Paranormal Cognition And Paranormal Action Flashcards
What does extrasensory perception mean?
Refers to the ability that one can acquire information without using human physical senses.
1) Telepathy: the communication and transmission of feeling, thoughts, and images from one mind to another.
2) Clairvoyance: the ability to acquire knowledge of events, people and objects without the use of the human senses or reasoning
3) Precognition: the ability to gain knowledge by seeing into the future
4) Retrocognition: the ability to gain knowledge about events that have occurred in the past
What does the term psychokinesis mean?
The ability of using only the mind to influence physical matter without making any physical contact
Macro-PK:
* the effects of psychokinesis on psychical matter are large enough to be observed directly by the naked eye. E.g. moving items such as glasses, chairs, levitation
Micro-PK:
* the effects of psychokinesis cannot be directly observed by the naked eye because the effect is so small that a statistical test is carried out to determine whether PK occurred or not
How does the ganzfeld technique occur?
1) Participant in separate rooms:
Two participants - the “sender” and a “receiver”
Placed in separate soundproof chamber rooms to prevent sensory leakage
2) Eyes and ears covered:
Received sits in a reclined chair, eyes are tapped down with half ping-pong balls and red light shown on the receivers face
The light helps eliminate visual interferences.
Headphones are places over the wars with a gentle hissing noise to eliminate outside noise
3) One participant concentrates on image:
Sender randomly chooses one image from a selection, and concentrates on this for approx. 15 minutes and attempts to mentally communicate the information to the receiver.
4) Other participant attempts to describe imagine:
The receiver provides aloud a continuous verbal description on their mental thoughts, feeling that they experience which are carefully recorded by the experimenter via an audio link in another room (experimenter doesn’t know the answer)
5) Telepathy is judged:
At the end of the period, the receiver is presented with four images and judges which one closely matches the image they described under the ganzfeld period.
- by chance alone we would expect a success rate of 25%
- anything greater than 25% suggests something more than chance, such as ESP
What does Honorton (1985) find and what are the methodological issues?
He conducted a meta-analysis and analysed the results of 28 early ganzfeld studies between 1974 and 1981 and found a success rather of about 38%, which suggests it is not due to chance and that ESP must exist.
Hyman (1985) identified methodological flaws in the experiments that Honorton analysed:
1) Security flaws - not all experiments were standardised and varied in procedure. This could have led to sensory leakage, e.g. Prior communication before experiment
2) Statistical errors - the use of statistical testing was incorrectly applied in some of the studies.
Possible that the researcher may had tried various statistical methods until finding one that produces favourable results.
3) File drawer effect for meta-analysis:
The use of choosing successful studies over unsuccessful studies.
This bias sample of studies with significant results can exaggerate the overall finding results
Hymn argues if we take into account of possible unpublished studies with non-significant results, the overall success rate of the studies comes closer to chance
How does the ganzfeld technique occur?
1) Participant in separate rooms:
Two participants - the “sender” and a “receiver”
Placed in separate soundproof chamber rooms to prevent sensory leakage
2) Eyes and ears covered:
Received sits in a reclined chair, eyes are tapped down with half ping-pong balls and red light shown on the receivers face
The light helps eliminate visual interferences.
Headphones are places over the wars with a gentle hissing noise to eliminate outside noise
3) One participant concentrates on image:
Sender randomly chooses one image from a selection, and concentrates on this for approx. 15 minutes and attempts to mentally communicate the information to the receiver.
4) Other participant attempts to describe imagine:
The receiver provides aloud a continuous verbal description on their mental thoughts, feeling that they experience which are carefully recorded by the experimenter via an audio link in another room (experimenter doesn’t know the answer)
5) Telepathy is judged:
At the end of the period, the receiver is presented with four images and judges which one closely matches the image they described under the ganzfeld period.
- by chance alone we would expect a success rate of 25%
- anything greater than 25% suggests something more than chance, such as ESP
What does Honorton (1985) find and what are the methodological issues?
He conducted a meta-analysis and analysed the results of 28 early ganzfeld studies between 1974 and 1981 and found a success rather of about 38%, which suggests it is not due to chance and that ESP must exist.
Hyman (1985) identified methodological flaws in the experiments that Honorton analysed:
1) Security flaws - not all experiments were standardised and varied in procedure. This could have led to sensory leakage, e.g. Prior communication before experiment
2) Statistical errors - the use of statistical testing was incorrectly applied in some of the studies.
Possible that the researcher may had tried various statistical methods until finding one that produces favourable results.
3) File drawer effect for meta-analysis:
The use of choosing successful studies over unsuccessful studies.
This bias sample of studies with significant results can exaggerate the overall finding results
Hymn argues if we take into account of possible unpublished studies with non-significant results, the overall success rate of the studies comes closer to chance
Reasons for limited research evidence to support macro-PK?
Stanford (1986) says that the main reasons are:
1) refusal under controlled conditions - as they object to having their “psychic abilities” investigated under controlled experimental conditions
2) reliability - attempts to produce reliable findings of macro-PK effects under controlled conditions have been unsuccessful
3) fraudulent acts - many have been exposed of such which questions the credibility of such phenomena even existing. For example, Randi called out Geller in 1973 for not actually being able to bend metal objects but actually “pre-bending” these objects before he conducts his act.
What evidence is there for macro-PK
Nina Kulagina was a Russian housewife who was tested by a number of scientists under controlled conditions, which shows her to have been able to move a variety of small objects across a table of different material
How is micro-PK measured?
Helmut Schmidt introduced random number generators to investigate it
The view is that an individual can influence the outcome of RNG to try and produce more of one number than another.
Example of a random event generator: electronic coin flipper. In this type of experiment participants attempt to influence the fall of the coins
What did Bosch et al (2006) find?
Conducted a meta-analysis on 380 studies and found a small overall positive effect of participant intention on RNG.
They then found when studies were analysed separately that the larger studies tended to show non-significant results, whereas the smaller studies tended to report more positive results.
Small studies = “optional stopping” due to promising results
- criticism of meta-analysis is the mixing of studies that vary in terms of type and quality of research design. The suggestion is that validity of a meta-analysis depends on the quality of the studies, otherwise poor research design of some studies may account for the significant results in the meta-analysis review
What did Radin and Nelson (1989) find?
Meta-analysis of 597 RNG experimental studies and 235 control studies
Found a small but significant effect when studying the experimental studies
Found an overall effect closer to chance when studying control studies
What are the methodological issues with Psychokinesis?
- Problem with experimental control:
- Lack of tight experimental control allowing for the possibility of trickery
- Psi experimenter effect:
- assumption is that if psychic forces exist, the experimenters who believe in paranormal are more enthusiastic and motivated and will create a friendly environment that will enhance the participants own psi ability; “psi-conductive experimenter”.
- hence the consistent produce of significant positive results
- sceptic experiments may not have a positive attitude and therefore not bring out psi abilities; “psi-inhibitory experimenter”
- hence the consistent produce of unsuccessful significant results
- Issues of reliability:
- sceptics argue that positive results from studies do not demonstrate real evidence for psychic abilities
- they claim the significant results stem from methodological issues.
- results from PK and ESP studies are unreliable as they cannot be replicated consistently
