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Why is PSI so elusive? A review and proposed model
Journal of Parapsychology, The, Sept, 2001 by J.E. Kennedy
4. Psi-conducive experimenters are psi practitioners. This is indicated by the evidence that most consistently successful psi experimenters have produced reliable results as participants (Kennedy & Taddonio, 1976; Palmer, 1997). The hypothesis that motivation, expectancy, and novelty enhance psi occurrence is probably true for psi practitioners. However, these factors cannot turn a person who is not a psi practitioner into a psi practitioner.
5. Psi-conducive experimenters usually achieve their experimental outcomes in an efficient, goal-oriented manner. The experimental outcomes change as an experimenter's interests and intentions change. Various effects discovered in parapsychology, such as decline effects, position effects, and differential effects, may be residual patterns from the efficient operation of psi.
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6. For most psi experiencers, a relatively autonomous or independent aspect of consciousness influences or guides the occurrence of psi. This higher consciousness may be a deeply unconscious process or some type of transpersonal or collective unconscious, or possibly even a nonphysical entity or some combination of these factors. Whatever the exact process, the effect is experienced as something that happens to the person that is outside the person's control. These effects are experienced as unusually meaningful experiences that relate to higher guidance, personal growth, or personal transformation. These are the most common type of psi experience for psi experiencers who are not psi practitioners. For experimenters who are not psi practitioners, these experiences can include occasionally obtaining significant experimental results that are meaningful to the experimenter. The relative roles and interactions between this higher consciousness and a psi practitioner's intentional direction of psi are not clear at present.
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
This model brings into focus several topics for further research.
1. The bimodal distribution of psi experiences found by Palmer (1979) and Kohr (1980) needs further investigation. The General Social Survey (GSS) has long had questions on "parapsychological" and mystical experiences (see www.icpsr.umich.edu/gss/). Unfortunately, these items are not as useful as would be desired. The GSS solicits suggestions for additional questions and special modules. Enhancing the questions on anomalous experiences could provide a means to obtain high-quality national data.
2. Collaboration with behavioral genetics research centers to add psychic and/or anomalous experience questionnaires to future twin studies would provide valuable information on the genetic aspects of the tendency to have psi experiences.
3. Virtually all meta-analyses should investigate the underlying statistical assumption that the z score is proportional to the square root of the sample size. Other strategies for investigating goal-oriented psi can also be explored (Kennedy, 1995).
4. The observation that multivariable, process-oriented studies tend to be less successful than simple evidence-for-psi studies has far-reaching implications and clearly merits formal study. Existing meta-analysis databases may provide significant, quantitative insights with relatively little effort.
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