Content provided in partnership with
Why is PSI so elusive? A review and proposed model
Journal of Parapsychology, The, Sept, 2001 by J.E. Kennedy
Conclusion
There is significant evidence on both sides for this hypothesis. Further research on the relationship between psychic phenomena and worldview/spirituality is needed before conclusions can be drawn.
HYPOTHESIS 10. Psi Is INFLUENCED BY MANY OR ALL or THE PEOPLE WHO ARE INTERESTED IN THE POTENTIAL RESULTS
The assumptions that psi is related to human motivations and that it is independent of space and time directly lead to the possibility that many people may contribute to a psi effect. In the extreme case, all the people who eventually learn about or would have an interest in a psi result may contribute to the outcome. Psi would be elusive because the net result of this integrated psi is to oppose or suppress psi manifestations.
- Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »
Supporting Arguments
Studies showing that psi results can be influenced by the person who generates the targets (West & Fisk, 1953) or checks that data (Feather & Brier, 1968) suggest that psi effects are a diffuse combination of effects from various people in addition to the participants and the primary experimenter. White (1976a) reviewed the early studies in these areas, and Weiner and Zingrone (1989) provided a later summary of the evidence for the "checker effect."
Braud (2000) reviewed numerous studies of "retroactive intentional influence" that support the hypothesis that people's intentions and motivations can influence past events. In these studies, data are recorded from a random process and then sometime later goals for a PK effect are defined as the recording is played back. Success on these tasks implies that the future goals influenced the previous random process. Precognition experiments may also be evidence for backward influence. The results could be due to the participant's precognitive calls being influenced backward in time by motivations associated with the subsequent scoring of the results.
Two studies found evidence that efforts to influence prerecorded targets appeared to affect the original recording even after the targets had already been played one or more times (Schmidt, 1976, 1990). These results support the hypothesis that many psi influences from the future can have effects backward in time.
Opposing Arguments
The studies of randomizer and checker effects provide evidence that certain individuals appear to influence, and perhaps dominate, the experimental outcomes, but these idiosyncratic results do not provide evidence for extensive influence by many people.
The studies of retroactive intentional influence may be due to the experimenter using precognition combined with real-time PK to influence the random process. The evidence for goal-oriented psi suggests that this type of information-processing complexity is irrelevant for psi. The precognition-PK task is similar to the clairvoyance-PK task of blind PK.
Two studies found evidence that efforts to influence prerecorded targets appeared to not affect the original random process after the targets had already been played once (Schmidt, 1985, 1986). These results oppose the hypothesis that multiple psi influences from the future can have effects backward in time. Three other studies on this topic were inconclusive (Schmidt, 1984; Schmidt & Dalton, 1999; Schmidt & Stapp, 1993).
Find Research Guides for:
Find Featured Titles for: News
Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »