Nonintentional behavioural responses to psi : hidden targets and hidden observers
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Date
28/11/2012Author
Anderson, Mary-Jane Charlotte
Metadata
Abstract
Psi is the phenomenon of apparently responding to or receiving information by
means other than the recognised senses. Psi information may influence human
behaviour, without the individual intending this or even being aware of it. This thesis
seeks to investigate nonintentional behavioural responses to psi. We present five
empirical studies that investigated nonintentional behavioural responses to psi
information. In each study, the psi information was hidden from participants, in that
the participants neither had sensory access to it, nor did they know that it existed.
Two different combinations of psi information and a behavioural response were
examined. The first was the influence of hidden psi information on psychological
task performance. The second was the influence of covert, remote observation by
hidden observers on the social facilitation effect. In all the studies, the effects of
individual differences in participants’ personalities were also considered.
In Experiment 1 we investigated whether hidden targets influenced participants’
judgements of the lengths of lines. There was no overall psi effect, but we found a
replication of a response bias effect and a significant correlation between psi and
participants’ extraversion. In Experiment 2 we investigated whether hidden targets
influenced participants’ speed on a maths task. There was no overall psi effect and no
correlations between personality and psi scores.
We reviewed previous research literature on social facilitation from the novel angle
of investigating whether being watched can, in and of itself, lead to the social
facilitation effect. Experiments 3, 4, and 5 developed the paradigm of testing for a
social facilitation effect from remote observation, investigating whether remote
observation leads to the same behavioural changes as knowingly being observed by a
physically present person. We compared participants’ performance on psychological
tasks under different observation conditions: alone, remotely observed by a hidden
observer, and observed by a physically present observer. The expected social
facilitation effect was not found in these experiments, leading to a series of
improvements to the sampling, methodology, and tasks over the course of these
experiments. As the social facilitation effect from a physically present observer was
not reliably replicated, these experiments were not conclusive tests of whether there
is a social facilitation effect from remote observation. However, there was an
indication in Experiment 3 that remote observation does not exert a significant
behavioural effect.
Considered together, our studies explored novel approaches to examining
nonintentional behavioural responses to psi. The significant correlation between
participants’ extraversion and psi is, to our knowledge, the first time this effect has
been found in a nonintentional psi experiment. This, and the replication of the
response bias effect, represent important advances in parapsychology. Our
experiments are also the first to test the assumption, inherent in many research
designs, that covert observation does not affect participants’ behaviour. Overall, our
findings did not support the psi hypothesis.