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METHODS
Apparatus
The equipment utilized in this research included silver/silver chloride
palmar electrodes, a skin-conductance amplifier, an analog-to digital converter
interfaced with an IBM microcomputer, a SUN computer with modem, and a
closed circuit television, that included a color video camera, two VCR's, two
video monitors, and a tripod to hold the video camera.
The camera's radio
frequency output was boosted by a 10 dB amplifier then conveyed via shielded
cable to the color monitor in the Remote Observer’s room.
Assessments
During Experiment
1, each experimental participant completed four
forms/assessments.
The first was a consent form.
The second was used in
preliminary screening and consisted of general biographical information as
well as a health condition assessment.
Third was a psychological inventory
measuring introversion/extroversion through the use of the NEO Personality
Inventory (Costa & McRae
1985).
This instrument measures six facets of
extroversion, including (1) Warmth, (2) Gregariousness; (3) Assertiveness; (4)
Activity;
(5)
Excitement
Seeking;
(6)
Positive
Emotions.
The
fourth
assessment was
the
Social Avoidance and
Distress
scale
(SAD), which
measures social-evaluative anxiety (the experience of distress, discomfort, fear,
and anxiety in social situations) and deliberate avoidance of social situations.
This
self-report
scale emphasizes
subjective
experience, and
it excludes
physiological signs as well as times related to impaired performance.
In
Experiment 2, the NEO Personality Inventory was not used, due to the fact that
participants
generally
disliked
the
assessment based on redundancy
of
questions and length of time needed to complete the form.
Subjects
Each of the two experiments involved 24 trials.
In Experiment
1, this
consisted of one person per trial as the experimental "target" or "Observee"
and 4 remote "Observers," each working with different target persons during 6
sessions.
In Experiment 2, 16 subjects participated, with 5 subjects contributing
two or three sessions each.
This was done on the basis of the expressed
interest and availability of some volunteers.
Under the null hypothesis, this
repeated use of participants does not violate statistical assumptions about the
remote observation effect (Utts, n.d).
Further, no claims are made about the
generalizability of the effect in the general population, since
all participants
were
self-selected on
the
basis
of
their
interest
in
the
study
or
their
relationship to the experimenters.
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Volunteers were recruited by MJS through notices that were handed out
or posted in the greater San Francisco Bay area, as a result of lectures
at
neighboring
universities and
professional
societies,
as
well
as through
personal
contacts. Observers were drawn from
the
subject pools
of the
Cognitive Sciences Laboratory and from the same community as used for
recruiting Observees.
The age of all participants ranged from 16 to 60.
They
were in good health based on the health assessment.
Experimental Procedure
The basic experimental design was the same
for both experiments;
exceptions
to
this are outlined following the general description.
Subjects
were greeted by the experimenter in the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory
at
Science Applications International Corporation. They were treated
in a warm
and friendly way.
Following a brief "get acquainted'
period, the experiment
was explained to them.
They were encouraged to ask any questions and to
understand the nature of the study.
They were introduced to the "Observer"
with whom they would be working and were told that the "Observer would
try to get their attention or "wake them up" during randomly selected periods.
Efforts were made during
this period to ascertain the types of images or
thoughts that might be useful to the Observer in order to startle or excite the
Observees.
Hence, the participants were aware of the hypothesized direction
of the effect, although they were blind as to the order, number and duration of
the sampling periods.
This differed from the Braud,
et.
al studies during
which no direction of effect was hypothesized and Observers were instructed
to simply look at the distant person's image—rather than trying to influence
the person directly.
Rather, the goal of influencing the distant person in a pre
specified
direction was based on
previous
research on remote
mental
influences reported by Braud and Schlitz (1989).
Three rooms were used for the experiment.
During an experimental
session, each volunteer was taken to an experimental room, where they were
seated in a chair and the skin electrodes attached to the palm of their non-
dominant hand. As was the case in the Braud, et al studies, they were asked to
complete the experimental forms with their dominant hand, keeping their
non-dominant hand as
still as possible.
Any potential muscle artifacts were
randomly balanced across the experiment, based on the specific research design
(see below). A video tape called Illuminations, which provides amorphous
colors accompanied by a musical sound track, was played for the volunteer on
the VCR and headphones in the experimental room.
The presentation timing
of this video was held constant throughout the experiment. This VCR was not
in any way connected to the experimental equipment used to measure the
remote observation effect.
The Observee was told that the video camera
would be on throughout the session, but that the remote Observer would be
watching them through the monitor in the
distant room only
at
certain
randomly determined times.
The Observee was asked not to try to guess
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consciously when those periods
(of which the Observee was kept "blind")
might be occurring, and was told that we were exploring whether unconscious
physiological reactions might be associated with RO.
The experimenter (MJS) left the subject alone in the experimental room
and moved to the computer, which was set up in the adjacent control room.
The experimenter checked the electrode conductance.
Following
this, she
returned to the Experimental Room, started the Illuminations videotape, and
closed the door.
The audio track on the video controlled for the possible
influence of extraneous sounds that might influence the Observee.
She passed
through the computer room, crossed the hallway, and entered the Observer's
room, advising the Observer that the session was about to begin and wished
the Observer luck, and reminded them to activate the distant person when
their image appeared on the experimental monitor.
She then closed the
Observer’s Room door and returned to the Computer Room.
At
this
point,
the
experimenter
started
the
microcomputer
that
controlled the session events, including timing of the physiological sampling
periods and recording of data during 32 30-second periods. As such, the
experimenter was completely blind as to the sampling periods during any
interactions with the participants.
Each of the 16 recording periods during the
experimental (RO) conditions of the experiment was signaled to the remote
Observer when the distant person's image appeared on the monitor in the
Observer’s Room.
During these periods, the Observer stared intently at the
television image throughout the 30-second recording period.
During control
periods, the Observer read a book or otherwise tried to shift their attention
from the distant person.
The Remote Observer received no feedback during the session about the
Observee's physiological
activity.
The equipment sampled the Observee's
spontaneous phasic skin conductance responses (SCR) once a second
for the
30 seconds of a recording period. A random pause of 0 to 5 seconds was
inserted in order to eliminate potential artifacts due to possible guessing of the
experimental sequences and to rule out possible cycles that might occur in the
Observee's physiology.
The experimental sampling then continued with the
next block.
The subjects were randomly assigned to one of two experimental
sequences that were counter-balanced for time effects across the experiment.
The randomization sequence was generated by the second author (SB) through
the use of a random number generator.
These consisted of blocks of four
conditions: control, observation, observation, control or observation, control,
control, observation.
These sequences were randomized in blocks of 6, with
equal numbers of the two conditions across the experiment.
This was done to
assure a balance of two conditions and to control for any temporal drift in the
autonomic activity of the participant.
Digitized data were stored on disk for
later analysis and copied over to the SUN system for backup security and
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transport
via modem
to
the second
author.
The mean value
of skin
conductance activity for each 30-second period was used in the analyses.
RESULTS
For each experimental session, a total score was calculated for
all 32
recording periods (16 observation and 16 control). A chi-square goodness of fit
test indicated that the scores of these sessions did not differ significantly from
normality; therefore, parametric
statistics were used in their evaluation. A
single mean t-test was calculated with 23 degrees of freedom for each of the
two experiments.
In Experiment One, the obtained t-value was 1.878, p<.036
(1-t), es=.36.
In Experiment Two, the obtained t value was 2.360, p<.014 (1-t),
es=.44.
As
a
pre-planned
analysis,
the combined
results
of
the two
experiments were combined, yielding a significant t-value of 2.652, p<.005 (1-t),
es=.36, with 47 degrees of freedom.
These results supported our two primary
hypotheses, providing
significant differences
in the autonomic
activity
of
Observees during RO and non-RO conditions in the direction of autonomic
nervous system activation.
Secondary analyses were computed for the psychological data collected
on the basis of the NEO and SAD assessments for experiment 1 and on the
SAD assessment for experiment 2.
Linear correlation coefficients (Pearson r's)
were calculated but no significant relationships were found.
To assess the
ROE-SAD
relationship,
Pearson
r's
were
computed
for
the
percent
electrodermal activity occurring during the RO versus the SAD scores.
Again,
no significant relationship was found.
In the
first experiment,
it was noted that there was
a relationship
between the gender
of "Observer" and
of the "Observee"
in the remote
observation experiment. As such,
it was decided to analyze
this sex pair
relationship across the two experiments.
This was done through the use of a
2x2 ANOVA.
Results yielded a significant interaction across sex pairs (pc.Ol,
2-t).
CONCLUSIONS
This research provides an independent conceptual replication of the
remote observation experiments conducted by Braud, et.
al, under conditions
that
rule
out
conventional
sensory
exchange
between
experimental
particpants. The work builds upon an increasing data base suggesting that
people are able to interact with one another at non-sensory levels, including
the mental influence of one person upon another person s physiology (e*gv
Braud and Schlitz 1989; May and Vilenskaya, 1994).
As is often the case in research, the findings raise more questions than
answers.
More research
is needed to better understand the mechanisms at
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play in this work.
For example, a larger study designed to systematically
manipulate the direction of the effect would be useful.
Another promising
area of research would address the possible role of influence as compared with
information
acquisition
in an
ostensible
information exchange
process.
Following the work of May, Radin, Hubbard, Humphrey, and Utts (1986), this
leads us to ask whether the results can be accounted for by a distant influence
on the part of the Observer or to a passive responsiveness on the part of the
Observee.
Lastly, more research
is needed to assess the degree to which
Remote Observation effects can be limited, blocked or shielded. Such questions
are essential
to the development of a truly progressive research program
(Lakatos, 1978).
This
work,
in
the
context
of
previous
research by
independent
researchers, has
significant implications
for our understanding of human
communication processes and
for a reevaluation of a worldview in which
humans are seen as isolated beings.
Furthermore, the results suggest the need
for
a broader approach
to human
consciousness
than
that held by the
conventional, reductionistic, scientific paradigm.
Indeed, as pointed out by
Harman (1991), these results move us toward a new view of causality in which
consciousness is interactive, rather than emergent, in human experience.
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