Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R003200110001-4 ANOMALOUS INFORMATION TRANSFER 13 to serve as senders produced significantly higher hit rates than studies that used only laboratory-assigned senders. As noted, however, there is no record of how many of the participants in the former studies actually did bring in friends. Whatever the case, sender-receiver pairing was not a significant correlate of psi performance in the autoganzfeld studies: The 197 sessions in which the sender and receiver were friends did not yield a significantly higher proportion of hits than did the 132 sessions in which they were not (35% vs. 29%; Fisher’s exact p = .28). Correlations between receiver characteristics and psi perfor- mance. Most of the autoganzfeld participants were strong be- lievers in psi: On a 7-point scale ranging from strong disbelief in psi (1) to strong belief in psi (7), the mean was 6.2 (SD = 1.03); only 2 participants rated their belief in psi below the midpoint of the scale. In addition, 88% of the participants reported per- sonal experiences suggestive of psi, and 80% had some training in meditation or other techniques involving internal focus of attention. All of these appear to be important variables. The correlation between belief in psi and psi performance is one of the most consistent findings in the parapsychological literature (Palmer, 1978). And, within the autoganzfeld studies, successful perfor- mance of novice (first-time) participants was significantly pre- dicted by reported personal psi experiences, involvement with meditation or other mental disciplines, and high scores on the Feeling and Perception factors of the Myers-Briggs Type Inven- tory (Honorton, 1992; Honorton & Schechter, 1987; Myers & McCaulley, 1985). This recipe for success has now been inde- pendently replicated in another laboratory (Broughton, Kan- thamani, & Khilji, 1990). The personality trait of extraversion is also associated with better psi performance. A meta-analysis of 60 independent studies with nearly 3,000 subjects revealed a small but reliable positive correlation between extraversion and psi performance, especially in studies that used free-response methods of the kind used in the ganzfeld experiments (Honorton, Ferrari, & Bem, 1992). Across 14 free-response studies conducted by four inde- pendent investigators, the correlation for 612 subjects was .20 (z = 4.82, p = 1.5 X 10~°). This correlation was replicated in the autoganzfeld studies, in which extraversion scores were available for 218 of the 240 subjects, r = .18, (216) = 2.67, p= .004, one-tailed. Finally, there is the strong psi performance of the Juilliard students, discussed earlier, which is consistent with other studies in the parapsychological literature suggesting a relationship be- tween successful psi performance and creativity or artistic abil- ity. Discussion Earlier in this article, we quoted from the abstract of the Hy- man-Honorton (1986) communiqué: “We agree that the final verdict awaits the outcome of future experiments conducted by a broader range of investigators and according to more stringent standards” (p. 351). We believe that the “stringent standards” requirement has been met by the autoganzfeld studies. The re- sults are statistically significant and consistent with those in the earlier database. The mean effect size is quite respectable in comparison with other controversial research areas of human performance (Harris & Rosenthal, 1988a). And there are reli- able relationships between successful psi performance and con- ceptually relevant experimental and subject variables, relation- ships that also replicate previous findings. Hyman (1991) has also commented on the autoganzfeld studies: “Honorton’s ex- periments have produced intriguing results. If. . . independent laboratories can produce similar results with the same relation- ships and with the same attention to rigorous methodology, then parapsychology may indeed have finally captured its elusive quarry” (p. 392). Issues of Replication As Hyman’s comment implies, the autoganzfeld studies by themselves cannot satisfy the requirement that replications be conducted by a “broader range of investigators.” Accordingly, we hope the findings reported here will be sufficiently provoca- tive to prompt others to try replicating the psi ganzfeld effect. We believe that it is essential, however, that future studies comply with the methodological, statistical, and reporting stan- dards set forth in the joint communiqué and achieved by the autoganzfeld studies. It is not necessary for studies to be as au- tomated or as heavily instrumented as.the autoganzfeld studies to satisfy the methodological guidelines, but they are still likely to be labor intensive and potentially expensive.’ Statistical Power and Replication Would-be replicators also need to be reminded of the power requirements for replicating small effects. Although many aca- demic psychologists do not believe in psi, many apparently do believe in miracles when it comes to replication. Tversky and Kahneman (1971) posed the following problem to their col- leagues at meetings of the Mathematical Psychology Group and the American Psychological Association: Suppose you have run an experiment on 20 subjects and have ob- tained a significant result which confirms your theory (z = 2.23, p<.05, two-tailed). You now have cause to run an additional group of 10 subjects. What do you think the probability is that the results will be significant, by a one-tailed test, separately for this group? (p. 105) The median estimate was .85, with 9 of 10 respondents provid- ing an estimate greater than .60. The correct answer is approxi- mately .48. As Rosenthal (1990) has warned: “Given the levels of statisti- cal power at which we normally operate, we have no right to expect the proportion of significant results that we typically do expect, even if in nature there is a very real and very important effect” (p. 16). In this regard, it is again instructive to consider the medical study that revealed a highly significant effect of as- pirin on the incidence of heart attacks. The study monitored more than 22,000 subjects. Had the investigators monitored 3,000 subjects, they would have had less than an even chance of 7 As the closing of the autoganzfeld laboratory exemplifies, it is also difficult to obtain funding for psi research. The traditional, peer-refer- -eed sources of funding familiar to psychologists have almost never funded proposals for psi research. The widespread skepticism of psy- chologists toward psi is almost certainly a contributing factor. Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R003200110001-4
. Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R003200110001-4 14 DARYL J. BEM AND CHARLES HONORTON finding a conventionally significant effect. Such is life with small effect sizes. Given its larger effect size, the prospects for successfully rep- licating the psi ganzfeld effect are not quite so daunting, but they are probably still grimmer than intuition would suggest. If the true hit rate is in fact about 34% when 25% is expected by chance, then an experiment with 30 trials (the mean for the 28 studies in the original meta-analysis) has only about | chance in 6 of finding an effect significant at the .05 level with a one-tailed test. A 50-trial experiment boosts that chance to about | in 3. One must escalate to 100 trials to come close to the break-even point, at which one has a 50-50 chance of finding a statistically significant effect (Utts, 1986). (Recall that only 2 of the 11 au- toganzfeld studies yielded results that were individually signifi- cant at the conventional .05 level.) Those who require that a psi effect be statistically significant every time before they will seriously entertain the possibility that an effect really exists know not what they ask. Significance Versus Effect Size The preceding discussion is unduly pessimistic, however, be- cause it perpetuates the tradition of worshipping the signifi- cance level. Regular readers of this journal are likely to be fa- miliar with recent arguments imploring behavioral scientists to overcome their slavish dependence on the significance level as the ultimate measure of virtue and instead to focus more of their attention on effect sizes: “Surely, God loves the .06 nearly as much as the .05” (Rosnow & Rosenthal, 1989, p. 1277). Ac- cordingly, we suggest that achieving a respectable effect size with a methodologically tight ganzfeld study would be a per- fectly welcome contribution to the replication effort, no matter how untenurable the p level renders the investigator. Career consequences aside, this suggestion may seem quite counterintuitive. Again, Tversky and Kahneman (1971) have provided an elegant demonstration. They asked several of their colleagues to consider an investigator who runs 15 subjects and obtains a significant ¢ value of 2.46. Another investigator at- tempts to duplicate the procedure with the same number of subjects and obtains a result in the same direction but with a nonsignificant value of ¢. Tversky and Kahneman then asked their colleagues to indicate the highest level of ¢ in the replica- tion study they would describe as a failure to replicate. The ma- jority of their colleagues regarded ¢ = 1.70 as a failure to repli- cate. But if the data from two such studies (¢ = 2.46 and ¢ = 1.70) were pooled, the ¢ for the combined data would be about 3.00 (assuming equal variances): Thus, we are faced with a paradoxical state of affairs, in which the same data that would increase our confidence in the finding when viewed as part of the original study, shake our confidence when viewed as an independent study. (Tversky & Kahneman, 1971, p. 108) Such is the iron grip of the arbitrary .05. Pooling the data, of course, is what meta-analysis is all about. Accordingly, we sug- gest that two or more laboratories could collaborate in a ganz- feld replication effort by conducting independent studies and then pooling them in meta-analytic fashion, what one might call real-time meta-analysis. (Each investigator could then claim the pooled p level for his or her own curriculum vitae.) Maximizing Effect Size Rather than buying or borrowing larger sample sizes, those who seek to replicate the psi ganzfeld effect might find it more intellectually satisfying to attempt to maximize the effect size by attending to the variables associated with successful out- comes. Thus, researchers who wish to enhance the chances of successful replication should use dynamic rather than static targets. Similarly, we advise using participants with the charac- teristics we have reported to be correlated with successful psi performance. Random college sophomores enrolled in intro- ductory psychology do not constitute the optimal subject pool. Finally, we urge ganzfeld researchers to read carefully the de- tailed description of the warm social ambiance that Honorton et al. (1990) sought to create in the autoganzfeld laboratory. We believe that the social climate created in psi experiments is a critical determinant of their success or failure. The Problem of “Other’’ Variables This caveat about the social climate of the ganzfeld experi- ment prompted one reviewer of this article to worry that this provided ‘“‘an escape clause” that weakens the falsifiability of the psi hypothesis: “Until Bem and Honorton can provide oper- ational criteria for creating a warm social ambiance, the failure of an experiment with otherwise adequate power can always be dismissed as due to a lack of warmth.” Alas, it is true; we devoutly wish it were otherwise. But the operation of unknown variables in moderating the success of replications is a fact of life in all of the sciences. Consider, for example, an earlier article in this journal by Spence (1964). He reviewed studies testing the straightforward derivation from Hullian learning theory that high-anxiety subjects should con- dition more strongly than low-anxiety subjects. This hypothesis was confirmed 94% of the time in Spence’s own laboratory at the University of lowa but only 63% of the time in laboratories at other universities, In fact, Kimble and his associates at Duke University and the University of North Carolina obtained re- sults in the opposite direction in two of three experiments. In searching for a post hoc explanation, Spence (1964) noted that “‘a deliberate attempt was made in the Iowa studies to pro- vide conditions in the laboratory that might elicit some degree of emotionality. Thus, the experimenter was instructed to be impersonal and quite formal. . . and did not try to put [sub- jects] at ease or allay any expressed fears” (pp. 135-136). More- over, he pointed out, his subjects sat in a dental chair, whereas Kimble’s subjects sat in a secretarial chair. Spence even consid- ered “the possibility that cultural backgrounds of southern and northern students may lead to a difference in the manner in which they respond to the different items in the [Manifest Anx- iety] scale” (p. 136). If this was the state of affairs in an area of research as well established as classical conditioning, then the suggestion that the social climate of the psi laboratory might affect the outcome of ganzfeld experiments in ways not yet com- pletely understood should not be dismissed as a devious attempt to provide an escape clause in case of replication failure. The best the original researchers can do is to communicate as complete a knowledge of the experimental conditions as possi- ble in an attempt to anticipate some of the relevant moderating Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R003200110001-4
Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R003200110001-4 ANOMALOUS INFORMATION TRANSFER 15 variables. Ideally, this might include direct training by the orig- nal researchers or videotapes of actual sessions, Lacking these, nowever, the detailed description of the autoganzfeld proce- dures provided by Honorton et al. (1990) comes as close as cur- rent knowledge permits in providing for other researchers the “gperational criteria for creating a warm social ambiance.” Theoretical Considerations Up to this point, we have confined our discussion to strictly empirical matters. We are sympathetic to the view that one should establish the existence of a phenomenon, anomalous or not, before attempting to explain it. So let us suppose for the moment that we have a genuine anomaly of information transfer here. How can it be understood or explained? : The Psychology of Psi | In attempting to understand psi, parapsychologists have typi- | cally begun with the working assumption that, whatever its un- ‘ derlying mechanisms, it should behave like other, more familiar psychological phenomena. In particular, they typically assume that target information behaves like an external sensory stimu- lus that is encoded, processed, and experienced in familiar in- formation-processing ways. Similarly, individual psi perfor- mances should covary with experimental and subject variables in psychologically sensible ways. These assumptions are embod- ied in the model of psi that motivated the ganzfeld studies in the first place. ‘The ganzfeld procedure. As noted in the introduction, the ganzfeld procedure was designed to test a model in which psi- mediated information is conceptualized as a weak signal that is normally masked by internal somatic and external sensory “noise.” Accordingly, any technique that raises the signal-to- noise ratio should enhance a person’s ability to detect psi-medi- ated information. This noise-reduction model of psi organizes a large and diverse body of experimental results, particularly those demonstrating the psi-conducive properties of altered states of consciousness such as meditation, hypnosis, dreaming, and, of course, the ganzfeld itself (Rao & Palmer, 1987). Alternative theories propose that the ganzfeld (and altered states) may be psi conducive because it lowers resistance to ac- cepting alien imagery, diminishes rational or contextual con- straints on the encoding or reporting of information, stimulates more divergent thinking, or even just serves as a placebo-like ritual that participants perceive as being psi conducive (Stan- ford, 1987). At this point, there are no data that would permit one to choose among these alternatives, and the noise-reduction model remains the most widely accepted. The target. There are also a number of plausible hypotheses that attempt to account for the superiority of dynamic targets over static targets: Dynamic targets contain more information, involve more sensory modalities, evoke more of the receiver’s internal schemata, are more lifelike, have a narrative structure, are more emotionally evocative, and are “richer” in other, un- specified ways. Several psi researchers have attempted to go be- yond the simple dynamic-static dichotomy to more refined or theory-based definitions of a good target. Although these efforts have involved examining both psychological and physical prop- erties of targets, there is as yet not much progress to report (Del- anoy, 1990). The receiver. Some of the subject characteristics associated with good psi performance also appear to have psychologically straightforward explanations. For example, garden-variety mo- tivational explanations seem sufficient to account for the rela- tively consistent finding that those who believe in psi perform significantly better than those who do not. (Less straightfor- ward, however, would be an explanation for the frequent finding that nonbelievers actually perform significantly worse than chance [Broughton, 1991, p. 109].) The superior psi performance of creative or artistically gifted individuals—such as the Juilliard students—may reflect indi- vidual differences that parallel some of the hypothesized effects of the ganzfeld mentioned earlier: Artistically gifted individuals may be more receptive to alien imagery, be better able to tran- scend rational or contextual constraints on the encoding or re- porting of information, or be more divergent in their thinking. It has also been suggested that both artistic and psi abilities might be rooted in superior right-brain functioning. The observed relationship between extraversion and psi per- formance has been of theoretical interest for many years. Eysenck (1966) reasoned that extraverts should perform well in psi tasks because they are easily bored and respond favorably to novel stimuli. In a setting such as the ganzfeld, extraverts may become “stimulus starved” and thus may be highly sensitive to any stimulation, including weak incoming psi information. In contrast, introverts would be more inclined to entertain them- selves with their own thoughts and thus continue to mask psi information despite the diminished sensory input. Eysenck also speculated that psi might be a primitive form of perception an- tedating cortical developments in the course of evolution, and, hence, cortical arousal might suppress psi functioning. Because extraverts have a lower level of cortical arousal than introverts, they should perform better in psi tasks (the evolutionary biology of psi has also been discussed by Broughton, 1991, pp. 347- 352). But there are more mundane possibilities. Extraverts might perform better than introverts simply because they are more relaxed and comfortable in the social setting of the typical psi experiment (e.g., the “warm social ambiance” of the autoganz- feld studies). This interpretation is strengthened by the observa- tion that introverts outperformed extraverts in a study in which subjects had no contact with an experimenter but worked alone at home with materials they received in the mail (Schmidt & Schlitz, 1989). To help decide among these interpretations, ganzfeld experimenters have begun to use the extraversion scale of the NEO Personality Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992), which assesses six different facets of the extraversion-introver-_ sion factor. The sender, In contrast to this information about the re- ceiver in psi experiments, virtually nothing is known about the characteristics of a good sender or about the effects of the send- er’s relationship with the receiver. As has been shown, the initial suggestion from the meta-analysis of the original ganzfeld data- base that psi performance might be enhanced when the sender and receiver are friends was not replicated at a statistically sig- nificant level in the autoganzfeld studies. A number of parapsychologists have entertained the more Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R003200110001-4
Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R003200110001-4 16 DARYL J. BEM AND CHARLES HONORTON radical hypothesis that the sender may not even be a necessary element in the psi process. In the terminology of parapsychol- ogy, the sender—-receiver procedure tests for the existence of te- lepathy, anomalous communication between two individuals; however, if the receiver is somehow picking up the information from the target itself, it would be termed clairvoyance, and the presence of the sender would be irrelevant (except for possible psychological reasons, such as expectation effects). At the time of his death, Honorton was planning a series of autoganzfeld studies that would systematically compare sender and no-sender conditions while keeping both the receiver and the experimenter blind to the condition of the ongoing session. In preparation, he conducted a meta-analytic review of ganzfeld studies that used no sender. He found 12 studies, with a median of 33.5 sessions, conducted by seven investigators. The overall effect size (a) was .56, which corresponds to a four-alternative hit rate of 29%. But this effect size does not reach statistical significance (Stouffer z = 1.31, p = .095). So far, then, there is no firm evidence for psi in the ganzfeld in the absence of a sender, (There are, however, nonganzfeld studies in the literature that do report significant evidence for clairvoyance, including a classic card-guessing experiment conducted by J. B. Rhine and Pratt [1954].) The Physics of Psi The psychological level of theorizing just discussed does not, of course, address the conundrum that makes psi phenomena anomalous in the first place: their presumed incompatibility with our current conceptual model of physical reality, Parapsy- chologists differ widely from one another in their taste for theo- rizing at this level, but several whose training lies in physics or engineering have proposed physical (or biophysical) theories of psi phenomena (an extensive review of theoretical parapsychol- ogy was provided by Stokes, 1987). Only some of these theories would force a radical revision in our current conception of physical reality. Those who follow contemporary debates in modern physics, however, will be aware that several phenomena predicted by quantum theory and confirmed by experiment are themselves incompatible with our current conceptual model of physical re- ality. Of these, it is the 1982 empirical confirmation of Bell’s theorem that has created the most excitement and controversy among philosophers and the few physicists who are willing to speculate on such matters (Cushing & McMullin, 1989; Her- bert, 1987). In brief, Bell’s theorem states that any model of reality that is compatible with quantum mechanisms must be nontocal: It must allow for the possibility that the results of ob- servations at two arbitrarily distant locations can be correlated in ways that are incompatible with any physically permissible causal mechanism. Several possible models of reality that incorporate nonlocal- ity have been proposed by both philosophers and physicists. Some of these models clearly rule out psi-like information transfer, others permit it, and some actually require it. Thus, at a grander level of theorizing, some parapsychologists believe that one of the more radical models of reality compatible with both quantum mechanics and psi will eventually come to be accepted. If and when that occurs, psi phenomena would cease to be anomalous. But we have learned that all such talk provokes most of our colleagues in psychology and in physics to roll their eyes and gnash their teeth. So let’s just leave it at that. Skepticism Revisited More generally, we have learned that our colleagues’ tolerance for any kind of theorizing about psi is strongly determined by the degree to which they have been convinced by the data that psi has been demonstrated. We have further learned that their diverse reactions to the data themselves are strongly determined by their a priori beliefs about and attitudes toward a number of quite general issues, some scientific, some not. In fact, several statisticians believe that the traditional hypothesis-testing meth- ods used in the behavioral sciences should be abandoned in fa- vor of Bayesian analyses, which take into account a person’s a priori beliefs about the phenomenon under investigation (e.g., Bayarri & Berger, 1991; Dawson, 1991). In the final analysis, however, we suspect that both one’s Bayesian a prioris and one’s reactions to the data are ultimately determined by whether one was more severely punished in childhood for Type I or Type II errors. References Atkinson, R., Atkinson, R. C., Smith, E. E., & Bem, D. J. (1990). Intro- duction to psychology (10th ed.). San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jo- vanovich. Atkinson, R., Atkinson, R. C., Smith, E. E., & Bem, D. J. (1993). Intro- duction to psychology (11th ed.). San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jo- vanovich. Avant, L. L. (1965). Vision in the ganzfeld. Psychological Bulletin, 64, 246-258, Bayarri, M. J., & Berger, J. (1991), Comment. Statistical Science, 6, 379-382. ‘ Blackmore, S. (1980). The extent of selective reporting of ESP ganzfeld studies, European Journal of Parapsychology, 3, 213-219. Bozarth, J. D., & Roberts, R. R. (1972). Signifying significant signifi- cance, American Psychologist, 27, 774-715. Braud, W. G., Wood, R., & Braud, L. W. (1975). Free-response GESP performance during an experimental hypnagogic state induced by visual and acoustic ganzfeld techniques. A replication and extension. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 69, 105-113. Broughton, R. S. (1991). Parapsychology: The controversial science. New York: Ballantine Books. Broughton, R. S., Kanthamani, H., & Khilji, A. (1990). Assessing the PRL success model on an independent ganzfeld data base. In L. Henkel & J. Palmer (Eds.), Research in parapsychology 1989 (pp. 32- 35). Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press. Child, I. L. (1985). Psychology and anomalous observations: The ques- tion of ESP in dreams. American Psychologist, 40, 1219-1230, Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Cohen, J. (1992). Statistical power analysis. Current Directions in Psy- chological Science, 1, 98-101. Costa, P. T. Jn, & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Revised NEO Personality In- ventory (NEO-PI-R) and NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI): Professional manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Re- sources. Cushing, J. T., & McMullin, E. (Eds.). (1989). Philosophical conse- Approved For Release 2000/08/08 : CIA-RDP96-00789R003200110001 -4