: CIA-RDP96-00789R002200550001-7 Approved For Release 2000/08/08 292 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research METHOD Subjects Forty individuals participated in this formal study. Eight persons served as influencers and 32 persons served as subjects; each influencer worked with 4 subjects. The first author served as experimenter for 16 sessions, and the second author served as experimenter for the remaining 16 ses- sions. One of the 8 influencers was the person who had had the highest performance record in the pilot study; this was also the person who had been least bothered by the lengths of the pilot sessions and who had been most enthusiastic about participating in further experiments. The second influencer had participated successfully in prior electrodermal bio-PK ex- periments. The third influencer was a psi researcher who had a history of successful psychokinesis performances in his own experiments. The fourth and fifth influencers had participated successfully in several pre- vious psi experiments at the Foundation. The sixth and seventh influencers were very interested in psychic healing and had had ostensible psi healing interactions in their everyday lives. The eighth influencer had participated in previous psi experiments at the Foundation as a subject and as a student experimenter and had expressed an interest in the bio-PK formal experi- ment. Four influencers were male and 4 were female. ; The 32 subjects were selected from a pool of persons expressing interest in participating in bio-PK and other psi experiments. Some participants had previously enrolled in workshops presented by the two authors. Others were undergraduate students from a local college who participated as part of a course requirement. Eight (one-fourth) of the subjects had participated in prior psi experiments conducted at the Foundation; 24 (three-fourths) of the subjects were first-time participants. Twenty-two of the subjects were female and 10 were male. Apparatus Experimental apparatus consisted of silver/silver chloride palmar elec- trodes, a skin-resistance amplifier, an analog-to-digital converter inter- faced with a microcomputer, and audio equipment. This equipment was identical to that described in previous reports (Braud & Schlitz, 1983; Schlitz & Braud, 1985), with a single exception: A momentary contact push button was added so that the influencer could initiate sampling epochs. Procedure The procedure was similar to that described in Braud and Schlitz (1983). The experimenter met with the influencer and the subject in a Intuitive Data Sorting and Bio-PK 293 comfortable office, explained the purpose and procedure of the experi- ment, and provided consent forms and general information questionnaires for the influencer and subject to complete. The experimenter then escorted the two participants to the influencer’s room and showed the subject where the influencer would be stationed during the experiment. The influencer remained in one room while the experimenter escorted the subject to the subject’s room, which was located in an entirely different suite area across an outside corridor and 20 meters away from the influencer’s room. Con- ventional sensorimotor communication between these two rooms was not possible. The subject was seated in a comfortable recliner chair (which remained in an upright position throughout the experiment), and the experimhenter attached two silver/silver chloride electrodes (7 mm diameter) fille¢Swith partially conductive electrode gel to the subject’s right palm by megas of adhesive electrode collars. The subject was told that he or she uld make no deliberate effort to relax or to be especially active, but showd try to maintain a moderate level of autonomic activation throughout eXx- periment. This was to be accomplished by watching randomly ch@ging patterns of colored squares of light on a 12-inch display screen 2 fpeters away and by. listening to prerecorded computer-generated randomotones through headphones. The subject was asked to allow his or her minédto be as ‘‘random’’ as possible—observing thoughts, images, and fecligs as they spontaneously arose, without clinging to any of them. Theyowere asked to make themselves open to and accepting of a distant mentafinflu- ence by the influencer, but not to try to consciously guess when inffence attempts might be made. The subject was, of course, unaware co the number, timing, or scheduling of the various influence attempts. 6 The experimenter returned to the influencer’s room and consu ted a sealed envelope to learn the influence epoch sequence for the ses$@n. A set of these sequence envelopes had been prepared beforehand byggn as- sistant who was not otherwise involved in the experiment. The enlopes had been prepared using a table of random numbers with a meth that minimized the preparer’s degree of freedom in making arbitrary de&sions about where to enter the table and how to assign conditions to the random numbers (see Stanford, 1981, for the rationale underlying this mégiod) - The envelope indicated whether the influence epoch sequence watPto be calm-activate-activate-calm (CAAC) or its opposite (ACCA). Thigyroun- terbalanced sequence was used for the 12 sampling epochs of a s¢gsion. The experimenter entered the proper sequence into the computer, rétorded the subject’s initial basal skin resistance, started the computer pieram that controlled the experiment, and then started playing the audiocgssette that presented the subject’s random tones. = The new element that had been added to this experiment to test ti IDS hypothesis was described to the influencer by the experimenter. the in- fluencer was to press a button at what he or she intuitively felt to be the optimal time for beginning the next sampling epoch. The influencer was
294° Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research told that it might be possible to psychically, yet unconsciously, scan the future autonomic activity data stream of the subject and press the button so as to optimally sort the subject’s activity into the appropriate sampling epochs—thereby increasing the scoring rate. The addition of this IDS op- tion is, of course, accompanied by psychological factors such as beliefs and expectations that might obscure its true effectiveness. Therefore, a procedure was designed that would allow us to control for such psycholog- ical factors. This procedure required a contrast condition in which the influencer appeared to be initiating sampling epochs by means of his or her button pressing, but in reality was not. This was accomplished in the following manner. In the condition that we expected would optimize IDS, the influencer’s button presses initiated sampling epochs after randomly getermined variable delays. In this condition (the MULTIPLE SEEDS gendition), the precise times of occurrence of the button presses were cru- gal in determining the delay periods, because the button presses selected §e clock values that served as the different seeds for the pseudorandom Qleorithm that generated the values of the delays. Thus, button presses tually could be efficacious in determining sampling scheduling. In the O6ntrast condition (the SINGLE SEED condition), all random delay pe- Sods were determined by the first of the influencer’s 12 button presses. he computer’s clock value at the time of this first button press seeded the aan algorithm once and only once, and all other button presses etched’’ their random delays from the already determined outcome of Prat first seeding. o¢ The use of randomly varying delays between button presses and sam- pting epoch initiations accomplished two things: (a) They allowed the in- Muencer and the experimenter to remain blind as to whether a SINGLE SEED or MULTIPLE SEEDS condition was in effect for a given session e., whether the last 11 button presses were really influencing sampling och scheduling or not), and (b) their unpredictable nature prevented the fluencer from simply observing the subject’s electrodermal chart tracing @2id making sensorially and logically informed guesses about the optimal fines to press the button and initiate sampling (i-e., to initiate sampling on tRe basis of knowledge of the likely time course of the subject’s autonomic tivity, based upon observation of the chart tracing). The delays between fgitton press and sampling epoch initiation varied within a 30- to 40- Scond range. OEach of the 12 30-second sampling epochs was signaled by a contin- Hus, low-frequency tone that was audible only to the experimenter and ‘he influencer. During the six calm-aim (C) epochs, the influencer at- tempted to psychically decrease the distant subject’s sympathetic nervous tem activity. Three types of strategies were used to accomplish this 1: (a) calming and relaxing oneself and intending for the subject to respond similarly, (b) visualizing the subject in tranquil and relaxing situa- tions and settings, and (c) attending to the polygraph feedback and visual- izing and intending for a flat tracing. During the six activate-aim (A) Intuitive Data Sorting and Bio-PK 295 epochs, the influencer attempted to increase the distant subject’s sympa- thetic nervous system activity. Three types of strategies were used to ac- complish this goal: (a) activating oneself and intending for the subject to respond similarly, (b) visualizing the subject in exciting, active situations and settings, and (c) attending to the polygraph feedback and visualizing and intending for a tracing filled with frequent and large pen deflections. The influencer was given the option of whether or not to view the chart tracings. Some influencers found this real-time feedback helpful, whereas others found it distracting and preferred to simply close their eyes and visualize the subject responding appropriately. In order to minimize participant-scheduling difficulties and to minimize variability, a within-subject design was used in which each subject’s Opsit to the lab involved two sessions, one under the SINGLE SEED condi%pn and one under the MULTIPLE SEEDS condition. The influencer and@he experimenter (and, of course, the subject) remained unaware of wifich conditions were in effect in the two respective sessions until the end ofShe second session, at which time a computer printout revealed the condition sequence. The order of the two conditions was determined randomly by a computer algorithm that was seeded before the first session— based ypon the timing of a carriage return that occurred while the experimenter Ras entering keyboard information about the subject’s name, the date and time of the session, etc. Each of the two sessions required approximatelyo15 minutes for completion. The two sessions were separated by a brief bggak of approximately one-minute duration. oO * At the conclusion of the second session, the computer generated a printout of the subject’s average electrodermal activity during each o ithe 12 sampling epochs of each of the two sessions, along with an indic aon of the order of the two (SINGLE or MULTIPLE SEEDS) conditions. ‘the experimenter returned to the subject’s room, removed the headphones@§nd palmar electrodes, then returned with the subject to the experimenggr’s office where the influencer was now waiting. The influencer and the {&b- ject discussed their experiences during the sessions while the experimepter calculated the experimental results, based upon the printout. The t@yee participants discussed the outcome of the experiment and then concluded their visit. o All procedural details that have not been mentioned explicitly mare be found in Braud and Schlitz (1983). That paper provides information aftbut specific equipment, electrodermal sampling, etc. re} Three a priori statistical analyses were planned: uw 1. A comparison of the psi scores (calm-aim percentage scores; qpee below) for the two SEEDS conditions. This analysis would involg a matched (dependent) ¢ test performed on the 32 pairs of scores. Becgyise no directional prediction was made in this case, a two-tailed test Svas planned, with alpha set at .05. < 2. A determination of whether a psi effect occurred in the SINGLE SEED condition. For this analysis, a single-mean ¢ test would be used to