A conceptual typology of presence experiences and corresponding mechanisms

Researchers who seek to understand the mechanisms that give rise to presence experiences are faced with a phenomenon that spans a wide variety of contexts, takes many forms, and is studied in various disciplines. In the absence of a conceptual typology that distinguishes different types of experiences in which physically absent persons or entities seem to be present, researchers have difficulty specifying the extent to which the mechanisms they propose apply to different presence experiences, both within and outside their subfield. Moreover, in seeking to explain presence experiences, researchers across disciplines typically fail to distinguish between detecting a presence and identifying it. We propose a typology of detection processes with three dimensions: mode of detection (direct or indirect), nature of the initial stimulus (unknown or known), and source of the initial stimulus (external or not external). We suggest that people identify presences based on agent characteristics and/or agent context. Based on this typology, we suggest that claims of direct detection involve a variety of mechanisms, while indirect detection typically involves making attributions to relatively ordinary events. Attributional theories, updated based on the proposed typology, can provide a framework for explaining how presences are identified (regardless of how they are detected).