A study to show the relationship between repetition and the belief in Extrasensory Perception (ESP)

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A study to show the relationship between repetition and the belief in Extrasensory Perception (ESP)

Abstract

In an attempt to find the relationship between repetition and the belief in Extrasensory Perception (ESP), the work of Brugger et al. (1990) is partially replicated. The experiment was an independent measure design, using 194 participants, who were selected using an opportunity sample. The independent variable was whether participants believed in ESP or not, and the dependent variable is the number of repetitions on a subjective random generation task. The participants were asked to randomly select the numbers one to six, 66 times, in order to imitate that of a dice being rolled. Participants were also asked to rate on a six-point scale, ranging from strong belief (=1) to strong disbelief (=6) how much they believed in Extrasensory Perception (ESP). The results showed that believers in ESP (sheep) (mean=3.41, SD=6.69) scored significantly lower on repetitions than non-believers (goats) (mean=4.78, SD=18.37). The difference was significant in the direction predicted by the hypothesis so the null hypothesis was rejected ( t (95) = 1.74, p<0.05, one tailed).  

 

Introduction

Extrasensory perception (ESP) is part of parapsychology, it’s considered to be the responses to external stimuli without any known sensory contact. In recent years there has been a widespread and increase in the belief in paranormal (Truzzi, 1971, found in Blackmore et al., 1985), surveys have shown the most common reason for this is personal experience. ESP mainly includes telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition/psychic ability, which all have one thing in common they depend on judgements of probability. There are two explanations for people’s belief; they have had the paranormal experience, or a misinterpretation of normal events as paranormal. Such misinterpretation is referring to the errors in judgement of probability; people tend to underestimate the probability of ‘coincidence’.  For example, people misinterpret events as paranormal, when they perceive the event wrongly. They interpret only in terms of paranormal but actually physical and psychological experiments are adequate.

The first study into extrasensory perception was done by Schmeidler and McConnell (1958) who came up with the terms sheep and goats respectively for believers in ESP and disbelievers in ESP. There have been several studies into ESP which have all shown similar findings that sheep are more likely then goats to score significantly above the level expected by chance and for disbelievers to score significantly below that level. In particular sheep have been shown to underestimate randomness when taking part in experimental tasks.

A study by Langer (1975) presented a series of studies that demonstrated what she called ‘illusion of control’, a tendency for participants to perceive a random process as being potentially under their control. This tendency is increased if the situation seems to incorporate elements of skill. For example, participants rate their success in a raffle as higher if they pick their own raffle ticket rather than just having one allocated at random even though the objective probabilities are identical. Ayeroff and Abelson (1976) explored this further and found that several factors increased participant’s perception that they were performing higher than chance levels, even though they were not. These included skill within task, allowing for a ‘warm-up’ session, and allowing participant’s choice in test materials, such as the cards they were going to use.

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A study by Blackmore and Troscianko (1985) found sheep were more biased to probability judgements. In this study participants were asked to estimate the probability of repetition in two events. One was throwing a dice ten times, and the other was throwing ten dice at once, and they were asked to estimate the amount of repetition that would occur. The results showed that believers (sheep) in ESP were found to underestimate chance more than non-believers (goats). However this experiment did not differ in avoidance for sheep and goats, all participants tended towards underestimation. This study has been criticised by ...

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