Graduate Program

Clinical Psychology

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Semester of Degree Completion

2006

Thesis Director

Russell Gruber

Thesis Committee Member

Unknown

Thesis Committee Member

Unknown

Abstract

The current study involves the exploration of several variables relating to the facilitation of mental telepathy from a social field perspective. Groups of participants ranging from 8 to 35 attempted to telepathically send information regarding one of four target locations to a receiver who was selected at random from the group. During each of ten sessions, an average of nine receivers completed 16 trials apiece over a period of two hours. It was hypothesized that since all participants had a previous experience with a telepathy task, they would score above chance initially and that as sessions progressed fatigue or boredom would result in declining hit rates. A 7-point scale was used to measure attitude toward mental telepathy in order to explore the effects of high or low belief. As hypothesized, results indicated that the first four participants scored above chance, whereas the remaining participants scored in the below chance direction, resulting in a significant within session decline effect. Although belief in psi did not correlate significantly with overall hit rate, it was found to play a mediating role in the decline effect. Those with high belief scores showed less of a decline effect than those with low belief scores. It was concluded that although current findings do not directly confirm the existence of a collective group influence, a social field explanation for telepathy was supported. We can speculate that the existence of social fields increased the effects offatigue or boredom experienced by senders and/or receivers, resulting in a significant within session decline effect.

Download

Included in

Psychology Commons

Share

COinS