ESP: Target Qualities/Personal Relationships 57 Approved For Release 2000/08/15 CIA-RDP96-00792R0007,0096Q001 -Rinson and Nordbeck study, ESP: TARGET QUALITIES AND PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS * R THE EFFECT OF ANXIETY ON SCORING en Oars oF EFFECTS IN A BLIND-MATCHING TEST WIT 5 THE UBaECTS SPECIFIC AND EMOTIONAL IMPLICATIONS T . : ¢ oratory » University 9 i on (Parapsychology La Martin u. oet, Sorbonnelaan 16, 3584CA Utrecht, The Netherlands) and Joop M. Houtkoopert (Jan Swammerdam Institute, University of Amsterdam ) out by Johnson and Nordbeck i= an end 122-132) based on psychodynamic ideas of "detene a meet ae ential " eship ," a selected subject manifested a striking ae cor coving Fi st, during preliminary test sessions she switche oe scoring - tion with the turn of the psychological atmosphere » BPE) wit oe chan e of experimental technique, from psi-hitting (p wit Gemissing (p < .01). This was followed by @ formes te result Matching Test (BMT) employing two types of target ive ne eal t0 was psi-hitting on the targets having * St miss i TN ae eoae: j stro. - the i“ bject, Whereas re differential scoring between ne a types of targets amounted to a CRq of 4.58 (p “rood on HHO ta etie The selection of the two types of targets was se ds aaa aepth information gathered by personality diagnostit me eS ante the interview. During the course of the successful exp ee tudy. subj t was unaware of the nature of the targets used in es whe BMT was administered via closed-circuit TV, a design m . a totally eliminated the possibility that olfactory cues cou Pp role in the outcome of the experiment. In a study carried From the viewpoint of observational theory we a jecte do well suited for detecting observational effects, a6 eee eet gual et obtain feedback about their performance, nor en the fine oor cards nor on their overall score. The persons chec . nd cr tone respondence between key cards and matched cards ar i ed to the first observers of the outcome and thus can be consider produce the paranormal effect. ore *Chaired by Adrian Parker. Approved For Release 2000/08/15 : CIA RDP96-00792R000700960001-5 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. 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 Scale (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 ofa 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- jor 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