4D.2.1 What is parapsychology?

The following press cutting is typical of anecdotal accounts of paranormal phenomena:

‘MAN CHANGES PLANS, ESCAPES DEATH: Charles Thompson had a narrow brush with death yesterday. He was a passenger on Transcontinental Flight 361 to Denver, but within minutes of departure he cancelled his trip. ‘I woke up with a bad feeling about the trip this morning’ Thompson noted. ‘It felt like something was trying to tell me not to travel. The feeling got stronger all day, so finally I just decided to stay home.’ It is fortunate for him that he did as Flight 361 crashed shortly after take-off killing all 186 people on board. ‘I never believed in telling the future or stuff like that before’ Thompson added, ‘but after this, I guess I’ll pay attention to all my hunches.’

If you have ever seen a story like this in a newspaper or magazine you will probably have wondered about the question, do we really possess a ‘sixth sense’? In other words, can we receive information about the external world without the use of our five basic senses? Some people think that we can. They accept the existence of extra-sensory perception (ESP).

_üActivity

Collect examples of similar paranormal experiences.

According to Frazier (1985), extrasensory perception is perception without a basis in sensation. There has been much controversy over the existence of psi. These are processes of information and/or energy exchange not currently explicable in terms of known science. The phenomena of psi are the subject matter of parapsychology (beside psychology) and include the following:

Telepathy: thought transference from one person to another without any sensory communication, e.g. identifying a playing card being thought of by someone else.

Clairvoyance: perceiving objects or events that do not stimulate sensory organs, e.g. while playing cards, you know which card comes next.

Precognition: perceiving a future event that cannot be anticipated, e.g. predicting which number will come up on a roulette wheel.

Psychokinesis (PK): Mental influence over physical events without intervention of physical force, e.g. willing matchsticks to move.

!SAQ 1

a) Outline two features of ESP.

b) Distinguish between telepathy and clairvoyance.

_üActivity

Have you ever had the feeling of experiencing telepathy, e.g. when you and a friend say the same thing together? Was it more than just co-incidence? How would you find out for sure?

Research methods in parapsychology

Early attempts to examine claims about paranormal events scientifically were carried out in 1882 when the Society for Psychical Research was set up in London. However, it was not until 50 years later that J. B. Rhine at Duke University, North Carolina, began the first controlled experiments into extra-sensory perception.

Rhine’s studied clairvoyance by means of written records of so-called spirit communication and by actual tests with mediums. He wanted to find confirmation of the existence of disembodied spirits. By 1934, despite exhaustive work with mediums such as Eileen J. Garrett, Rhine felt that there was no irrefutable evidence possible and so, turned his efforts to a more tangible form of research. This involved use of a system of card-guessing experiments using Zener cards. These are a pack of 25 cards bearing 5 different symbols such as a circle or a cross, each symbol having its own colour. A score of more than 1 in 5 is considered ‘above chance’.

To test clairvoyance, the subject of the experiment tries to name the colours or symbols on the cards, one at a time. No one knows what symbol or colour will come up. The laws of chance would produce 5 correct answers out of 25. If the subject consistently scores higher than that it could be said that he/she has some clairvoyant ability (see below). The cards should be shuffled well and the subject must guess what order the cards will appear in after they have been shuffled. In modern laboratories at parapsychology institutes, the cards may be shuffled and randomly sorted for selection by electronic means.

Rhine’s experiments indicated that there were people who clearly had extra-sensory perception. He published his findings in a book called ‘Extrasensory Perception’ (1934), which created considerable interest and a great deal of criticism over the mathematical validity of his testing methods. Rhine responded by tightening up the controls of the experiments. His next book ‘New Frontiers of the Mind’ (1938), became a best seller and his statistics were pronounced valid by the American Institute for Mathematical Statistics. A separate parapsychological laboratory was then established at Duke University.

More and more varieties of tests were to follow. Rhine was no longer trying to prove the existence of ESP but was looking for reasons that produced it. He found that mood and attitude were important factors, as was the relationship between experimenter and subject and that extremely low scoring was just as indicative of ESP as extremely high. Circumstances, environment and other effects on the subjects’ psychic responses were studied and the results then computed.

_üActivity

Conduct your own version of a telepathy experiment. Make up a set of 25 Zener cards showing the following:

a) 5 cards with blue waves

b) 5 cards with a black triangle

c) 5 cards with a yellow cross

d) 5 cards with a red circle

e) 5 cards with a green square

Is performance of participants significantly better than chance? You could also look at age or sex differences.

Parapsychological case studies

Case studies continue to figure prominently in parapsychological research. A case study is an in-depth study of an individual who claims to have psychic powers. Some cases that have been investigated include:

Ingo Swann: a gifted psychic who took part in experiments to test out-of-body perception. Specially drawn art ‘targets’ were laid on a platform placed high above his chair and well out of sight. When he was in a ‘relaxed state of mind’, he began to draw what he could ‘see’. When the results were compared and analysed, Ingo Swann showed remarkable accuracy in his drawings.

Madame Kulagina: a Russian who was famed for her extraordinary power to move objects by mental force alone (PK). In a concentrated, scientifically monitored experiment she gradually caused match-sticks to move, alter their direction and finally bunch together. In other experiments she has moved objects of different materials and caused compass needles and cases to rotate.

Uri Geller: well known for apparently being able to bend a variety of objects including nails, spoons, keys and clock hands, apparently just by mental force. However most scientific observers have remained unconvinced by his apparent ‘powers’. Many others have claimed this power and they have been classified according to their individual strengths. In the highest category there is an unusually high number of children.

Personality traits and ESP

Scientific personality researchers use one or more of the following types of evidence to construct personality profiles:

Biographical material

Objective measures of behaviour

Questionnaires which record opinions, preferences, thoughts etc.

Each has advantages and disadvantages. The most extensive research into the measurement of personality has been that conducted by Eysenck & Catell (1967) in America. They suggest that the two most reliable and measurable components of human personality are extroversion/introversion and neuroticism/stability. It is around these two components that parapsychologists have concentrated their research efforts.

Humphrey used a standard personality test to divide participants into extraverts and introverts. She then ran them through ESP card-guessing and consistently the extraverts scored above chance while the introverts scored below chance. However, she lumped together the results from all extraverts and all introverts into groups so that differences between individuals were not explored. Later, in 1953, she gave the best personality measures available at the time to 30 subjects prior to an ESP card-guessing test, and found a clear extravert/introvert difference as before.

Sargent (1981) found that out of 19 studies which showed clear-cut differences between extraverts/introverts and ESP ability, extraverts outscored introverts in 18 cases.

Another theory is that extraverts like to party because the excitement boosts their level of cortical arousal. They make better ESP subjects than introverts, but whether this is because their levels of cortical arousal are generally lower than introverts is still controversial.

Training for ESP

It seems that people score highly on ESP tests after meditation. The fact that these altered states seem to enable ESP signals to be distinguished from incidental noise prompts the question: can people learn to recognise and detect such signals and become better at using ESP?

Research conducted with ESP tests in normal states of consciousness has suggested that the possibility for learning may exist. Tart (1976) described his attempts to train ESP using machines which provided feedback (immediate information about whether a guess was correct or not). According to learning theory, feedback facilitates learning. If ESP is a skill, it should be trainable using feedback techniques. Tart’s conclusion from his research, which used careful screening of individuals who appeared to have some ability to succeed in ESP tests initially was that ESP is trainable. He also pointed out that you cannot train an ability which isn’t there in the first place, so some people can not be trained. However, Tart’s experiment has been fiercely criticised on technical grounds.

Very few experiments with altered states of consciousness have looked for learning effects, but this is not surprising. Altered-state, free-response experiments are time-consuming — a dream session requires an entire night. To check for learning you would need at least 20 participants and an equal number of sessions for each participant. Even with such small numbers, the time and expense of conducting a learning experiment would be considerable.

The few altered-stage studies that have explored this area, have not produced clear-cut learning effects. We have to draw the conclusion that this is a case unsupported either way.

!SAQ 2

Explain two experimental methods that may be used to conduct research in parapsychology.

4D.2.2 Extrasensory perception

Many who are not yet convinced that ‘psi’ has been demonstrated are still open to the possibility that new evidence might emerge that would be more compelling. Some psychologists believe that recent experimental procedures either provide evidence already or hold the potential for doing so. The most promising is the Ganzfeld procedure. This tests for telepathic communication between a subject acting as the ‘receiver’ and another subject who serves as the ‘sender’. The receiver is placed in a sound-proofed room and placed in a mild form of perceptual isolation by having translucent Ping-Pong ball halves taped over the eyes and headphones placed over the ears. Diffuse red light then illuminates the room and white noise is played through headphones.

The ‘sender’ sits in a separate sound-proofed room and a picture or videotape sequence is randomly selected from similar stimuli to serve as the ‘target’ for the session. The ‘sender’ concentrates on the target while the receiver attempts to describe what it is. At the end of the session the receiver is shown four stimuli, one of which is the ‘target’, and is asked to rate the extent to which each matches the imagery and verbal descriptions experienced. A ‘direct hit’ is scored if the ‘receiver’ gives the highest rating to the ‘target’ stimulus.

Since 1974, over 50 experiments have been conducted. The typical experiment involves around 30 ganzfeld sessions, in which a receiver attempts to identify the ‘target’ transmitted by the ‘sender’. After analysing 28 studies of 835 Ganzfeld sessions, participants selected the correct ‘target’ 38% of the time. Because a participant has to select the ‘target’ from 4 alternatives, a success rate of 25% could happen by chance. Therefore, statistically, this result is highly significant as the probability that it could have arisen by chance is less than 1 in a billion (Honorton 1985).

In 1985, the Journal of Parapsychology published an extended examination of the Ganzfeld studies focusing on a debate between Hyman, a critic of parapsychology and Honorton, a parapsychologist and major contributor to the ganzfeld database. They evaluate claims of ‘psi’ as follows:

Replication problem

Generally, a phenomenon is not established until it has been observed repeatedly by several researchers. Therefore, a criticism of parapsychology is that it has failed to produce a reliable demonstration of ‘psi’ that can be replicated by other researchers.

The parapsychologists response to this criticism is that many psychologists are dissatisfied with the focus on statistical significance level as the sole measure of a study’s success. Alternatively they are adopting meta-analysis, which is a technique that treats accumulated studies of a certain phenomenon as a single experiment. Therefore, any study that has a positive result contributes to the overall strength of the phenomenon, (Rosenthal 1984).

From this perspective, the ganzfeld studies indicate good replicability in that 23 of the 28 studies obtain positive results.

Inadequate controls

A major criticism of parapsychology is that many of the experiments have inadequate controls. Flawed procedures that allow someone to obtain the information either inadvertently or through cheating are particularly fatal. This is called the problem of sensory leakage.

Methodological inadequacies plague all sciences, but parapsychology, in particular, is full of promising results that have collapsed when the procedures were critically examined, (Akers 1984). One complaint against parapsychology is that poorly controlled studies often obtained positive results, but that as soon as better controls were introduced, these positve results disappeared.

However, meta-analysis can evaluate the criticism by checking to see if the more poorly controlled studies obtained more positive results than better controlled studies. If there is a correlation between a flaw and positive results across all studies then there is a problem. In the Ganzfeld database, both Hyman and Honorton agree that flaws of inadequate security and sensory leakage do not correlate with positive results. Also, after looking at 11 new studies designed to control for flaws identified in the original database, consistent results with the original set of 28 studies, were shown (Harris & Rosenthal, 1988).

!SAQ 3

a) Outline the Ganzfeld procedure.

b) What is meant by ‘sensory leakage’?

c) What is a meta-analysis? How do such analyses control for possible flaws in experimental procedures.

File-drawer problem

Suppose 20 investigators conducted a ganzfeld experiment independently. There is the probability that 1 of these investigators would obtain a statistically significant result by chance. The investigator would then perhaps publish a report of the experiment, but the other 19 could become discouraged, put their data into a file drawer and move on to something else. The scientific community would learn about the 1 successful study but have no knowledge of the 19 null studies buried away in the file drawers. The database of known studies would, therefore, be biased toward positive studies, and meta-analysis of that database would be biased. This is known as the file-drawer problem.

Parapsychologists offer two defences against this problem:

The Journal of Parapsychology publishes all studies that report negative findings.

By knowing the overall statistical significance of the database, it is possible to compute the number of studies with null results that would have to exist in file drawers to cancel out that significance.

!SAQ 4

a) What is the ‘file-drawer problem’?

b) Explain what experimenter effects mean, and give one example that might occur when paranormal phenomena are investigated.

Scepticism about ‘psi’

Most scientists believe that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. A study reporting that students who study harder, get higher grades, will be believed even if the study is statistically flawed because this fits with our understanding of the world. But the claim that 2 people in a ganzfeld study communicate telepathically is more extraordinary since it violates our beliefs about reality. We therefore require more proof from parapsychologists because their claims would require us to radically revise our model of the world.

Telepathy seems less extraordinary to us than precognition because we are already familiar with the invisible transmission of information through space when we view television. Precognition, on the other hand, seems more extraordinary because we have no phenomena in which information flows backwards in time.

As our understanding of the world changes, a phenomenon that seemed extraordinary earlier on may no longer seem so. Before the 19^th century, the scientific community did not believe in meteorites and those who reported seeing them were ridiculed and other explanations were given to explain the evidence (Nininger, 1933).

In the 20^th century, quantum mechanics is challenging our model of reality more radically than is realised (Herbert, 1987). Some parapsychologists believe that modern physics will provide a model of reality within which ‘psi’ phenomena will fit and many studies of psychokinesis are conducted by physical scientists who base their theories of ‘psi’ on quantum mechanics (Jahn & Dunne, 1987).

Psychokinesis (PK)

There are four kinds of psychic phenomena: telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and psychokinesis (PK). Psychokinesis can be further sub-divided into:

PK-MT (psychokinesis on moving things: rolling dice)

PK-LT (psychokinesis on living things: healing)

PK-ST (psychokinesis on static things: matchsticks)

Over the last 20 years research has been dominated by statistics. ‘Micro-PK’ is the detection of slight effects without dramatic results, for example, the number of times a card is guessed correctly. ‘Micro-PK’ has become more popular than ‘Macro-PK’, simply because it can be established mathematically. According to Broughton, ‘these experiments tend to be highly automated and secure, and even some of parapsychology’s severest critics have acknowledged that the ‘Micro-PK’ research is hard to fault on methodological grounds’.

!SAQ 5

Distinguish between micro-methods and macro-methods of investigation in psychokinesis.

Another development has been the work of Michel Gauquelin, who showed that although conventional astrology is unscientific, eminent sportsmen do show a tendency to be born under Mars, actors under Jupiter and doctors under Saturn. Psychologists Eysenck and Nias, who checked Gauquelin’s work, have called for a new field of research called ‘cosmobiology’ to investigate the questions that resist conventional answers.

_üActivity

Ask each of 20 participants their star sign and profession, and correlate the results.

There remains, however, the possibility that we will never know the full truth about parapsychology. It maybe there are too many variables to control to be able to compare experimental studies fully. Ultimately, the whole subject drifts into metaphysics — the deepest beliefs we have about life and its meaning.

_üActivity

Carry out a survey on people’s ‘belief in the paranormal’. Are there significant age or gender differences, for example.