: CIA-RDP96-00792R000400100003-0 Approved For Release 2000/08/11 162 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research The Human Values Survey was repeated in 1990 in all the countries of Western Europe and a number of countries in Eastern Europe, Asia, and the Americas. To our disappointment, the EVSSG committee decided to drop the Greeley items from the new questionnaire. REFERENCES ABRAMS, M., GERARD, D., & Timms, N. (Eps.). (1985). Values and Social Change in Britain. London: Macmillan. AUDIENCE SELECTION. (1980). Psychic Phenomena in Britain. London. (Mimeographed.) BRADBURN, N. M. (1969). The Structure of Psychological Well-Being. Chicago, IL: Aldine. EUROPEAN VALUE SYSTEMS STUDY GROUP. (1987). Information Bulletin 1987. Tilburg, The Netherlands: Tilburg University. (Mimeographed.) GALLUP INTERNATIONAL (EUROPEAN VALUE SYSTEMS STUDY GROUP). (1984). Human Values and Beliefs. Tabulations. London: Gallup Inter- national. GALLUP MARKEDSANALYSE. (1957, August). Befolknings Indstilling til Paranormale Oplevelser. Copenhagen, Denmark. GREELEY, A. M. (1975). The Sociology of the Paranormal: A Reconnais- sance. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. GREELEY, A. M. (1987, January/February). Mysticism goes mainstream. American Health, 6, 47—49. HALMAN, L., HEUNKS, F., Moor, R. DE, & ZANDERS, H. (1987). Tra- ditie, Secularisatie en Individualisering: Een Studie naar de Waarden van de Nederlanders in een Europese Context. Tilburg, The Nether- lands: Tilburg University Press. HARALDsson, E. (1975). Kénnun a dulrenni reynslu, vidhorfum til dulrenna fyrirbera o.fl. Hand-out given to Icelandic media, June 6. Reykjavik, Iceland: University of Iceland, Department of Psychology. HaRALDsson, E. (1978). Thessa Heims og Annars. Reykjavik, Iceland: Bokaforlagid Saga. HARALDsSON, E. (1981). Some determinants of belief in psychical phe- nomena. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 75, 297-309. HARALDSSON, E. (1985). Representative national surveys of psychic phe- nomena: Iceland, Great Britain, Sweden, USA and Gallup’s multina- tional survey. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 53, 145-158. HARDING, S., PHILLIPS, D., & FoGaRTY, M. (1986). Contrasting Values in Western Europe. London: Macmillan, in association with the Euro- pean Value Systems Study Group. IMU [INSTITUTET FOR MARKNADSUNDERSOKNINGAR]. (1978, Oktober). Rapport éver en Undersékning betr forekomsten av ‘‘Ockulta Upple- velser’’ i Sverige. Stockholm, Sweden: The Institute. Psychic Experiences: A Multinational Study 163 IMU [INSTITUTET FOR MARKNADSUNDERSOKNINGAR]. (1980, June). Rap- port dver en Undersékning ang ‘‘Annorlunda Upplevelser’’ i Ans- lutning till Konsumentindex vecka 21, 1980. Stockholm, Sweden: The Institute. McCLenon, J. (1982). A survey of elite scientists: Their attitudes toward ESP and parapsychology. Journal of Parapsychology, 46, 127-152. McCreapy, W. C., & GREELEY, A. M. (1976). The Ultimate Values of the American Population. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. NOELLE-NEUMANN, E., & KOcuer, R. (1987). Die Verletzte Nation. Stuttgart, Germany: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt. © Rees, W. D. (1971). The hallucinations of widowhood. British Medal Journal, 4, 209-221. S TOBACYK, J., & MILForD, G. (1983). Belief in paranormal phenoméga: Assessment instrument development and implications for persond@ty functioning. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, @, 1029-1037. o N Faculty of Social Science Houtkooper Software Engineerg University of Iceland De Maalkom 7 Ss 101 Reykjavik, Iceland 1191 LP Ouderkerk ald Amstel g The Netherlands 0 APPENDIX A CIA-RDP9 The Bradburn Affect Balance Scale We are interested in the way people are feeling these days. During the few weeks, did you ever feel: Yes No Particularly excited or interested in something So restless you couldn’t sit long in a chair Proud because someone had complimented you on something you had done Very lonely or remote from other people Pleased about having accomplished something Bored On top of the world/feeling that life is wonderful Depressed or very unhappy That things are going your way Upset because somebody criticized you Approved For Release 2000/0884 1 APPENDIX B Response Bias The finding of a correlation between the sum-of-affect variable from the Bradburn Scale items and reported psychic experiences has caused some
: CIA-RDP96-00792R000400100003-0 Approved For Release 2000/08/11 164 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research concer about its being explainable by response bias. In this case, re- sponse bias would be defined as the tendency to respond affirmatively on questions asking whether something applies to the subject or not. Subjects who possess this tendency to a large degree are called ‘‘reporters,”’ whereas those who respond generally negatively to such questions are called ‘‘nonreporters.’’ Of course, it is important forthe interpretation of a correlation to know whether it can be regarded as due to a general effect or to the specific content of the questions whose responses show this correla- tion. To decide this issue, we are fortunate in having a sizeable collection of questions available. We were able to find a set of 50 questions that asked for responses that could be regarded as distinguishing “‘reporters’’ from ‘“‘nonreporters,”’ if such a distinction has any grounds. The questions are found in various parts of the questionnaire so that specific meaning gets diffused when the set is treated as a whole. To obtain a variable to repre- sent response bias, in the set of 50 questions we counted all responses of “*yes,’’ “‘very,’’ “‘often,’’ or where a specific item was marked as appli- cable to the subject. This provided the rather diffuse variable representing response bias needed to distinguish between our finding being due to a specific, rather than a diffuse, effect. The response-bias variable (RBV) has been correlated with both sum of affect (SUMAFF) and the reporting of one or more psychic experiences (Any Exp). This allows the calculation of a partial correlation coefficient in which the correlation is controlled for the effect of a third variable, RBV, in this case. The results are shown in Table 8 for Europe combined and for the U.S. The conclusion is that response bias plays a negligible role in the corre- lation and does not explain the high positive and negative affect scores and sum of affect of those who respond affirmatively to the three Greeley items. The regression analyses (see Table 7) corroborate this conclusion. Table 8 INFLUENCE OF RESPONSE BIAS ON THE CORRELATIONS BETWEEN ANY PSYCHIC EXPERIENCES AND BRADBURN’S SUM OF AFFECTS Any Exp x SUMAFF Any Exp Any Exp SUMAFF x x x controlled Country RBV RBY SUMAFF for RBV Europe .04 AS 9 9 US. .03 12 22 .22 Note: Kendall rank correlation coefficients and Kendall rank partial coefficient (last column) are given. Psychic Experiences: A Multinational Study 165 Though part of the variance in ‘‘Number of Psychic Experiences’’ is ex- plained by the RBV, another larger part of it is explained by SUMAFF. A better way to detect response bias is by including items that are asked twice, but in an opposite sense, so that an affirmative response in one instance should correspond with a negation in the other. Lack of consis- tency then reveals response bias. Because no items of this sort were in- cluded in the questionnaire used in the Human Values Survey, we could not perform this analysis. : CIA-RDP96-00792R000400100003-0 Approved For Release 2000/08/11