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ESP:
Target Qualities /Personal Relationships
Approved For Release 2000/08/15
. CIA-RDP96-p|^^^|^^p^^Q.9j§QPQ1'J-^j1nson and Nordbeck study,
albeit perhaps
a more modest one, be obtained
for a group of un-
selected ESP subjects?
The object of this study
is
to try
to answer
that question and in addition to use a design by which observer
effects can be studied.
ESP:
TARGET QUALITIES AND
PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS*
the effect of akxiety ON
S
S££?«
SSiS ZSSStZSXSSl TO TEE SUBJECTS
Martin U. Johnwm
SelLrlmd,,
J
rs,
University of Amsterdam)
in . study u«ried ««
122-132) based on psycho yn
ifested a striking differential
!»*».».• »
sessions she ssMcEed scor
;
scoring.
First, during pr
psychological atmosphere,
to Se
®
ing direction with the turn
tpchnique ,
from psi- hitting (p
<
- 05 >
with a change of expemien
was
followed by a formal Blind-
to psi-missing
(p
<
types of targets.
The result
Matching Test (BMT)
g
.
^ strong,
positive appeal to
was psi-hitting on the “f* J^n^ psi-missing on the "nega-
te subject, whereas there w^^trong,
between the two
tive," traumatic targets.
<
_ 00001> two-tailed),
types of targets amounted to a CRd °
£ based on anamnestic
The selection of the two
^agnostic methods and a depth
information gathered by personal! y
experiraents the
interview.
During the course of
targets used in the study,
subject was unaware of the
a design that
The BMT was
.
a™Stfs
e
sibmty that olfactory cues could play
a
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FOT
uie-Pcdn.
»’'w'uW^do
well suited
for detecting
’
nor on the individual
£3*
«* thus
be considered to
produce the paranormal effect.
Chaired by Adrian Parker.
One hundred twenty nonpsychology students were given a
questionnaire involving questions on traumatic experiences
(acci-
dents, death,
illness,
etc.) plus items related to very strong
positive experiences.
In addition,
a Dutch short form of the
Taylor Manifest Anxiety
Seale (TMAS) was used.
Subjects were
also asked to indicate whether they were willing to take part on a
voluntary basis in some experiments later on,
in which case they
were asked
to come to the Parapsychology Laboratory
for a follow-
up interview and
for some experiments.
Three experimenter-assistants carried out an interview focused
on traumatic experiences as
well as on strongly pleasant or positive
experiences.
(We wish to convey our great appreciation to Selma
Ligthart,
Fred Woudenberg, and Emile van der Zee,
for the help
they rendered us by taking part
as experimenter- assistants. )
They
rated the judged severity of the traumatic episodes by the use of a
semantic differential.
Furthermore,
the strengths of the three neg-
ative and the three positive episodes were
also rated.
A word-recognition task was planned to validate the rated
emotional strength of the selected target words, but because of a
number of technical adversities associated with that part of the ex-
periment, the obtained data are not considered worthwhile to be
dealt with in this paper.
The Defense Mechanism Test (DMT) has in a number of stud-
ies manifested some predictive power as regards the scoring behav-
ior in so-called ESP tests
(see Johnson and Haraldsson, JP,
1984,
185-200).
That alone made
it worthwhile to use in our study, in
spite of the
fact of the complication that here an attempt is made
to influence the scoring direction by means of selection of targets.
That makes
it more questionable what kind of correlation one can
expect.
Because the DMT
is considered to measure submanifest
anxiety
it may be of interest to see if the DMT and the TMAS are
intercorrelated
.
Seventy-four subjects were asked to come for a second ses-
sion.
The BMT
consisted
of matching 24 envelopes containing
target cards against six key envelopes containing the correspond-
ing targets.
There were four matching envelopes
for each of the
target categories.
In each of the identically looking envelopes
there was a card with the target word printed on it.
All cards
were wrapped in aluminum
foil in a standardized way.
For each
subject the order of the envelopes within the batch had been
strictly randomized.
The subject’s task was to perform
a forced-
choice balanced matching of the
24 envelopes against the
6 key-target
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: ClA-R^e-^SlR^OTtl^edlOW-^
envelopes that appeared on the screen of a closed circuit T\
.
Dur
ing the matching procedure,
the envelopes were put into
six differ-
ent boxes corresponding to the positions of key envelopes appearing
on the TV screen,
resulting in four envelopes in each of the boxes.
In order to study observer effects, we decided that the data
from the BMT should be
split into two categories, Pool A
(48 sub-
jects
,
to be observed by the
first author and the three experimenter-
assistants) and Pool B
(26 subjects,
to be observed by two cate-
gories of external observers
,
"sheep" and "goats").
A
strict random
procedure was
followed
for the designation of data into the two pools
and the subcategories within each pool.
To prepare
for the evaluation of the data, the 74 batches of
matching units (key envelopes and matched envelopes) were photo-
graphed by a photographer who was naive
to the purpose and
rationale of the experiment.
Slides,
framed and marked, were pre-
sented
to the designated observers, who had to make notations of
the number of hits per
slide.
The primary hypotheses in the present study concern the
replication
of the
differential
effect
for
targets with different emo-
tional loadings and the possible relationship between this
differential
scoring and anxiety in the subject.
Hi:
The differential effect between the numbers of hits in
the emotionally positive target
set versus the emotionally negative
target set.
H2:
Scoring on the strongest negative target.
H3:
The
relationship between anxiety and the differential scoring between
positive and negative target
sets.
As measures of anxiety we have
the scoring on the TMAS and on the short-form DMT.
Therefore,
we have two hypotheses:
H3a :
The correlation between TMAS and
differential scoring on the BM task.
H3b:
The correlation between
DMT and differential scoring on the BM task.
The observational hypotheses are HOI
:
The
differential ef-
fect as in HI differs between the two halves of the A pool that have
been observed by the
first author and the three experimenter-
assistants,
respectively.
HQ2
:
The overall effect in the B pool
differs between sheep observers and goat observers.
The results of the experiment are nonsignificant
for each of
the hypotheses:
HI:
The one-sample t-test applied to the differ-
ential scoring between the emotionally positive and negative target
sets per
subject
results
in:
t =
. 82,
47 df, p
=
.4 (two-tailed).
H2
:
On the strongest negative target,
the average number of hits
per subject is
.6875, whereas mean chance expectation (MCE)
is
.6667
(two-thirds).
The one-sample t-test results in:
t =
.22,
47 df,
p
=
.8 (two-tailed).
H3a :
The correlation between
dif-
ferential score and the score on the TMAS results in Spearman's
rho =
.117, N
= 48,
p
=
.4 (two-tailed).
H3b:
The correlation
between
differential score and the score on the DMT
results in
Spearman's rho —
.074, N
-
44, p
=
.6 (two-tailed).
In
5 out of
74 cases
(4 out of the
48 of Pool A)
the subjects did not produce
usable DMT
protocols.
Hypothesis HOI:
The difference in scoring between the two
observer categories
, namely the
first author versus the three ex-
perimenter-assistants,
is tested by a two-sample t-test:
t =
.27,
46 df, p
=
.8
(two-tailed).
Hypothesis HQ2 :
The difference in
overall scoring between "sheep" observers and
"goat" observers of
the data, when tested by a two-sample t-test,
results in:
t = 1.00,
24 df , p =
. 3
(two-tailed)
In an exploratory
analysis, we employed the degree of trauma-
tization involved in the experiences the subjects described during
the interview procedure.
We calculated Spearman's rank correlation
coefficients between:
•
TMAS and number of hits on the negative target
set:
rs = -.33, N
=
48, p
=
.023.
•
DMT and number of binary
hits:
rg
= -.45, N
=
44,
p
=
.002.
•
Trauma classification and number of hits on the negative
target set:
rg
= -.43, N
= 48, p =
.002.
Intercorrelations between the psychological variables are
for the
subjects:
Between TMAS and DMT:
rg =
- .11; between TMAS and
trauma classification:
rg =
.06; between DMT and trauma:
rg =
.07;
none of these approaches significance.
We evaluated the overall scoring in the experiment.
We find
a mean of 3.581
hits per
subject,
with a standard deviation of
1.767 (MCE
is
4).
For the
74 subjects,
a one-sample t-test would
give
a
t of -2.04,
with 73 degrees of freedom (p = .04, two-tailed).
The main conclusion is that the results of the study by John-
son and Nordbeck cannot be generalized to a population of unse-
Iected subjects.
In the exploratory analysis we
find some strong
associations between psychological variables and aspects of ESP
scoring.
Trauma classification and manifest anxiety both correlate
with ESP scoring on the emotionally negative target set in the
di-
rection of lower scoring (more psi-missing) being associated with
higher trauma and anxiety.
The DMT
correlation
is in the direc-
tion of a greater number of binary hits being associated with a
higher level of submanifest anxiety (lower DMT score).
This
is in
contrast with the correlation of DMT scoring with total number of
hits, where the correlation amounts
to an rg of +.16 (with N
=
44,
p
=
.29,
two-tailed).
This indicates
a scoring pattern in the
highly anxious,
low DMT scorers, where matchings tend to avoid
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: C IA-RDP96-00792R000700960001 -5