Making sense of the extraordinary – An exploration of the content and prevalence of appraisals of nonordinary experiences

Individuals around the world report nonordinary experiences that stand out to them compared to their day-to-day or ordinary experiences. Yet, they can be appraised in very different ways, resulting in wellbeing and personal growth or in marginalization and mental health problems. One challenge is that there are relatively few systematic efforts to explore possible appraisals and the overall contexts in which these experiences take place. We report a validation and extension of a previously designed set of follow-up and appraisal questions to the Inventory of Nonordinary Experiences, with a sample of Brazilian participants (N = 160). After validation, we administered these follow-up questions and appraisals in a general population sample (N = 5,117) in which individuals reported on one of 38 nonordinary experiences. Overall, the patterns suggest that individual response options are normally distributed, suggesting that there are several shared interpretations across a wide range of diverse experiences in the general population. Our results provide new insights into consciousness states and their mental health and wellbeing implications.