Can Science Test the Possibility of Reincarnation?

Despite skepticism among mainstream researchers, exceptional experiences—such as precognitive dreams, meaningful coincidences, and experiences sometimes described as crisis telepathy—appear to be relatively common in the general population.

Large-scale surveys and opinion polls conducted in Western countries suggest that roughly 30 to 50 percent of people report having experienced at least one such phenomenon, with even higher rates reported in some non-Western countries. For any given individual, these experiences may be unusual or infrequent. Yet taken across an entire population, they are far from rare. This distinction is important: An experience can be uncommon for any given person while still being widespread across society. As summarized in my recent Psychology Today post, our findings from a 2026 study conducted with a representative sample of Germans likewise suggest that exceptional experiences represent a relatively common dimension of human experience and merit psychological investigation, particularly for understanding how people interpret events and construct meaning in their lives.

One item in our study, drawn from the Inventory of Nonordinary Experiences, concerns memories of a past life: “I have distinct memories that made it seem as if I had lived a past life in a different body.” In our representative German sample, 11 percent of participants answered “yes” to this question. Perhaps such a proportion would not be especially surprising in India, where many Hindu traditions teach reincarnation (or rebirth)—the idea of a continuing cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. But why do people in Germany, whose population has a mixture of Christian and secular, if not atheist, backgrounds, report experiences that they interpret as memories of a past life? We will return to the possible influence of religious and cultural beliefs below. For now, it is worth considering how we should regard such experiences. Mainstream scientists may be reluctant to take reports of past-life memories seriously, particularly when they are based primarily on qualitative accounts. Such reports can readily be dismissed as mere anecdotes, perhaps reflecting unclear motivations, expectations, memory processes, or cultural influences.

Research on Past-Life Memories

A paper just published in the American Psychological Association journal Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice—by Saeedeh Sadeghi, Marieta Pehlivanova, and Philip J. Cozzolino from the Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS) at the University of Virginia School of Medicine—may become a game changer. At DOPS, research into cases involving children who report memories of previous lives began with individual case studies several decades ago. Since then, researchers have collected and documented thousands of cases. They try to check the children’s statements against independent evidence, such as historical records, family accounts, and other documents. A case is considered “verified” when researchers can identify a specific deceased person whose life details appear to match what the child reported.

A large-scale, systematic analysis of the most valid 1,678 documented cases in which children reported memories of a previous life revealed an astounding association. The study examined whether—and how—the time between the death of the person whose life the child was said to remember and the child’s birth was related to the circumstances of that person’s death. This interval, referred to as the “intermission time,” was substantially shorter when the previous person had died unexpectedly or unnaturally—for example, through an accident or violence—than when the death had been expected, such as after a prolonged illness. When the death was completely unexpected, the average interval between the person’s death and the child’s birth was on average 12 months. By contrast, when the death was expected, the interval averaged 21 months.

This is the largest systematic investigation to date of temporal patterns in reported reincarnation memories, using objectively verifiable variables such as dates of death, dates of birth, and circumstances of death. Any individual case can, in principle, be questioned because it may involve exaggeration, wishful thinking, or even fabrication. A quantitative association observed across 1,678 cases, however, presents a different kind of evidence.

Death Circumstances and Intermission Time

Importantly, the relationship between the circumstances of death and the length of the interval between death and birth remained even after considering potential sources of bias. For example, the association persisted when the analysis was restricted to cases in which the reported memories had been most thoroughly verified and to cases in which the two families had no prior knowledge of one another and therefore could not have coordinated their accounts. Perhaps most strikingly, the intermission effect was stronger among families who did not believe in reincarnation. This finding runs counter to the expectation that cultural beliefs alone might explain the observed pattern.

The study does not provide evidence that reincarnation is real; rather, it identifies an empirically observable pattern in the data. The study makes an important contribution to research on reported reincarnation memories by identifying a robust, objectively measurable pattern that does not appear to be explained by known psychosocial or cultural factors. At the same time, the findings challenge researchers to consider new theoretical explanations and to pursue further empirical investigation of this intriguing phenomenon.

According to philosopher Karl Popper, science advances by testing hypotheses in ways that allow them to be falsified. This raises a provocative question: Can we falsify the possibility suggested by this study—that more violent deaths may be associated with shorter intervals between death and a subsequent reincarnation? That is certainly a bold claim. How else might we interpret this empirical finding within the accepted scientific worldview framework? The result presents us with a fascinating riddle: If reincarnation is not the explanation, what alternative account can make sense of the observed relationship? Or should we take the more radical step and consider the possibility that an earlier rebirth may somehow follow a violent death?