Interpersonal psi: exploring the role of the sender in ganzfeld GESP tasks
Year: 2004
Type: article
Abstract: According to Morris, Dalton, Delanoy, and Watt (1995, p. 246), of most important theoretical issues in parapsychology concerns role of sender in GESP procedures. Indeed, many of most impressive spontaneous cases do seem to involve an active (cf. Beloff, 1993), whereas in laboratory Palmer (1978, p. 97) noted that whatever status of 'pure telepathy,' widespread use of GESP procedures in psi experiments is ample evidence that many experimenters believe presence of an agent may improve chances of a successful outcome. One means of assessing this possibility is to compare participants' performance under GESP conditions (where there is a sender) with that under clairvoyance conditions (where there is not). Unfortunately, interpretation of outcomes of some of these studies is confounded by fact that participants were aware that there would be no sender for some trials and this may clearly affect their expectancy or motivation--or even perceived credibility of phenomenon under investigation--in ways that could lead to what we term a psychological sender effect (cf. Irwin, 1999). Palmer (1978) has similarly noted that the percipient might be more relaxed, more confident, or more highly motivated if he thinks someone is sending to him, even if no agent actually exists (p. 97). Among interpretations of putative sender/no sender difference offered by Morris et al. (1995) is one that argues that to many participants, it seems somehow more plausible that someone must first observe target and send them a signal before they can gain any information about target, and that having a sender may simply increase feeling of teamwork or diffuse responsibility for failures (or perhaps more tellingly, for successes, reminiscent of work of Batcheldor, 1966). This is perhaps illustrated in extremis by Langdon-Davies (1956), who described a basic clairvoyance study in which he was scoring at chance until he set up an imaginary agent (in fact, it was well-known medium Eileen Garrett, whom he had never actually met) so that he had someone to share success or failure with. His next series of 200 runs exhibited significant hitting. A number of forced-choice experiments have kept participants blind to fact that some trials were clairvoyant and others permitted GESP, and these constitute a better test of influence of sender. Palmer (1978) reviewed much of early work of this type and reported that researchers who tested gifted individuals did tend to find predicted difference in favour of telepathy (e.g., Birge & Rhine, 1942), whereas those engaged in group testing did not (e.g., Beloff, 1969, West, 1950). The former finding has been replicated more recently; for example, gifted participant Lalsingh Harribance was misinformed that all trials were GESP when in fact alternate trials were clairvoyant. He scored significantly above chance on former task but close to chance on latter (Klein, 1972). (It should be noted, however, that Harribance was able to score above chance on clairvoyance tasks at other times when accurately briefed.) Bender (1970) similarly reported an abrupt drop in performance following an unannounced switch from GESP to clairvoyance. Schmeidler (1961) found suggestive support for better performance on GESP trials compared with clairvoyance trials, and Kreitler and Kreitler (1972) found that percipients who had to identify letters that were projected subliminally tended to perform better on trials for which an agent was attempting to transmit correct letter. However, Lantz, Luke, and May (1994) described a nonganzfeld free-response ESP experiment with five experienced receivers (who had all produced significant effects in previous research) in which performance was better in no-sender condition than with an agent, although difference was not significant. Senders and Ganzfeld In terms of sender effects within ganzfeld paradigm, it is worth noting Honorton's (1995) meta-analysis of differences in sender and no-sender conditions. …
Authors: Chris A Roe, Simon J. Sherwood, Nicola J. Holt
Language: English
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W89583313