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Unexpected Common Patterning of Subject Data .
When
all
subjects'
(exploratory and replication) data were examined,
16 of
190 possible comparisons
(8.4%) were significant
at the
.05 level
whereas
7/190 comparisons of simulation data were significant
at ’the
.05
level.
A
graphical analysis of the data revealed an unexpected
common patterning in significantly intercorrelated subject data:
The subjects' intercorrelated data form
a pattern that can be
roughly described as a "U" curve.
No pattern
is
visible in inter-
correlated simulation data.
Blind Matching.
The experimenter's data yielded a rank of
and the second Exploratory subject's data yielded a rank of
2.
Among the eight Application subjects,
3 yielded ranks of
(exact
binomial probabilityNpf
3 out of/8 with rank of
1 =
.005, where
p = .0476, q =
. 9524V one-tailep)
.
apers
This pa
cal tasks
(
sequences of
"primacy" and
progress
ite
ty&t has a long history in standard psychologi-
"U" curve associated with learning temporal
and attributed to the motivational effects of
,
Replication of the present work
is in
future w!*ck
will explore other parameters of random
data for evidence of idiosyncratic patterning.
AN EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION OF A BELIEF IN PSI
Kenneth Reed (Dept,
of Psychology,
University of Edinburgh,
7 George Square, Edinburgh EH 8
9JZ
,
Scotland)
D/seussion
The
first hypothesisVtjhat subjects temporally pattern RNG
data with which they interact,
received weak confirmation.
Two of
eight participants showed significant correlation of the temporal
patterning of significant ruI stores between two separate experi-
mental replications, and a t*iird\subject showed a marginal correla-
tion.
Matched simulation dpta showed chance outcomes.
The second hypothesis, that\uch patterns would be idiosyn-
cratic enough to allow blind matching: by objective means was strong-
ly supported.
Three of eight subjects' data
(38%) were correctly
matched from within
20 ddcoy data sets
What was most unexpected was the^imilarity of patterning
among individuals.
The /pattern formed can be described as
a "U"
curve.
As a group,
thef intercorrelated subject data showed a pat-
tern of significant
hittinfg near the beginning of the game,
followed
by significant missing iA the game's middle
,
fallowed by recovery
to
chance
at the game's
erid.
Had a summary measure alone been used
it would be concluded jhat
"no effect" was preA|nt in this
analysis:
’
Consistent,
periodic hitting and missing cancel e\ch other out .
This
conclusion
,
if based
or/ individual data sets instead of an ex-post-
facto grouping, would (be the same:
Half of the 2(kdata sets showed
a periodic hitting/missing pattern,
with the hitting \t the beginning
of the game and the pissing in the game's middle,
followed by a re-
covery to chance levels.
Of the
12 simulation data seW that showed
significant interconnections , no patterning can be seen.
Random
fluctuations should
statistically average out
,
and
there should be no differences between temporal epochs
(if there
is no effect of the subject on the data).
The present data indicate
that, indeed,
subjects do influence random data idiosyncratically
,
but the present subject population showed a strong common effect.
Belief in psi has been a topic of investigation over recent
years,
especially by skeptics of parapsychology.
The results
achieved, however,
have been inconclusive,
and many of the stud-
ies may have been biased.
This study was therefore an attempt to
investigate belief in psi taking account of these biases.
The subjects involved in this study were second-year psy-
cholop undergraduates
at Edinburgh University,
a class composed
of
117 students
(83 females and
34 males).
They were
all initially
approached during their practical classes and asked to participate
m the study
, when they were
told that the purpose of the study
was
to
collect data
to establish population norms
for attitudes about
unusual phenomena.
Each subject was then handed
a questionnaire
which was
set up along the following lines.
Section A:
Subjects had to reply yes or no, depending on
whether they had experienced any of the following:
a dream that
later came true; thought about someone just before they telephoned;
successfully tried to score in a definite way in a card game; been
consistently lucky;
been
consistently unlucky; known that a letter
was about
to arrive.
If a "yes" answer was given to any of these
experiences the subjects had to rate that experience on a five-point
scale,
(definitely psychic)
to
(definitely coincidence /normal ex-
planation)
.
Section B:
Subjects had to rate a
list of phenomena, which
fell into the following groups:
"real"-ball lightning, acupuncture,
dreams,
meteorites,
hypnosis;
"psi"- -ESP, psychic healing,
telepa-
thy, mind over matter,
clairvoyance,
poltergeists; "anomalous"—
Bigfoot,
Atlantis, UFOs, spontaneous combustion. Abominable Snow-
man, Loch Ness monster;
"false" --alchemy, phrenology,
flat earth,
astrology.
The phenomena were rated on a seven-point scale
(not real)
to
(real).
Section C:
Subjects chose a passage which was either for or
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:
against parapsychology, and said how much they agreed with
it on
a three-point scale,
(strong agreement)
to
(mild agreement).
Section D:
Subjects had
to rate the importance of religion
and science on a four-point
scale,
(major influence)
to
4 (no in-
fluence)
.
The subjects were asked
to
fill out the questionnaire and
re-
turn
it the following week.
Those subjects who were participating
in the Differential Psychology course
(88 students) were approached
a few weeks
later and handed a questionnaire
(Rotter's Locus of
Control,
labeled
"I-E
Scale").
At a later stage permission was
granted for other personality data (from an Eysenck Personality
Questionnaire,
or EPQ
test) to be made available to the author for
the purpose of this study.
Seventy- six subjects returned the
original "Attitude Survey" questionnaire,
35 of whom
also returned
the Locus of Control scale.
EPQ data were available for 37 subjects.
There
are no sex differences in the number of experiences
reported, although males had a lower
(i.e., more psychic) mean
evaluation
for
all experiences than females (2.7 to 3.7, p
<
0.01).
There were no personality differences between subjects who rated
the experiences
as coincidental and subjects who rated the experi-
ences as psychic, although subjects reporting fewer experiences
were more neurotic than those who reported
, more experiences than
average
(p
<
0.05).
Subjects who rated the phenomena highly
(i.e., coincidence explanation)
did not
differ in personality from
other subjects.
Subjects who rated the experiences
at the other
extreme
(i.e., psychic explanation) appear to be more introverted
and neurotic than other subjects
(0.1
> p
> 0.05).
However, due
to the small number and the level of significance the result should
only be considered suggestive rather than conclusive.
The mean
scores
for each of the groups of phenomena were as expected,
i.e.,
real
(5.91)
> psi
(4.41)
> anomalous
(3.51)
> false
(2.52).
Subjects who had a higher psi rating
(i.e.,
rated psi as
valid) were more inclined
to believe in the validity of anomalous
phenomena (p
<
0.01).
These subjects
also had higher ratings
for
the
real group of phenomena
(p
<
0.0005).
Males were also more
likely to rate the real and anomalous groups higher than did females
(p
<
0.05).
Subjects with a high psi rating reported more ex-
periences than subjects with a low psi rating,
although there were
no significant differences in their evaluations of these experiences.
There were no personality differences between these two groups,
or groups with more extreme psi ratings.
Sixty- five subjects agreed with Passage A
(positive to para-
psychology) and
10 agreed with Passage B.
Seventeen subjects
expressed a strong agreement
(16
for Passage A and
for Passage
B).
There were no personality differences between those subjects
who chose Passage A and those who chose Passage B.
Similarly,
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there were no personality differences between those subjects who
expressed strong agreement and those who didn't.
Subjects who
chose Passage A had
a higher rating for the psi group
(p
<
0.0005),
the anomalous group
(p
<
0.001), and also the real group
(p
<
0.05).
The mean reported ratings were
2.4 (important /minor influ-
ence)
for science and
3.0 (minor influence)
for religion.
Those
subjects who reported science or religion as being very important
in their lives did not differ in personality from those subjects who
did not report such an importance.
There were no differences in
the passage chosen or the group ratings for those subjects who re-
ported a strong importance for science or
religion compared with
the rest of the subjects.
From the
first part of the study we can see that a belief in
psi is not the result of a specific personality pattern or the conse-
quence of some illogical cognitive process.
The idea was therefore
put forward that the previous studies were actually measuring fac-
tors relevant
to strength rather than content of belief.
Consequent-
ly, the second part of this study was an attempt to measure differ-
ences due to extreme attitudes.
However,
the results achieved were
inconclusive with regard to this
specific question, but this may have
been because of the
size of the study rather than for any other
reason.
It therefore seems that the idea that subjects displaying
strong attitudes have a characteristic personality /cognitive profile
is worthy of further investigation.
Such a study would have to
take into account the biases that could affect the results,
while
at
the same time have a large enough number of subjects to be able to
measure extremes.
Since,
in this case, the content of the belief
may be largely irrelevant,
it should be possible to test this notion
using different contents.
We would then be able to determine
if the
personality /cognitive results do actually relate to one's holding an
extreme attitude or if they are dependent on the particular content
of that
attitude.
Either way, the results would shed more light onto
the debate about the validity of a belief in psi.
EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF BIOLOGICALLY INDUCED
MAGNETIC ANOMALI&*
Q
G.
Egely and G. VertesX (Central Research
Institute for Physics,
H- 1525 Budapest ll\ Box
49, Hungary)**
While electrical phenomena in biological processes are relatively
Abstracted from the
full/ reportX by Debra H.
Weiner.
Presented in absentia by JohnVleloff.
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