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The capricious, actively evasive, unsustainable nature of psi: a summary and hypotheses

Journal of Parapsychology, The, Spring, 2003 by J.E. Kennedy

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Both the rational, controlling and interconnected, spiritual personality characteristics may have adaptive value and contribute to the optimum diversity of the human species, and to a balanced background of motivations supporting and opposing psi. A more detailed examination will likely find that these characteristics consist of multiple factors and some of the factors may be separate dimensions rather than extremes of a continuum. People who are unsure or indifferent to psi and those who want to use psi instrumentally must also be recognized.

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Various aspects of this model can be tested. Using the methods of behavioral genetics to investigate the genetic aspects of belief and skepticism is an obvious starting point. The fact that skeptics are a minority of the population may indicate that all people do not contribute equally to the background psi. The background opposition could be due to a subgroup of people with psi ability and high motivation. Also, the evidence that males may typically demonstrate greater PK influence than females (Dunne, 1998) is consistent with the male drive to assert themselves and may have implications for a disproportionate background influence by skeptics.

Strategies that influence psi effects may also be tested. Although this model can be precisely handled as an observational model, the critical assumptions are the independence of time and space rather than the act of observation.

Bierman (2001) suggested that the number of people becoming aware of and potentially influencing psi experiments increases as experiments are repeated. Presumably, the background opposition to psi has an increasing role with replication, while the motivation and novelty for the experimenters may decline. The evidence that psi effects abruptly drop after meta-analyses (Houtkooper, 1994, 2002) is particularly relevant. Bierman (2002) also suggested that the reported stability of the classified Star Gate research may reflect limitations on the number of persons potentially influencing the results. Houtkooper (2002) extended this idea by suggesting that the restricted information of classified research may allow the skeptics to dismiss findings without being confronted with strong evidence. Similarly, the idea that stronger psi occurs with weak methodology also may reflect less attention and negative motivation by skeptics.

If these ideas are correct, the optimum conditions for psi results would be for one person or a few people with psi ability to carry out self-tests with the firm constraint that no one else will ever learn of any positive outcomes. This is consistent with the strategy "go and tell no one" recommended by some proponents of psi (e.g., Sinetar, 2000). Other experiments could be carried out with varying degrees of information distribution, including simulating classified research. One interesting strategy would be to attempt to reverse the declines by having more restricted distribution of information and perhaps lower quality methodology as the research progresses.

The capricious, actively evasive, unsustainable nature of psi: a summary and hypotheses

Journal of Parapsychology, The, Spring, 2003 by J.E. Kennedy

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