The Psychology of Religion, Chapter 25: Speaking in Tongues

Some religions feature unusual behaviours that are accepted as manifestations of divinity. One striking example is glossolalia—“speaking in tongues.” Every culture has rituals that gesture at transcendence or divine intervention in some form, and there is nothing remarkable in that. What is more concerning, in modern times, is the readiness to treat this particular behaviour as a literal case of God “speaking through” a person, rather than as the human psychological and social phenomenon it appears, on examination, to be.

So what do we actually know about glossolalia? It usually is not the dramatic thing some imagine—suddenly speaking a real foreign language one never learned. (That claim, properly called xenoglossy, is a different matter, and does not survive scrutiny.) What tongues-speakers produce is speech-like vocalizing: it has rhythm, emotion, and a kind of word-like flow, but it does not reliably carry stable meaning or grammar the way an ordinary language does. The foundational linguistic study, by William Samarin, examined the phenomenon closely and concluded that it is a “meaningless but phonologically structured human utterance”—patterned sound without lexicon or syntax. Tellingly, it draws heavily on the sounds and speech habits the speaker already possesses in their native tongue, favouring simple syllables and a narrow range of sounds: a voice improvisation that feels like language without functioning as one. Nor is it a supernatural gift; psychologists have shown that naive volunteers, given a little exposure and encouragement, can produce passable glossolalia on demand, and where it is expected, taught, and socially supported, it behaves like a learned skill. One point deserves emphasis, because a clinical description can be mistaken for a diagnosis: glossolalia is not a symptom of mental illness. The research is consistent on this—its practitioners are psychologically unremarkable, and Samarin was at pains to stress that the behaviour is normal, not pathological, and not reducible to trance. It is an ordinary human capacity, not a disorder.

From a psychological point of view, glossolalia is best understood as a learned vocal practice that can, under the right conditions, shade into an altered state of attention. Assemble the ingredients—music, group emotion, high expectation, authority cues, a shared vocabulary of the sacred—and a person can generate vocalizations that feel profoundly meaningful, and may experience the act as a surrender of control. That subjective sense has a measurable correlate: in a small but striking neuroimaging study, Andrew Newberg and colleagues found that, compared with devotional singing, speaking in tongues was accompanied by decreased activity in the frontal lobes—the seat of deliberate, intentional control—just what one might expect of a state the speaker describes as no longer steering. (The same study found no loss of the sense of self, so this is not the ego-dissolution reported in deep meditation.) But the experience is not uniform. Many practice it quietly, in private prayer, and describe it as calm or soothing rather than ecstatic. The phenomenon is therefore broader than revivalist spectacle—though spectacle is where its social force becomes most visible.

That force is easy enough to observe. Among the most widely circulated clips online are public performances of “tongues” by a prominent faith leader with close ties to a major political figure. A viewer encountering such a scene for the first time often passes through a small sequence of reactions—curiosity, unease, and then a sharper concern on realizing that the performer commands a large and fervent following and a measure of genuine political influence. There is a real puzzle here, and it is worth stating without condescension, since the people moved by such displays are no less intelligent than anyone else: how does a vocalization carrying no semantic content whatsoever come to be so persuasive? The answer, I think, is that it was never working as an argument in the first place.

This is where the social function matters most. Like the miracles discussed in an earlier chapter, and like the costly behavioural markers of the previous one, glossolalia can operate as a signal: it makes the group feel special, chosen, close to the divine in a way that outsiders “don’t get.” That feeling is intensely bonding. It strengthens loyalty, rewards conformity, and makes doubt feel not merely intellectual but socially dangerous—almost a betrayal. The experience itself becomes the evidence, and the shared intensity becomes the glue. This is also why argument has so little effect on it: one cannot refute a feeling, and the feeling is the point.

This can be turned to darker ends. A leader skilled in spectacle and emotional orchestration can deploy these displays as instruments of persuasion—not by offering reasons but by manufacturing awe, certainty, and the sense that “we are witnessing the sacred.” The danger was never the oddness of the behaviour. It is the ease with which the resulting conviction and allegiance can be redirected into worldly power—political authority, or the solicitation of money—under the banner of a divine mandate.

References

Goodman, F. D. (1972). Speaking in tongues: A cross-cultural study of glossolalia. University of Chicago Press.

— An anthropological and cross-cultural study arguing that glossolalia is a learned, ritually shaped vocal behaviour, often (though not always) accompanied by an altered or trance-like state, and occurring across many cultural and religious settings. A counterpoint to purely linguistic accounts, emphasising the bodily and social conditioning of the practice.

 

Newberg, A. B., Wintering, N. A., Morgan, D., & Waldman, M. R. (2006). The measurement of regional cerebral blood flow during glossolalia: A preliminary SPECT study. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 148(1), 67–71. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pscychresns.2006.07.001

— The first functional neuroimaging study of glossolalia. In five practitioners, speaking in tongues was associated with decreased activity in the frontal lobes compared with devotional singing—consistent with the speakers’ report of a loss of intentional control—while the sense of self appeared preserved. A small, preliminary study, but a suggestive neural correlate of the subjective experience.

 

Samarin, W. J. (1972). Tongues of men and angels: The religious language of Pentecostalism. Macmillan.

— The foundational linguistic analysis of glossolalia, concluding that it is phonologically structured but semantically empty—patterned sound that resembles language without being one—and that it draws on the speaker’s native phonology. Samarin stressed that the behaviour is learned, normal rather than pathological, and not reducible to a trance state.

 

Spanos, N. P., & Hewitt, E. C. (1979). Glossolalia: A test of the “trance” and psychopathology hypotheses. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 88(4), 427–434. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843x.88.4.427

— An experimental and psychometric study testing—and largely rejecting—the claims that glossolalia requires a trance state or signals psychopathology. Together with the same group’s later demonstration that naive subjects can be trained to produce tongues on cue, it supports the view of glossolalia as a learnable skill practised by psychologically ordinary people.

 

A note on scriptural sources (handled as primary references rather than formal citations): the New Testament contains two distinct phenomena often conflated under “tongues”—the Pentecost narrative of Acts 2:1–13, in which the apostles are understood by speakers of many foreign languages (closer to xenoglossy), and Paul’s discussion in 1 Corinthians 12–14, in which the utterance is ecstatic and requires interpretation. It is the latter strand that corresponds to modern glossolalia.

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