7 gab a ——___, THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH, Inc. «ft . OFFICERS Dr. C. B. SCOTT JONES 0... eee eee cree eee eee nee ‘a aeeeee President Dr. HoytL. EDGE ..... settee ee ce First Vice-President Dr. STANLEY KRIPPNER ; . Second Vice-President MARILYN MALE ........... teeter eres seen ete eeeeaee Treasurer ELEANOR FRIEDE . ...--- 2020-0 ee eo ee ses cee cece eens Secretary BOARD OF TRUSTEES . Dr. Irvin L. Child (April* 1991) Marilyn Male (April* 1990) Dr. Hoyt L. Edge (April* 1992) Dr. John A. Palmer (April* 1991) Eleanor Friede  . - (April* 1992) Abram Samuels (April* 1991) Dr. Robert G. Jahn - (April* 1991). Dr. Nancy Sondow (April* 1991) Dr. C. RB. Scott Jones (April* 1991) Jan Stevenson, M.D. (April* 1991) Dr. Stanley Krippner (April* 1990) * The month may differ. STAFF _ Interim Executive Director, Howard Zimmerman : Director of Administration; Newsletter Editor, Donna L. McCormick : Director of Public Information & Education, Patrice Keane , Journal Editor, Rhea A. 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ContribaBions of books and periodicals will be welcomed. , THE JOURNAL Corresfondence relating to the Journal should be addressed to the Editor at 2 Plane Tree Lane, , Hills, NY 11746. Ail material offered for publication should be in triplicate and typewri (doubie-spaced). Tables, footnotes, and references should be in the form used in the Joupgal. Abstracts (125-200 words) must be submitted with all papers. Unsolicited contribugons will not be returned unless postage is provided. Permigsidn to reproduce or translate material published by the Society must be obtainel-from the author and from the Editor. Resp@Asibility for the contents of any article appearing in the Journal rests entirely with the Sontributor and not with the ASPR. o The JoQRNnaL is an affiliated publication of the Parapsychological Association e 20 The Journal of: the American Society for Psychical Research (ISSN 0003-1070) is published quarterly in January, April, July, and October by the American Society for Psychical Research, 5 West 73rd Street, New York, NY 10023. Second-class postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to American Society for Psychical Research, 5 West 73rd Street, New York, NY _ Copyright © 1989 by the American Society for Psychical Research, Inc. Annual sub- - scription: $35 to individuals, $50 to institutions ($10 additional for overseas postage). THE JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH VOLUME 83 OCTOBER «~ 1989 NUMBER 4 Possible Role of Intuitive Data Sorting in Electrodermal Biological Psychokinesis (Bio-PK) WILLIAM G. BRAUD AND MARILYN J. ScHLITz! ABSTRACT: Forty volunteers participated in a study designed to test a hypothesis derived from an intuitive data sorting (IDS) interpretation of the biological psychokinesis (bio-PK) effect. Each of 8 influencers attempted to exert a distant mental influence upon the physio- logical activity of 4 subjects in a distant room, isolated from al! conventional sensorimotor communication. Each laboratory visit consisted of two 15-minute sessions, and each session was divided into 12 influence epochs during which the subject’s electrodermal activity (EDA) was monitored and computer-scored. The influencer attempted to decrease the EDA of the distant subject during six of the epochs and increase the EDA during the remaining six epochs. One session was conducted under a new condition in which the influencer was provided: with multiple opportunities for intuitive data sorting. In the other session, the in- fluencer had only a single opportunity for epoch-initiation and intuitive data sorting. An ‘‘informational’’ (IDS) interpretation of the bio-PK effect would predict better psi scoring under the multiple than under the single opportunity condition, whereas a “‘causal’’ (psycho- kinetic) interpretation would predict equivalent scoring under the two conditions. The ob- tained results (significant psi hitting in the single condition, nonsignificant scoring in the multiple condition, and an almost significant scoring superiority of the single over the mul- tiple condition) were more consistent with the causal (PK) than with the informational (IDS) interpretation of the bio-PK effect. Possible artifacts were analyzed and discounted, and the issue of multiple ‘‘levels’’ of IDS potential was treated. For a number of years, researchers at the Mind Science Foundation have been engaged in studies of the distant mental influence of biological systems (i.e., “biological psychokinesis’’ or “‘bio-PK”’). Although the biological target systems for some of these studies have included the spa- tial orientation of fish, the locomotor activity of small animals, and the rate of hemolysis of human red blood cells, the system with which we have worked most often has been the electrodermal activity of another 1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 30th annual convention of the Parapsychological Association, August 5-8, 1987, at Edinburgh University, Edinburgh, Scotland. . : CIA-RDP96-00789R002200550001-7 Approved For Release 2000/08/08
: CIA-RDP96-00789R002200550001-7 Approved For Release 2000/08/08 2590 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research person. The experimental protocol of a typical electrodermal bio-PK ex- periment is as follows. The subject sits in a comfortable room watching a random colored-lights display and listening to random tones through head- phones while his or her electrodermal activity is monitored via palmar electrodes. Concurrently, an ‘‘influencer’’ in another room (isolated from all possible conventional sensorimotor interactions with the subject) at- tempts to mentally influence the ongoing electrodermal activity of the subject according to a predetermined schedule unknown to the subject. The subject’s spontaneous electrodermal activity (skin resistance re- sponse) is objectively assessed during each of the ten 30-second influence periods and each of ten 30-second noninfluence control periods by means of an analog-to-digital converter interfaced with a microcomputer. By chance, the average electrodermal activity during influence epochs should equal that during control epochs. A statistically significant excess of elec- trodermal activity in the prescribed direction (i.e., higher influence than control scores under an ‘‘activate-aim’’ condition or lower influence than control scores under a ‘‘caim-aim’’ condition) provides evidence for a psi effect in the experiment. The protocol just described has been used in a series of 11 electrodermal bio-PK experiments in which a total of 174 subjects have participated. An appropriate method for assessing the statistical significance of the entire series is the z-score addition method described by Rosenthal (1978, 1979, 1984, p. 89). Here, one converts the studies’ obtained p values into z scores, sums these z scores, and divides by the square root of the number of studies being combined; the result is itself a z score that can be evalu- ated by means of an associated p value. This method, when applied to the present data, yields an overall z = 3.98, which has an associated p = .000034. Thus, the observed psi effect is a reliable and robust one. We have been interpreting the obtained psi effect as a psychokinetic (causal) influence of the subject’s autonomic nervous system activity by the distant, isolated influencer. An alternative possibility, however, is that the effect may be contributed totally or partially by an ‘‘intuitive data sorting’’ (IDS) process. The influencer or experimenter psychically, yet unconsciously, scans the future electrodermal activity stream of the sub- ject and begins an experimental session at a time that maximizes the de- gree of fit between the ongoing electrodermal activity and the prescribed schedule of influence and control epochs. Stated somewhat differently, the experimenter might psychically and unconsciously sort the subject’s elec- trodermal data into two ‘‘bins’’ so that significantly more of the activity in the prescribed direction falls in the influence bins than in the control bins (see May, Radin, Hubbard, Humphrey, & Utts, 1985). According to this ‘‘informational’’ model, psi functioning is still in evidence, but it is of an informational rather than a causal (psychokinetic) sort. The present study was designed to test a hypothesis suggested by the IDS model. According to that hypothesis, the effectiveness of intuitive data sorting is proportional to the number of opportunities provided for Intuitive Data Sorting and Bio-PK 291 such sorting. It was hypothesized that a single opportunity to psychically sort a future data stream may not be as effective as multiple opportunities for such sorting. Thus, the scoring rate might be greater if the person who initiates the sampling epochs in a bio-PK session is given the freedom to initiate each epoch at whim (and have, for example, 20 opportunities for intuitive data sorting) than it would be if the person were allowed only a single data-sorting opportunity. On the other hand, according to a causal, psychokinetic interpretation of the bio-PK effect, the scheduling of the sampling epochs should not influence the results; that is, the PK effect should be the same whether the influencer or experimenter has many or few degrees of freedom in deciding when to initiate sampling epochs. A pilot study was conducted to test the above hypothesis. Twenty-five individuals participated in that study, with 5 serving as influencers an@20 serving as subjects. Each influencer worked with 4 subjects. Each visto the laboratory consisted of two bio-PK sessions in which the influef¥er attempted to increase and to decrease the subjects’ electrodermal actiggy, mentally and at a distance, according to a prespecified schedule. For@ne of these two sessions, the influencer was able to initiate all 20 electro- dermal activity sampling epochs by means of button presses, and thugzhe or she had multiple opportunities for intuitive data sorting. For the er session, only one opportunity for IDS was made available to thd3n- fluencer. In that pilot study, the scoring rate did not differ significantl for the two conditions, although performance was slightly better in the §§)1- tiple opportunities condition. ou The absence of an overall psi effect in the pilot study may have Gen due to negative psychological factors attributable to the extreme lengt of the sessions (often approaching 22 hours for the entire two-session Djo- cedure). In an effort to counter this negative factor, a number of changes were instituted in order to shorten the length of the sessions for this fofRial study. We originally had planned to have the best two influencers ofghe pilot study serve as the influencers for the formal study, each working with 16 subjects. We decided, instead, to ask 8 influencers to work with 4 subjects each. This greatly lessened the workload of the influencers.ewWe also drastically reduced the length of each session by (a) reducing ¢he number of sampling epochs from 20 to 12, (b) eliminating the 5-mimute adaptation period at the beginning of each session, (c) reducing the rage of the variable delay between button press and sampling epoch initidfion (see below) to 30-40 seconds, and (d) reducing the duration of the bak between the subject’s two sessions to one minute. As a result of these changes, the new session lengths for the formal trials were approximaply 15 minutes each, and the entire two-session procedure could be accgm- plished in approximately 40 minutes, rather than the 22 hours required in the pilot study. It was our hope that these new conditions would fendeane sessions less trying and would produce more optimal moods in all experi- mental participants.