Anomalistic Psychology

Anomalous Experience: Experience that is irregular and does not fit into existing explanations
1. Pseudoscience
  1. Lacks falsifiability
    1. not able to prove a hypothesis wrong
    2. Jealous phenomena: phenomena disappears as sceptics are present
    3. Occam's Razor: if there are two competing explanations, the simpler one is used
  2. Not Objective
  3. Lacks replicability
    1. Example: Ganzfeld study
    2. Failure to replicate studies, especially by non-believers
  4. Lacks theory to explain the effects
    1. did not give any theoretical explanations
    2. Example: how does ESP happen
  5. Burden of proof
    1. supporters argues that the burden of proof is not theirs even if it should lie with them instead of the sceptics
  6. Lacks ability to change
    1. the same explanation is used even if people fails to find support for it
  7. Evaluation
    1. Paranormal research is not the only pseudoscience. Example: Freud's theory
    2. Mousseau: Compared articles in peer-reviewed parapsychology journals. She found43% produced empirical data and 24% used the experimental method which suggests that mainstream research are more scientific. However, she found evidence of selective reporting/ file-drawer effect
    3. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) allowed Parapsychological Association (PA) to be an affiliated member in 1969.
    4. Credible research may lead to valuable discoveries. Example: Acupuncture is now a valuable therapy as it has demonstrated replicable results
2. ESP (extrasensory perception): the perception of objects or events without any of the known physical senses being involved.
  1. Honorton: (Ganzfeld technique) The receiver is isolated in a red-lit room with halved table-tennis balls taped over their eyes and earphones playing white noise. The sender is in another room and chooses one of four images randomly to send telepathically. The receiver is asked to select the target images from several other and the judge records that data.
    1. Researcher Bias: Wooffitt found that sceptic researchers are less encouraging than researchers who are believers. This is known as the sheep-goat effect.
    2. Hyman: re-analysed Honorton's analysis of 28 Ganzfeld studies which showed that performance was significantly above chance. He found that the results are not significant
    3. File-drawer effect: Some researchers file away studies with negative outcomes, this leads to a publication bias
    4. Lack of control: The receiver may be able to hear the stimuli. Also, the first image chosen may be not random.
    5. Autoganzfeld technique: The researcher must state whether the study was pilot or not before starting the study. The images should be chosen by a computer instead of the sender
    6. Fraudulent research (E.g. Sargent)
    7. Jealous Phenonmena
3. Psychokinesis (PK)
  1. Macro-PK
    1. Wiseman and Greening
  2. Micro-PK: affecting the results of something that cannot be seen with the naked eyes without touching it physically, a statistical test is usually needed to determine whether there is a change or not
    1. Helmut Schmidt: Random Events Generator (REG), E.g. electronic coin flipper, Participants are told to influence REG by coming up with more heads than tails or vice versa
    2. Radin and Nelson: Positive results may be due to the small sample size
    3. Ecological validity: REG is not appropriate to study PK
Explanations for anomalous experience
1. Coincidence
  1. Illusion of causality: When two events happen at about the same time, people wrongly assumed causal relationship between them
  2. Illusion of control: people feel they control things when they are not
    1. Whitson and Galinsky: Found reduced reduced control led participants to detect patterns when there were none and form illusory correlations between unrelated events
  3. General Cognitive Ability: intelligence is lower in believers (sheep) than sceptics (goats)
    1. Gray: Believers have significantly lower academic results than sceptics
    2. Evans: New Scientist readers are assumed to have high cognitive ability as they are mainly scientists and engineers. When they were questioned, 67% regarded ESP as an "established fact" or "likely possibility"
    3. Wiseman and Watt: Found that sheep and goat only differ in terms of syllogistic reasoning rather than cognitive ability
2. Probability Judgement: the likelihood of an event occurring
  1. Repetition avoidance: consecutive repetitions in a true series of random numbers that people may underestimate probability are less likely to produce
    1. Brugger et al: Found that sheep avoid producing repetitions more than goats
  2. Questions about probability
    1. Birthday Paradox: 23 random people have a 50/50 chance of having the same birthday
      1. Blackmore and Troscianko: asked participants various questions about birthday party paradox and found that more goats than sheep got this right
  3. Conjunction fallacy
    1. conjunction vignettes: descriptions of occasions where two events co-occur
      1. Rogers et al: Tested probability judgements by giving participants 16 conjunction vignettes and ask them to indicate the probability of such events co-occurring. They found that sheep made more conjunction errors than goats.
  4. Blackmore and Troscianko: suggests that paranormal experiences are a kind of "cognitive illusion" resulting from a failure to accurately judge probability
  5. Evaluation
    1. Not all research has found a difference between sheeps and goats in terms of their probably judgements. This may be due to the difference in the way "belief" is determined.
    2. As research evidence are mainly correlation, it only suggests that there is a link but not a causal relationship
    3. Musch and Ehrenberg: controlled for differences in general cognitive ability and found this reduced the performance difference between believers and non-believerson probability judgement tasks to zero
    4. Kahnerman and Tversky: suggest that people use various heuristics (strategies to solve problems), for example representativeness
3. Superstitious behaviour and Magical thinking
  1. Superstitious behaviour
    1. Type 1 and 2 errors
      1. It is better to erroneously assume causality between unrelated events that co-occur than occasionally miss a genuine one.This behaviour is adaptive
    2. Behaviourist explanation
      1. Skinner: Proposed that superstitions develop through operant conditioning where an accidental stimulus-response link is learnt and negative reinforcement where anxiety is reduced when the behaviour is repeated
    3. Illusion of control
      1. Whitson and Galinsky: ask participants to recall situations in their lives. One group was asked to recall situations where they felt in control while the other recall those where they felt a lack of control. They were then given a story involving a superstitious behaviour and asked to judge how much this affected the eventual outcome of the meeting. Participants who had been made to ell less in control were more likely to believe that the superstitious behaviour affected the eventual outcome.
    4. Evaluation
      1. Staddon and Simmelhag: repeated Skinner's experiment and found superstitious behaviour unrelated to food reward.
      2. Matute: humans did learn to press a button despite no actual effectiveness
      3. Damisch et al : illusion of control increases self-efficacy
  2. Magical thinking
    1. Freud: identified magical thinking as a form of childlike thought where inner feelings are projected onto the outer world.
    2. Dual Processing theory: two ways of thinking, adult thinking which is logical and child thinking which lacks internal logic
    3. Animism: Piaget: children ascribe feelings to physical objects
    4. Nominal realism: children have difficulty separating the name of things from the things themselves.
    5. Lack of contagion: things having been in contact continue to act on each other even after physical contact ceases.
      1. Nemeroff and Rozin: suggests that our evolved fear of contagion is adaptive
    6. Evaluation
      1. Pronin et al: experimental support with voodoo dolls, participants felt more responsible if they had bad thoughts
      2. Rosenthal and Jacobsen: self-fulfilling prophecy; may act like a placebo and provide positive expectations
      3. associated with mental disorders, for example, schizophrenia, and OCD
      4. Avoid "depression realism" as lack of magical thinking linked to low dopamine levels
      5. Vamos: real-work application; increases willingness to donate organs for transplant
4. Personality factors
  1. Eysenck (behavourist)
    1. Extraversion and Introverts: Extraversion is the need of external stimulation to bring up to optimal level of performance while introverts is the need of peace and quiet to bring up to optimal level of performance
      1. Research studies
        Peltzer: suggests that extraversion is associated with paranormal beliefs but not neuroticism and psychoticism
        Honorton: carried out a meta-analysis of 60 studies reliant extraversion to ESP and found overall there is a correlation. This may be due to extraverts being able to respond to new stimuli bette, thus are more open to paranormal experiences.
      2. Evaluation
        Wolfradt: suggests that only forms of psi correlate positively with an external locus of control while some negatively
        Davies and Kirbky: proposed that there is a relationship between internal locus of control and paranormal belief
        Groth-Marnat and Pegden: Internal locus of control is related to superstition while external locus of control is related to spirituality and precognition
    2. Neuroticism: high levels of negative effect, e.g. depression and anxiety
      1. Williams: tested nearly 300 Welsh school children and found a significant correlation of +.32 between neuroticism and paranormal beliefs, but not between paranormal beliefs and either extraversion or psychoticism
      2. Evaluation: Wieman and Watt: focus on just the superstition sub-scale of the Paranormal Belief Scale and found that neuroticism only relates to bad-luck and does not explain all paranormal beliefs
    3. Psychoticism/Socialization: associate with liability to have a psychotic episode and aggression
      1. Evaluation: Francis: tested 20000 UK children aged 13-15 and found that increase in psychoticism correlate with unconventional paranormal beliefs
  2. More imaginative personlaity
    1. Fantasy proneness: difficulty in separating reality from fantasy, absorbed in a fantasy
      1. Wiseman et al: (mock séance) one actor suggests that a table was levitating even though it was't, more believers than non-believers reported that the table had moved
    2. Suggestibility: the inclination to accept the suggestion of the others. People who are more suggestive are more easily hypnotised
      1. Hergovich: linked suggestibility to paranormal belief as some involve deception (E.g. Uri Geller) and found a positive correlation between suggestibility and paranormal belief
    3. Creative personality
      1. Thalbourne: meta-analysis of relevant studies and found a correlation between creative and paranormal beliefs
    4. False memories: memories that did not happen but feels as if it is real
      1. Clancy et al: found that people who claimed to have experienced an alien abduction were found to be ore susceptible to false memories
      2. French and Wilson: Gave 100 participants a questionnaire which contains 4/5 real and 1/5 fictitious statements. They found that 36% claim to have seen the fictitious and these people score higher on paranormal belief and experience
Research into exceptional experiences
1. Psychic Healing: the ability to cause positive changes in physical well-being without the use of known medical techniques or effects
  1. Explanations
    1. Energy fields re-aligned by, for example, therapeutic touch (TT)
    2. Reduction of anxiety through psychological support
    3. Placebo effect: expectations of benefit created by success stories which could be due to spontaneous recovery
    4. Evaluation
      1. Lyvers et al: no evidence for psychic healing, believers improved more
      2. Benson et al: No placebo effect for prayers for cardiac recovery
  2. Research studies
    1. With et al: tested participants treated with TT or no touch and found that the former recovered faster
    2. Evaluation: Wirth's results haven't been replicated and was subsequently convicted of criminal fraud
2. Psychic mediumship: where a medium uses psychic abilities to carry out readings
  1. Explanations
    1. Clues help medium produce accurate information without psychic abilities
  2. Schwartz et al: accuracy of medium statements are about 80%
    1. Evaluation: O'Keefe and Wiseman: 5 mediums gave reading to 5 sitters producing 25 statements which were created by sitters as having little relevance
3. Out- of body experiences: the sensation of being awake and seeing your body from a location outside your physical body
  1. Explanations
    1. Paranormal: mind and body separates
    2. Biological: sensory disturbances
    3. Evaluation: Alvarado: found no evidence of parasomatic body having physically moved
  2. Research studies: Blanke et al: stimulation of the temporal-parietal junction of the brain resulted in OOBEs
    1. Evaluation: difficult to study OOBEs scientifically as they occur unpredictably and artificially-induced OOBEs are not seen as equivalent
4. Near-death experience: occur when someone is close to death and also fainting or simply in stressful or threatening situations
  1. REM intrusions due to hypoxia disrupt integration of sensory information
  2. Jansen: ketamine can produce symptoms of NDEs and ketamine has same effect as glutamate
  3. Evaluation
    1. Investigator bias may affect data collected
    2. Early studies are poorly controlled
  4. Nelson et al: NDE group are more likely to experience REM intrusions

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