individual has an out-of-body experience but becomes alive after a while. In this state, the person suddenly confronts with actual or expected death and his consciousness goes beyond his physical body or earthly environs. This phenomenon can be reported after heart attacks, car accidents, severe bleedings or blood loss after delivery, coma caused by traumatic brain injuries, suicide attempts and other similar cases. Commonly, experiencers report feeling of inner peace and joy, seeing a very bright light, reviewing one’s life, and a change in the concept of time. This phenomenon has been studied neurologically, psychologically, and sociologically, but its true nature, and the reasons why it happens, or who might experience it are still matters of question. Regardless of experiencers’ age, gender, religion, and cultural background, researchers have realized that core features of NDE reports are similar (Hashemi et al., 2023); However, the plausibility of NDE reports has constantly been a matter to be judged, which makes many NDErs tend not to share their experiences and generally be accused of hallucinating or fabricating memories. It is more than a century that verbal cues to deception have been studied in order to assess the credibility of statements in judicial contexts (Sporer et al., 2021). In fact, verbal cues to deception can be differentiated from verbal cues to truth. For this, many scientists examine the verbal cues in the stories of a group of truth tellers and then compare them to the stories of a group of liars. One of the most distinguishing cues to detect liars from truthtellers is that liars are less forthcoming (DePaulo et al., 2003), which is often attributed to liars’ lack of imaginations (Leal et al., 2015) or the fact that they are reluctant to provide details because they fear that such details may provide leads for investigators (Nahari et al., 2014). On the other hand, truthtellers produce more details. Details are units of information in a sentence; however, total detail variable is difficult to use in real life (Vrij et al., 2018c); because it is never clear that how much detail someone should provide to be judged as truthful (Nahari et al., 2014). In order to make detecting possible, different verbal components, which are complications, common knowledge and self-handicapping strategies, were introduced (Vrij et al., 2021). Complications are non-essential details that make the story more complex and are expected to be present in truthful stories; whereas common knowledge and self-handicapping strategies are used mostly by liars (Vrij et al., 2018c). In this study, we examined complications, as verbal cues, in stories of people who claimed to have NDE and compared them to storied of a group who we knew were lying about having NDE. The question in this research was: what are the subcategories of complications in order to have a clearer definition. Moreover, we sought to know if NDErs produce more complications. The zero hypothesis was: there is no difference in number of complications between the two groups. Materials and Methods In order to find the validity of our hypothesis, we had to have a group who claimed to have NDE and another group who lied about having one. A group of 50 participants, including 31 females and 10 males, whose age ranged from 18 to 72, took part in this study as liars. For experiencers, we picked 50 interviews, (including 37 males and 13 females, all above 18) from the TV show called ‘Life after Life’, in which participants share their NDEs. Stories of both groups were first audio-recorded and then transcribed. In a qualitative analysis we first investigated subcategories of complications, then each subcategory was separately coded in each story. Finally, we conducted a comparative analysis. Discussion of Results and Conclusion Considering the definition of complications as non-essential information that make the event complex (Deeb et al., 2021; Vrij et al., 2017; 2018b; 2018c) and the examples in previous studies, we went through each story separately and realized complications can be categorized into 3 main parts: Exemplifying: which is a secondary topic in a sentence to make the main topic clear; these secondary topics are mainly similes to mention the state of something or situations. Also, the speaker might mention different examples of a specific matter to help the listener picture the event. Potentializing: which is a secondary topic with a potential to turn into a main topic. These secondary topics are mainly defining and non-defining relative clauses that are directly or indirectly related to a previous sentence. Some of these clauses are merged into the previous sentence and some are not; however, each of them has the potential to be a separate main topic during the narration. Emphasis and Scrutinizing: which are in three levels of words, phrases and clauses linked by conjunctions like “and”, “but”, Farsi grammatical particle called “ezafe”, and pause. Emphasis includes synonyms and repetitions, and the Scrutinizing includes antonyms and words with overlapping meaning. Statistics showed except for potentializing and synonyms, there is a difference between the two groups in terms of producing complications. We realized near-death experiencers from the TV program produced more complications. In general, this study shows that liars produce fewer complications, which is similar to previous studies conducted with the focus on detecting lies. |
