The sheep-goat effect - A study on how extra-sensory perception belief affects repetition avoidance.

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Name: Gyang Ganan Andrew

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The sheep-goat effect

A study on how extra-sensory perception belief affects repetition avoidance

Abstract

Previous research has shown that there is a difference between people who believe in extra-sensory perception (ESP) and people who do not in tasks that include probability judgement, illusion of control and repetition avoidance. An experiment by Brugger et al (1990) has shown that belief in extra-sensory perception has influence on people’s generation of random number sequences in that people who believe in ESP (sheep) are more likely to avoid repetitions than strong disbelievers in ESP (goats). The experiment asked subjects to generate a sequence of random dice throws and make this indistinguishable from that of a real dice as possible.

The following experiment is a replication of Brugger’s (1990) repetition avoidance study. It was hypothesized that sheep will be more likely to avoid repetitions than goats. The results of this study show that there was no significant difference in the number of repetitions between sheep and goats in repetition avoidance. t (84)=0.11, p>0.05. This result contradicted and failed to replicate Brugger’s (1990) finding and it was concluded that belief or disbelief in ESP did not affect avoidance of repetitions.

Introduction

Many studies have been carried out on the subject of repetition avoidance. Experiments have shown that people find it difficult to generate true random sequences even when instructed to do so. The most frequent problem with generating these random numbers is avoidance of repetitions. One of the most frequently studied variables, which may affect repetition avoidance is the belief in extra-sensory perception (ESP).

ESP covers a wide range of beliefs, the most common of these are the paranormal and psychic experiences. There are many reasons for belief in ESP, the majority of people who believe state that this is because they have had first hand experience of something happening to them. This could be due to coincidences which have happened to a person e.g. they dream that someone is going to have a plane crash and the next day someone in their family gets involved in a plane crash, the person then states that they had a premonition about this and their belief in ESP is increased.

Other typical reasons for people’s belief in ESP tend to be due to poor judgement in probability. An example of this would be to ask a question such as ‘how many people would have to be at a party to have a 50:50 chance that two of them share the same birthday’ (ignoring year) Kahneman (1982) found that most people are surprised to learn that the correct answer is 23.

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To further test people’s appreciation of probability Brugger (1990) conducted a study to test people’s ability to generate random sequences. Subjects were asked to imagine rolling a dice and respond with a number from one to six, this was repeated sixty-six times at a rate of one response per second. The subjects were asked to make the responses indistinguishable from that of a real dice. They were also asked to rate their belief in ESP on a scale of one to six where one is strong belief in ESP and six is a strong disbelief in ESP. People who ...

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