CPYRGHT
WlllOTaSa
of
our
research
-
that
psi
involves
redundancy
with
our
other known
senses.
For
instance, most
of our experimentation
involves
primarily
visual targets such as
art
prints.
Braud suggests that
it would be useful
if psi provided Information which is not
immediately evident to our other known senses.
Such non-evident information could
concern the larger relationships in which a target participates,] for example
its history.
Similarly, Gertrude Schmeidler
in her 1971 PA Presidential Address stated that the
ESP target
is not the physical stimulus variables, but the "meaning" of the target or
an "informational pattern" (Schmeidler, 1972).
Braud conducted a pilot experiment to
test the theory of non-evident psi, where subjects were confronted with five identical
boxes containing, respectively, three control objects and two samples of hair cut from
one person’s head.
The hair samples were therefore related to each other, while the
control objects had no long-term association
to a particular person.
Subjects were
told which box was the "key" (one of the two boxes contain ng a hair sample) and,
while remaining unaware
of the contents
of
all the boxes, were asked to rank the
remaining four boxes according to how "related" their contents were to the contents of
the key box.
This study failed to achieve significant results, but this may
still be an
idea worth further investigation.
The 1986 Esalen Conference discussed techniques to improve the
reliable practical
use of psi
abilities.
Targ (1987) recommended that experimenters look for common
elements
in the "psychic appearance"
of targets
(i.e.
in
mentations), and that they
should compose a glossary of typical target transformation eirors.
Tart (1987), at the
same conference, suggested that experimenters create a pool of "hot" targets
- ones
that are consistently successful, either because they are correctly described or are
described in a recognisable fashion.
In other words, what makes a good target would
be defined operationally.
So
far,
this section has considered research
purely within parapsychology.
Some
parapsychologists have taken a more
interdisciplinary approach, however, and have
related the findings from other areas of research back to the question of what makes
a good GESP target.
Tart
(1982)
looked
at how
responses
to
targets
are
measured
in
conventional
psychophysiology, and asked what were the characteristics of a successful target
in
this field of research:
what kind of stimuli are most readily responded to, and easiest
to analyse.
To be successful, a target stimulus
in psychophysiology should stand
out from
Its background.
For targets
in parapsychological research, this may be
achieved by having the target stimulus occur suddenly, be discrete
in time, and have
what
Tart
calls
"psychic
intensity"
-
the
sense
that
the
:arget
is
important
and
meaningful within the experimental context.
Tart suggests that we could instruct our
experimental
participants on
the
significance
of
the
target
in
order
to
give
it the
required
meaningfulness.
Psychic
intensity
could
also
reflect
an
intense
event
happening to an agent
- a methodology which Tart finds attractive.
The idea that a
good
target
should
stand
out from
its
surroundings
is
strongly
supported
by
the
psychological literature on human attention which
i will be introducing later.
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A second area of research which has had some heuristic value for parapsychological
research concerns subliminal perception,
or preconscious processing
(Dixon, 1981).
Comparisons
of
psi and
subliminal
perception have
noted
that
"right hemisphere"
processing
facilitates
subliminal
perception
(Roney-Dougal,
1981,
1986)
-
a
suggestion which has also been made
for
psi perception
(e.g. Braud,
1975).
This
could
suggest
that
"right
hemisphere
targets"
such
as
music,
pictures and
other
non-anaiytic targets might be preferable
to "left-hemisphere" targets such as words
and numbers.
Another parallel between psi and subliminal perception
is that emotive
stimuli
can
evoke
clear
autonomic
responses
in
the
percipient
in
both
cases
(Roney-Dougal, 1986).
Serena Roney-Dougal feels that the use of negative emotional targets is both morally
and
methodologically
unsound,
partly
because
some
of
her
subjects
reported
unpleasant experiences while
receiving
target impressions and might psi-miss with
this kind of target, and also because of the perceptual defence phenomenon seen
in
subliminal perception.
Sondow, Braud & Barker (1981) considered that "defensive"
subjects
might
be
likely
to
psi-miss
with
unpleasant
targets,
and
devised
an
"Openness
Questionnaire”
to
identify
such
subjects.
They
found
no
significant
difference between the "openness'’ of receivers who psi-hit and those who psi-missed
in a ganzfeld study.
Unfortunately, no extensive description
is made of the format of
the questionnaire, or of whether or not
it measures perceptual defensiveness as seen
in subliminal perception or some other, unspecified, form of defensiveness.
In
perceptual defence, a person may
raise
his
or her
recognition
threshold
for a
threatening
or unpleasant
stimulus
-
in
other words,
they
perceive
it
less
clearly.
Roney-Dougal interprets this as being due to the person’s desire or motivation not to
perceive
the
threatening
stimulus,
a
motivation
which,
she
feels,
may
underlie
psi-missing
also.
However,
Dixon
reports
experiments
which
suggest
that
the
perceptual
defence
effect,
rather
than
representing
the
motivations
of
the
experimental
participant,
is
best
explained
in
physiological
terms:
emotive
stimuli
cause changes
in a person’s arousal
level which
in turn affect the sensitivity of the
sensory receptors.
Whatever the mechanism of the effect of emotional stimuli on recognition thresholds,
it
is
clear that
this
effect
is
not
uni-directional.
One aspect of perceptual defence
which,
it seems, tends to be overlooked
is sometimes called vigilance.
While some
people may raise their recognition thresholds to emotional stimuli, others may actually
lower them (Brown, 1961; Dixon, 1981).
Without digressing too much on the reasons
for this apparent contradiction,
it has been found that there
is a correlation between
personality-type and a person’s tendency
to
raise
or lower
his
or her
recognition
threshold,
with
extroverts
raising
their
thresholds,
and
introverts
lowering
them
(Brown,
1961;
Corcoran,
1965).
This
has
some
interesting
implications
for
parapsychology.
While Roney-Dougal
felt that the raised recognition thresholds seen
in perceptual defence might be
linked with the psi-missing of her own subjects with
negative
emotional
targets,
other
researchers
have
found
the
opposite
(Delanoy,
1988), and the vigilance effect suggests that some parapsychological subjects could
even
psi-hit with unpleasant targets.
Donn Byrne (1961, 1963, 1964) has developed
a
”repfei^M8;srii%o^»
be
253
CPYRGHT
personal communication, 1988).
Having looked at popular literature, spontaneous cases,
from parapsychologists on what might make a good
ta.,
inferences from areas of psychology which
I consider to be
(1) EMOTIONAL RESPONSES TO STIMULI
nd
target
theoretical suggestions
I
will now make some
relevant to this discussion.
Mehrabian
and
Russell
(1974)
outline
a
theoretical
a
psychology (the study of the impact of the physical and so
emotions,
attitudes and
behaviour).
In
their own words,
there are three basic emotional responses (pleasure, aro
dominance-submissiveness
dimension
refers
to
the
individuals feel they have over a situation or environment),
be used to describe adequately any emotional state
(e.g.
their impacts on these basic emotional dimensions, the
components within or across sense modalities (e.g. color,
can be readily compared" (preface, Mehrabian & Russell,
usal,
pjproach
to
environmental
cial environment on man’s
Evidence suggests
that
and dominance)
(the
degree
of
control,
which
combinations of which can
anxiety).
By considering
}
fleets
of diverse
stimulus
itch, texture, temperature)
, [my italics]).
974.
There
is evidence of considerable intermodality
of human
that
is, stimulation
in one sensory modality may
affect p
instance, people who visualize auditory stimulation tend to
i
names and mood
adjectives
with types
of
music:
"Such
visualize exciting music in bright forms or sharp and angulai
in rounder forms"
( p. 11, Mehrabian & Russell, 1974).
f
responses to stimuli reported above (pleasure, arousal
ancjl
providing a measure with which to compare people’s varied
stimuli.
This
is relevant because
it suggests that an adrf
1!
our consideration of what might be expected to be salient
is not only the
actual
physical
characteristics
of the targ
response (a combination of pleasure, arousal and dominan
in the percipient.
!
Further, the theory may provide a methodological framework for the consideration of
the impact of various target characteristics on our experimental participants (Delanoy,
personal communication,
1988).
A semantic
differential scale
is used to measure
people’s
emotional
state
in
particular
settings,
or
to
measure
their
characteristic
emotions over time.
Mehrabian and
Russell’s scale
coijnprises
adjective
pairs
describing various aspects
of pleasure, arousal and dominance, and
their subjects
are asked to mark on the scale the degree to which one or other of the adjective pair
most accurately reflects their feelings.
Semantic differential scales have already been
used in parapsychology, though for different purposes than suggested here.
McBain
et al (1970) used Osgood’s Semantic Differential to find pairs of people with common
affective reactions to the same concept, though, contraryjto their expectations, they
found no relation between the degree to which people agreed in their reactions to the
response
to stimulation
-
(
rception
in another.
For
gree in associating colour
persons were
found
to
r figures, and slow music
tThe three basic emotional
dominance) are seen as
intermodal responses to
tional important aspect to
features of a GESP target
et, but also the emotional
be) which that target elicits
target stimulus and their GESP scores with that stimulus.
Sondow, Braud & Barker
Approved For Release 2000/08/08
254
CIA-RDP96-00789R0031 001 20001 -4
(1981) used Osgood's Semantic
Differential as one
of several measures
of taraet
However’
li should be possib,e t0 make more extensive us^of
MehraZn
s
n
6"
!;.
,i?
plannedJ
0 investigate further how a scale such as
DaranQwhnir.
•
^
USS®
s
oou id
b®
adapted
to
measure
the
reactions
of
2S
SUb
i
e
?'.S
,0
.
ter9elS
and
,0
pravid®
a m®,llod
‘o
standardise
cescnptions of successful targets.
which ma^hfS
01 °'^®hrab‘an and Rus®ell
's theory of environmental psychology
emo«o^ rearsn
I °- r d,8CU?8l0n ab°u' targets
is their consideration of how
emotional
reactions
to
physical environmental
stimuli are
related to the conceDt of
,=
Ch
o
a
r
VOi
a
d
:r- , ™S th8y dS,ine^ 38 inotoding
"*at
phys!cal modern
toward,
or
away
from,
an
environment
or
stimulus,
dearee
of
attention
Russ°efT974t
V0
A
able
f”
ltUd9S^ as-P
re,erenc® °r «Wng...* ®p.96, Mehrabian &
IHeratum relL f°
USa VT
38 3 T9d 'a!°r of aPPtoach-avoidance behaviour.
A
of mouse
!n
9998,8 ,h3t approach-avoidance
is an inverted-U-shaped function
or
arousal,
an organism seeks an optimum
level
of arousal
- whether or not
it
Smelv
G
hloh
r 3
i°
ld
?
,
Stl7
UlUS d
?
p9ndS 00 how arousln9
the
stimulus
is, and
extremely high or low levels of arousal are avoided.
fLTndut?no
,h
a
e
nLL
S
|
3 ,9nd
.
H?
y ,99Xpl0re
'he
un,arn,Uar.
When
the
stimuli
are
RusseN nmp'.h^h
repeatedly withdraw and approach the stimuli.
Mehrabian and
beha^nnr %JS
th9 an,mals
?
r® Hiamtainlng an optimum level of arousal with this
»
u
.
.s,milar behaviour Is seen
in human children and adults
(for references
have s ofnPha
. ?
USS8l
|'
,
97f
: Bedyn®’ 1960 >-
Anecdotally, humans do seem to
nave a penchant
for voluntanly and
repeatedly
exposing
themselves
to
nenativo
exampte.
and ,ear',nducln3 slimuli
‘ hair'raisin3 roller coaster rides and horror film®, for
L
h
nsJere1ion^hi?
pr0f
h'3v0id3
?
C9
, ,
be
,
in9
medla,ed
arousal
relates
to
the
nemfva im.if ?
(r!
perceptual defence and
vigilance)
of the
merits
of using
"®9al1™. aroullv®
targets
In
parapsychology.
It suggests
that
people
might have
armrsaf
Tn
"
n
!
93t ve T
l!
V9 ,ar9e,s inso,ar 38 ,h9S® targets tend to Increase
arousal.
Too
much
arousal,
however,
will
cause
people
to
withdraw
from
an
unpleasant target.
On the other hand the use of neutral and bland GESP targets is
annrfL
o?
U88 °Ur axP® rin,,antal
participants
at
all, consequently
failing to
elicit
approach.
Of course,
positive emotive targets would also be expected to influence
the arousal of our subjects and to elicit approach-avoidance behaviour.
l
8!“"d area of psychological research which may make suggestions relevant to the
£'°" °Lwhat toakes a good GESP target concerns the characteristics of stimuli
which attract people s attention.
[2) STUDIES OF ATTENTION
While the theoiy discussed
in the preceding section suggested that stimuli could be
lescnbed in terms of people’s basic emotional responses to them, other research has
cammed characteristics of the stimuli themselves, to see what stimulus features tend
o
attrac^
Folp^^a||
8^8P^^\99l^9^6PTOaf200a^4Dn
255