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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.
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.
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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 (see Figure
1).
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. 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.
T
e
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 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
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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
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
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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 (see Figure 2).
Results yielded a significant interaction across sex
pairs (pc.Ol, 2-t).
Opposite sex pairs showed a larger experimental effect than
same sex pairs.
ALTERNATIVE HYPOTHESES
Various
alternative
hypotheses
to
remote
observation may
be
considered to account for the obtained results.
These are described below, as
well as the rationale for discounting each of them.
(1)
The
results
are due
to
internal
rhythms
that may
have
influenced
the
Observee's
autonomic
nervous
system
activity.
This
potential
artifact has
been ruled out by
utilizing
a random and counter-balanced schedule
of
experimental and control periods.
(2)
The
results are due
to sensory cues or other uncontrolled external
stimuli.
Based on the experimental design, this alternative hypothesis can be rejected.
There were no known or obvious
factors
that could have influenced the
Observee based on the random schedule of experimental and control periods.
(3)
The
results
are
due
to
chance
correspondences
between
the
Observer's
observations
and
the
Observee's
physiological
responses.
The
use
of
conventional statistical techniques, as well as the existence of effect sizes in the
predicted direction, minimize the likelihood of coincidence.
Of course, such a
coomddencg is expected to occur once in 200 experiments, according to our
statistics.
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