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process material and low defensiveness" ^
r
J
success (Sondow, 1987, p.43).
Similarly’ Ron
f°^d t0 COrrelate sigmficantly with psi
both subliminal and extrasensory perception tl' ^
tl982) f°Und 1(131
at
of altered states of consciousness. An unusual nftrf
^ ated t0 openness t0 experience
was suggested by Stanford & Schroeter (1978)*
ZT*
of defensiveness
•
f
cbair ^or a word association ESP task
if «/
f
?
f°
wbc(l objects chose to
choose the fully reclined position
while
•W defensive in^viduals
more vulnerable, threatened and less »hi i
defenSlve ^dividuals might feel
choose a more upright
3 Position and shcTJd^fore
the chair had significantly greater than chance ESP sc^
hat
.
silbjects who fully reclined
scored non-significantly below MCE, although the duT*’^
remaining subjects
was not significant
’ dirnough the difference between th*
of defensiveness seen in the
more defensive subjects tend to psi-LS
d
ffensive subJects tend to psi-hit and
strengthened by a group of studies which have relative!^
°f^ observation is funher
e ensiveness-psi relationship:
the DMT-ESP studies
V SystematlcaI1y examined the
2.1. The Defense Mechanism Test (DMT)
shown , piciurc
".«>
»ithssss am ^n^sij
his picture senes is preceded and followed bvL f
°m thC shadows behind the hero,
picture (responses to which are not evaluated) and^
1*6 °fV*™™
"
distractor"
pother series of successively lengthening
fr®
SeCOnd pictUre is sh™n *
Kragh argued that through projection th/c v
U$lng P^oanalytic assumptions
to defense mechanism! w^CovoSlvZf “““>
^ heroCT*
secondary figure.
Initial exposures^
® the hero fr<™'he
fragmentary information about the picture rontenf how,
1S eXpccted to gain only
is required to draw or describe what he or she thou’nh?
*7^ exposure he or she
correct description is given. The various transform**
the P1CtUre ’ until finaJ1y a
ihe subject’s responses can be interpreted^10,? T"!,
d,storti°ns which occur in
reudjan defense mechanisms. The techniaue rf
”
1 iu
,
as signs of the operation of
and tn increasingly lengthy s ,eps i7bSoTtenSTtf
Slinralus pid"™serially
(Kragh & Smith, 1970; Smith & We Sterlundh
l980) 7v
,',?Wn “ ^^pt-genetics
perception is a constructive or an adaptive nm’w
' 7?“ tbeory suSgests that
process by disrupting or
M
fractioning->rce^^®SS ’
that ir is Possible to examine this
briefly and serially.
It is thought that some of tt"
0118
presen,ing 'he stimulus yen,
during the fractioning process may indicate the
pCrceptu!' l d is 'orli°ns which occur
ve?
brief ("stimulus distal") exposure?,he rimT
u- °( defcnse ““hanisms. A,
subject’s perception ofit is thought to be dominate?
• gh y ambi*uous and the
g
t to be dominated by internal, personality factors. A,
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longer ("stimulus proximal") exposures the stimulus becomes increasingly clear and early
perceptions are modified until an accurate description of the stimulus is given. The DMT
therefore has three basic theoretical assumptions:
that through projection the subject
identifies with the hero figure; that the presence of the secondary figure activates
Freudian or neo-Freudian defenses; and that by fractioning perception these defenses can
be studied and scored.
In applied settings the DMT can reliably predict how people will react in stressful or
dangerous situations (for a review of these studies, see Cooper, 1988a). For instance,
Kragh (1970) describes two studies which successfully used theDMT to predict which
aviation cadets would be unsuccessful in their training, and to predict the training success
of Danish attack divers. For the former study, the inter-rater reliabilities (from .59 to .90)
were judged to be low to satisfactory compared with ordinary aptitude tests, and as good
as or better than those found with other projective tests. The most experienced DMT
rater achieved the highest validity.
For the latter study, inter-rater reliabilities were
higher (from .69 to .92) and again there was a significant correlation between DMT
scoring and the criteria set for success or failure in training. The DMT has also been
successfully used to predict accident prone parachutists and deep sea divers (Vaemes,
1982; Vaemes & Darragh, 1982). Nowadays, the DMT is used as part of the standard
screening procedure for Scandinavian military personnel.
The above research indicates the ability of the DMT to predict susceptibility to stress.
It
is less clear, however, whether the DMT is actually measuring the operation of Freudian
defense mechanisms (Cooper 1982, Cooper & Kline 1986, Kline 1987, Cooper 1988a.,
1988b.); I will enlarge on this point in section 2.3. below. For the moment, therefore,
one can only say that the DMT appears to be measuring responses to emotional or
threatening stimuli, and it has been successfully used in applied settings.
2.2. DMT-ESP Studies
Traditionally, there are 13 studies (listed in the Appendix) which have been regarded as
the principal DMT-ESP studies. These 13 have systematically compared people’s DMT
scores with their performance on forced-choice ESP tasks. There are also a number of
other studies which have compared scores on the DMT (or approximations to it) with
ESP scores. These studies, it appears, have not been included in a recent meta-analysis
of DMT-ESP research (Haraldsson, Houtkooper & Hoeltje, 1987) because they are not
directly comparable with the principal studies. Some are merely pilot studies; some use
free-response rather than forced-choice methodologies; and some use "unofficial" or
exploratory versions of the DMT. For the sake of completeness, however, I will briefly
outline the findings of these additional studies before moving on to describe the 13
principal DMT-ESP studies.
Johnson & Hartwell (1979) conducted an exploratory study, testing no specific
hypotheses, relating defensiveness as measured by the DMT to success at trying to guess
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whether an agent was looking at a pleasant picture or a group of unpleasant pictures
Post hoc ana^ses found that, contrary to expectation, the more defensive subjects were
hfnH
S
ht
lf
l
Cantly“T
accurate at guessing than the less defensive subjects. With
hmdsxght, however, the authors were critical of their experimental procedure (the
environment was noisy and the interactions with subjects were rushed) and in future they
would plan to work with extreme DMT scorers. Another pilot study (Johnson &
Nordbeck, unpublished) related subjects’ DMT scores with their performance at an ESP
f
erT
d
,
Symb°ls as targets - Using an exPi°ratory scoring
,LTl y
h DMT ’
W3S f°Und that signiflcantly more Psi-hitters showed relatively
und storted perceptions of the DMT stimuli than did psi-missers. This study also found
rdtrtTS-m“"s
S18n
b“‘ in ‘he expected dkecti0n ’ that m0re dcfensive subjects
Selecting high and low scorers on their own "unofficial" version of the DMT to
participate in a subsequent free-response clairvoyance task incorporating a relaxation
"DMT-
impr
f
Ssi°n Period"’ Miller & York 0976) found nTsignificant
c . ^
IT ‘^Pc
°fA
e*atlon ’ though results were in the expected direction. A follow-up
study by York (1977), presented at the 1976 PA Convention, gave subjects the DMT and
subsequenfiy subjects participated in a free-response "ganzfeld" clairvoyance procedure
(It
questionable whether this could be considered a standard ganzfeld, since subjects
were not exposed to red light, and did not hear continuous white or pink noise.
Instead
Uiey listened to a muscular and mental relaxation tape concluding with five minutes of
’
white noise as an impression period, followed by a reminder to relax, then a second five
IZ-?92
Wt ms'?
impr^
onf
riod-) Thi* ^udy yielded significant psi scoring overall
f~lm
: P<005 ’ WO 'lailed) - Analy sis of the
scores was done at a later date by
Martin Johnson, and are included in an unpublished paper (York & Morris) A
comparison of two groups of relatively high and relatively low DMT scorers found no
significant difference between the groups’ ESP scores (t=.82, 26df, p>.30, two-tailed).
“8h
‘U
“L
K°r DMT SCOrerS fr0m Icelandic v“ (Haraldsson &
Oissurarson, 1985), claiming to be the first ever to compare DMT scores with
eIpmr
n
ThkfFTT
Ce> T*
a ganZfeId procedurc with pictorial tafgets for the
expe^teddLSon
*
non-slgnifidan‘ DMT-ESP correlation opposite to the
The results from this diverse group of studies are quite inconclusive. Let us now look in
^ween DMT
°Se
WhlCh haVe m0re systemadcally examined the relationship
between DMT scores and scores on forced-choice ESP tasks. The first study arose from
DM^
?
u
nS°n (Wh° had StUdiGd With Kragh^ was very familiar with the
T) that people who tend to be defensive in normal perception might respond similarly
towards extrasensory perceptions (Carpenter 1965). These studies all have broadly
Y
similar characteristics.
Subjects are volunteer undergraduate students (the Icelandic
Tnl
UJ
SUbje
r
CtS °nly andM t0 avoid using psychology students). There are
two testing sessions.
In one, subjects are administered the DMT in groups (from 2 to 6
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individuals), and in the other they take one or two psi tests which tend to be of
restricted-choice clairvoyance or precognitive design. For instance, the clairvoyance test
may consist of a computer game where the subject has to guess which of four windows
on a computer screen has been randomly selected by the computer as the target.
Subjects
may work in pairs and a sense of light-hearted competition may be encouraged. For the
precognition test subjects may be asked to guess which of four letters will later be
selected by a computer as target.
In most of the studies the DMT results were scored
independently and only after all the ESP results had been collected were the ESP scores
correlated with the DMT scores. The results are summarised in Table 1.
Table 1: A summary of the main characteristics of the principal DMT-ESP studies -
correlations between DMT and ESP scores (adapted from Haraldsson et al. 1987).
Study
N
Spearman’s rho
p*
footnotes
US I
.79
.01
usn
.67
.005
US HI
.59
.05
DUTCH
,18
.42
.05
DUTCH n
.26
.05
DUTCH in
-.19
NS
ICELANDIC I
.47
.002
ICELANDIC H
.17
NS
ICELANDIC ffl
.02
NS
ICELANDIC IV
.26
.03
ICELANDIC V
.11
NS
ICELANDIC VI
.06
NS
ICELANDIC VII
.11
NS
*
One-tailed
1.
Pilot study, not double-blind.
2.
Pilot study, individual DMT testing.
3.
Icelandic Studies I to VI gave subjects one clairvoyance and one precognition test;
Icelandic VII gave two clairvoyance tests. The correlations shown are between DMT
scores and total ESP scores.
4. Only partially double-blind, but this was shown not to have influenced ratings.
Prior
selection of subjects based on extreme dream recall questionnaire scores or extreme
scores on precognition test.
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5”? Johnson ’s intuition was correct:
in all but one of the 13 studies
the
MT-ESp correlation has been in a positive direction, and in seven of these studies the
chmce Seedr
y Significant - High defensive s“»jec,s tend to score below
A mZ
?°u
ICe PS1 tests ’ and low defensive subjects tend to score above chance
tZTfc
T
65^68 (conducted by Haraldsson, Houtkooper & Hoeltje
'
the th
d
!
hlS C°rrelatl0n to be hlShly significant (p=0.0000019, one-tailed)
When
he three studies which did not have a double-blind design were excluded from the
uSF**
C0,Telati0" <P=° °0028 - °"e' ,ai]ed) (Hara,dsso"'
weakeKd
'rST”’ !
ha
‘ T* °f the DMT-ESP correlation has gradually
f
.
'
®P°sslble explanation for this decline may be that US I and US n were
H
’ ^ t0 ^ artefaCtUal inflation of
correlation for££
studies. However, even excluding the studies which were not double-blind
there
toTe nar
16")
P°f
dVe bU‘ d'Ciinin8 DMT'ESP correlations.
It has been suggested
that the pattern of correlation represents some kind of initial effect or experimentedEffect
as each of the experimental series was begun with fresh energy and emhSm bTelter
Marttn Johnson or Erlendur Haraldsson (Haraldsson & Johnson, 1979)
On the other
hand. » » Possible that the declining cofrela.ions in each of these series refled,
unreported changes in attitude, methodology, or analysis of results.
Indeed
the authors
& tateson Wm'hSm"
Ration of the DMT-ESP studies (Johnson
araldsson, 1984, Haraldsson, Houtkooper & Hoeltje, 1987), as most of these studies
ave been conducted at least m part by only two researchers: Johnson and Haraldsson
Given that replicable patterns can be hard to come by in parapsychology, why is it that
thei parapsychologists have been slow to follow-up on these promising indications of a
fairly consistent relationship between defensiveness and ESP scoring? The answer mav
lie with some difficulties associated with the DMT.
^
2.3. Drawbacks of the DMT
f?„
e
d,t
V
:
0U/r
blem afftCting a“ of parapsychology is the lack of manpower and
fundmg to follow up interesting lines of research. However, there are some practical
methoddogreal and theoretical drawbacks specifically associated with the DMT which
may have discouraged other researchers from working with
it.
,*• T°P^y ^minister and score the DMT requires 3 months intensive training
(
nson & Haraldsson, 1984); this is expensive both in terms of time and money
The
imetpretauon of DMT protocols is a particularly skilled task; i, may take more tLn three
months of “Penence before inter- and infra- rater reliability is satisfactory (Haraldsson
?3 dmt KP
haVe d0"e most of ,he “"ring in the
“ ™
‘ d es’ and have shown a very respectable inter-rater reliability (e g
and .90 for two samples of 12 subjects each; Johnson & Haraldsson, 1984). However as
Kragh developed the DMT and Johnson studied with Kragh there could hardly be two'
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people better qualified to evaluate DMT protocols; this task may be somewhat more
daunting to less experienced researchers.
2. The DMT was developed in Scandinavia and is unfamiliar to psychologists in
Western Europe and the USA; speaking from my own experience as a member of the
Psychology Department at Edinburgh University, I have yet to discover a
non-parapsychologist colleague here who is familiar with the DMT
. This situation may
not be helped by the fact that, so far as I know, there is only one published translation of
the complex scoring scheme into English (Westerlundh, 1976; there is also an English
translation in an unpublished PhD thesis by Cooper, 1982).
Therefore, until knowledge
of the DMT spreads outside of Scandinavia, few will use it, and so few will be able to
score it reliably.
3. Another drawback with the DMT is that it is time consuming to administer and
score. Group administration of the DMT, quicker than individual testing, is the norm for
the DMT-ESP studies. However, this is less desirable than individual testing, as the
former makes it difficult to ensure that each subject experiences identical levels of
stimulus and background illumination, identical angles and distances from the screen,
and so on.
Regardless of whether subjects are tested individually or in groups, each
subject’s series of responses must be scored individually - a lengthy process. When
resources of time and money are scarce, parapsychologists might be more inclined to use
a more convenient measure of defensiveness.
4.
Finally, the DMT is based on individuals’ responses to a series of exposures to only
two pictures which are intended to be threatening. This raises the question of whether we
can know what the DMT is actually measuring.
Detailed studies of the DMT,
manipulating the content of the stimulus pictures, have shown that the presence of the
threatening secondary figure is necessary for producing the distorted responses which are
thought to correspond to defense mechanisms (e.g. Cooper & Kline, 1986). However, it
has yet to be demonstrated that Freudian mechanisms are indeed involved. Kline (1987)
argues that, although the various signs of defensiveness were derived from
psychoanalytic studies of individuals in a clinical setting, these have face validity only.
For example, the defense mechanism of Isolation is coded when "the hero and secondary
figure are separated or isolated; one may not be seen"; for Denial, "the threat is
emphatically denied" (Kline, 1987, p.55).
Just because a part of a DMT protocol
resembles a defense mechanism, does not confirm that the individual’s responses actually
reflect the operation of Freudian processes. While Cooper & Kline (1986) found some
indications that responses to the DMT were as hypothesized from Freudian theory, they
also found little correspondence between the repression scale of the DMT and a measure
of perceptual defense, thus casting doubt on this aspect of the DMT.
Elsewhere, Cooper
has suggested that even more pronounced distortions might be elicited by abandoning the
"hero/secondary" notion in favour of a purely aversive stimulus.
Anecdotally, he noticed
that "more dramatic distortions were observed to picture 8BM of the TAT, which depicts
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wSr
°perati0"' ,hM ,0 the m0re tradi“" al -"rt-
threat"
3. FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR DEFENSIVENESS-PSI RESEARCH
is sZ7„rT!li!?
'
T
(Hara,dsso"' l®***! communication). Adrian Parker
DMTalwf
rel“onshlP betwee" absorption, and defensiveness as measured bv the
DMT, and reported anomalous experiences, from clinical, cognitive and
rtSDm E^r
,i7
<ParlKr' 1989>' Anoth"quastion worth following up is
wnetner the DMT-ESP correlation is specific to restricted-choice ESP tasks Th/,3L
desenbed in section 2.2. which have used the DMT (or approximations^ a^d
free-response ESP tasks (Miller & York
1976’ York
1077
,
. v
ujbHshed; haraldsson & Gissurarson.W
.
.
'
ave SPecu ated
fhat the ganzfeld procedure may be insufficiently stressful for rh
subject to activate defense mechanisms- in fact Haraldsson * rile
*
f
the
in psychoanalytic theoty, free
Sta.
againS ‘ 'he OPera,i°n °f drfcnse ntechanisms.
.he ESP tests which may raise subjec™S“^2^3“^
suggest that future studies might look ar thp hk/tt dcd
*
P
d)
m^.forexamp.ecompeddtrurnt
procedures versus not. Research along these lines may give funher insteh, inrnhe
relationship between defensiveness and psi scoring.
welco^J
r
t
SearCh^
b“UdS UP0" What has S°,,c before “ this field can only be
reseZthichr
VCT’
P
n
"g DMT-ESP flings can also be followed up by
ch is conceptually similar, though not using the DMT itself
For instance
flimre research might consider alternative measures ofdefeusive„«^u,dT’
OuTsZgvST*
SOme
°il
hepr°blcms Phtticularly associated with the DMT.
Derrf>nf, ian
y
rTi
gh b
t0 USC 3 subhminal Perception task aimed at identifying
SSr
0rvlg,,ant individuals. Such a task could be admin, stfred quickly
and automatically, requiring no training, and it could be objectively scored
This mil?
influence direction of psi scoring (for example, clear identifica^tTof^fenriveor
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vigilant individuals might suggest what kinds of ESP target material would be most
suitable for them).
I am currently conducting some preliminary research along these lines, exploring
whether it is possible to identify perceptually defensive or vigilant individuals by
presenting them with weakly illuminated stimulus slides and asking them to indicate
when they first become aware of the presence of the slides. At this "subjective awareness
threshold", the experimental participant reports no awareness of the presence of any other
information apart from the overall rectangular shape of the slide.
In fact, however, each
slide portrays one of four different categories of information:
either simple black and
white line drawings which have previously been judged to be emotionally negative or
neutral; or matched control slides, which are designed to have the same light transmitting
properties as the pictorial slides, but which do not portray any meaningful information.
Fluctuations in the illumination level at which the experimental participants report
awareness of the slide may represent an index of their reactions to the
subliminally-presented emotional
,
neutral and control information, thus enabling them
to be identified as perceptually defensive or vigilant.
Some indication that this may be a promising general technique to explore perceptual
defense and vigilance was found in an undergraduate thesis by Peter Gregor, conducted
at the Psychology Department in Edinburgh University in 1972, and supervised by John
Beloff (Gregor, 1972). Gregor presented subjects with gradually brightening emotional
(e.g. cancer), neutral (e.g. circus) and control words (rev~"""d and inverted emotional or
neutral words) on slides, and used subjects’ reported awareness of the presence of a slide
as an indicator of their perceptual defensiveness or vigilance (Gregor reports that his
experimental participants were never aware that the slides contained any information).
The results of this study indicated generally higher thresholds for slides containing
emotional words compared to their neutral counterparts; however, the highest threshold
overall was found for a slide which portrayed a nonsense word. Thus, the results suggest
that individuals may respond to the meaning of a subliminally-presented stimulus, but it
is not clear whether this response is due to defensive processes.
The
studies currently being conducted seek to preserve the strengths of Gregor’s method
(simplicity; and the use of a neutral indicator of subjective awareness threshold which
avoids criticisms of response bias) while resolving its weaknesses (manual slide insertion
and illumination means the experimenter may not be blind as to the slide contents, and
may not present each slide in an identical manner; manual recording of results may also
allow bias and error to affect results). The apparatus used by Gregor (known as
"Pandora’s Box") has been cannibalized and modernized so that slide presentation,
illumination, and recording of results are all now under computer control. Pandora’s Box
is a tachistoscope which has one field constantly illuminated by an electroluminescent
panel (thus removing the need for total dark adaptation in subjects). The second field has
been replaced by a slide projector placed so that, when a slide drops into the projector, at
full illumination the subject sees the slide contents in the centre of the constantly
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“uch’^y'S vS
F
H
U 'b h“ bee" replaced ^ a ™a«
For the main pilot study just comnleted
? t ^ w*
lntensl,-v trough a computer program.
Box.
In
t
S
“Si0nS“ ******
illuminated until the subject indicates that he n
h
r
1S where one slide is gradually
and then 2 runs of 16Sf
A
?
e haS bccome aware °f *> Presence),
.here were 8 slides
,hro“Sh ' Fot«
individuals, 9 of whom t4 PSe “S?^ judged °* 20
slides portraying emotionally neutral pictures and 16 conmdTn
°”a
'y "f8
f'
Ve> 8
the emotional or neutral slides
Half nf tb
1 -a
0x3
s ldes ’ matched to each of
the second
f h
"“5 Sh°Wn 31 th6 flrSt
half «
different random order
* SUbjeCtS * Each Subject saw the «Mes in a
awaren“s of each slide was
indeed respond either defensively or vigilantly to ne
S“8geS
!
that Somc individuals do
no consistent scoring on Pandora’s Box Thf^
e™otionaJ than those who showed
additional support
222?^
th6reforeP™d-
emotional as compared to other dide.™^
g
u
subjectlve awareness threshold for
the individual participants rather than to some'syet un
*** **
effects^^cutthg^w
t0 strenSthen the
a psi task
Whereas the DMT^SP
d^
nsi
^
eness or vigilance scores with their scores on
situations,urnSnS^tThe^ef
“ <uiK diffe™
letters or boxes for the ESP tests
future
a-
. y
emotionally neutral targets such as
the conditions
<*«»
testing ESP performance
Possiblv thee
.
nessorvigi:lance, and the conditions for
between
WhlCh ha$ aIready 66611 observed
comparable.
Therefore I would aim to use for die ESPeSfr*
6 tW° SitUati°nS more
identical to that used for the subliminal perception task
Th' ^ mat6nal Slrralar if not
was suggested in the first ever DMT-ESP report-
"If the Sp
!'
& "CW ld63; in fact il
out of threatening figures rather than a*
L
a
•
tarSets were constructed
(Catpentcr, 19M p!fr
S“memc dcstgns, would the effect be sponger?"
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4. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
The link between defensiveness and psi scoring has interested parapsychologists for
many years. The most consistent research into this relationship has been the DMT-ESP
studies; these have found that individuals rated as high defensive on the DMT tend to
score below chance on a psi measure, while those who are low defensive on the DMT
tend to score above chance on a psi measure. This research has lots of exciting
implications but it has not been replicated or followed up by other parapsychologists, I
believe, because of practical, methodological and! theoretical difficulties associated with
the DMT. While one should applaud studies incorporating the DMT itself, future
research might be able to overcome these difficulties by exploring alternative methods
for identifying individuals as perceptually defensive or vigilant.
If successful, this may
encourage parapsychologists to conceptually replicate and extend the DMT-ESP studies.
Further insights into the defensiveness-psi relationship may also be gained by exploring
different psi-testing situations in relation to DMT scores.
There are several reasons why research to follow up on the DMT-ESP studies would be
of interest to parapsychologists.
First of all, there is the question of psi-missing and
psi-hitting.
If we can find a convenient test which predicts reliably whether or not a
person is likely to score above or below chance a) a psi task, then we may begin to
explore reasons why people psi-miss.
I should stress at this point that while people are
usually either perceptually defensive or vigilant, this may not imply that they are
therefore bound to either psi-miss or psi-hit whenever they take part in an ESP test.
More research is needed on this question, but it is quite likely that methodological,
procedural and personality factors may interact to produce psi scoring in a particular
direction. This suggestion is supported by research by Stanford and colleagues into the
interaction between noise level in the ganzfeld, extraversion-introversion, and the
enjoyment level of the subject in a ganzfeld experiment. Working on the hypothesis that
noise provides stimulation which heightens arousal and thereby influences performance
to approach or exceed optimal arousal levels, it was found that extraverts (who are
thought to be typically less aroused than introverts in a given situation) enjoyed the
ganzfeld situation under noise more than introverts did (Stanford, Frank, Kass & Skoll,
1989). Whether ganzfeld enjoyment was related to ESP scoring is to be reported in a
subsequent paper, but the present study indicates how one procedural factor, noise in the
ganzfeld, may interact with a personality variable. Another aspect of ESP experiments
which may be altered to suit subject types or preferences is the target. As myself and
Deborah Delanoy pointed out recently (Delanoy, 1989; Watt, 1989), there has been little
systematic research to identify the characteristics of good ESP targets.
I will be looking
at individuals’ responses to emotional and neutral targets in both subliminal and
extrasensory conditions. This may give some valuable clues as to which combination of
target and subject characteristics seems to encourage positive psi-scoring.
In sum, further research into factors influencing the defensiveness-psi relationship may
enable parapsychologists to improve psi scoring by helping them to select experimental
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participant, and by enabling the training of
seem to encourage psi-hitting and to reduce
si-missing.
methodologies most suited to each individual
participants to capitalize on the factors which
the influence of factors apparently linked to p
i
i
!
i
-j
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