Parapsychology is defined as ‘the scientific study of the capacity attributed to some individuals to interact with their environment by means other than the recognised sensorimotor channels’. The neutral term ‘psi’ is used to denote this hypothesised capacity. Dr Watt has tested the psi hypothesis by measuring people’s performance on controlled laboratory psi tasks in three main areas.
This work tests the hypothesis that there may be similarities between subliminal perception and extrasensory perception. ‘Subliminal perception’ refers to the idea that people may perceive and react to stimuli that are too weak to be consciously perceived. A more modern term is perception without awareness (PWA). Although there is no evidence to support the popular claim that people’s behaviour can be influenced by subliminal messages (e.g., on weight-loss tapes or through advertising), there is evidence from studies in cognitive psychology of very subtle subliminal influences. One area of research concerns whether people are slow or quick to detect a subliminal threat (for instance, a picture showing an aggressive act). Individuals who are slow to perceive such a threat are known as ‘defensive’, while those who are quick are called ‘vigilant’. Based on the theory that extrasensory information is processed in a similar fashion to weak sensory information, parapsychologists predicted that defensive individuals might be slow to respond to extrasensory information. A number of studies have found that defensive individuals score poorly on controlled laboratory extrasensory perception (ESP) tasks. In these tasks, the participant has to attempt to guess the identity of a series of targets whose identity is concealed both from the experimenter and from the participant. However, these studies measured defensiveness using a subjectively-scored projective test.
Dr Watt’s research has built on these studies by developing a new measure of defensiveness that is objectively scored. She has confirmed the findings of these earlier studies, showing - as predicted - that defensive individuals score more poorly on controlled ESP tasks than vigilant individuals. The fact that theoretically predicted individual differences can be found in controlled studies of this kind lends some support to the hypothesis that ESP exists. However, as is often the case in parapsychology, more systematic research is needed into the question of individual differences in ESP task performance in order to gain a fuller understanding.
Reference:
Watt, C.A. & Morris, R.L. (1995). The relationships among performance on a prototype indicator of perceptual defence/vigilance, personality, and extrasensory perception. Personality and Individual Differences, 19, 635-648. Download pdf (1,668KB).
This term refers to the claim that people can exert an influence over other individuals through intention alone, for example the sense that one can detect when one’s being stared at from behind, claims of paranormal healing, and the idea that one person can help another through remote intention such as prayer, or harm them through ‘voodoo’.
Dr Watt’s research in this area has mostly focused on testing the possibility that one person can help another remote individual to perform a simple cognitive task. In these studies, three individuals are involved - a helper, a helpee, and the experimenter. The helpee is seated in a sound-insulated room, and is asked to attempt to focus his or her attention on an object and to press a button to indicate whenever attention has wandered. This counts the number and timing of self-reported ‘distractions’. The helper is located in a distant room, and has no contact with the experimenter or the helpee during the testing session. A computer instructs the helper to follow a randomised schedule of ‘help’ and ‘no help’ periods. During the help periods the helper maintains the mental intention to assist the helpee minimise distractions. The experimenter and helpee are blind to the helper’s schedule. If there is a significant reduction in the number of distractions during the randomly-timed help periods, a remote helping effect is inferred.
Dr Watt has found statistically significant evidence of remote helping. This finding is consistent with several other independently-conducted studies that have found significant evidence of remote helping. Two of Dr Watt’s studies failed to find any evidence of remote helping, suggesting that the conditions for observing a remote helping effect are not completely understood. Dr Watt has used these remote helping studies to investigate the question of experimenter effects in parapsychology.
Reference:
Watt, C., & Ramakers, P. (2003). Experimenter effects with a remote facilitation of attention focusing task: A study with multiple believer and disbeliever experimenters. Journal of Parapsychology, 67, 99-116. Download pdf (170KB).
This refers to one of parapsychology’s toughest and most crucial problems: Why do certain experimenters seem to consistently obtain evidence of psi, whereas others do not? A number of different variables have been suggested as important factors for parapsychology’s experimenter effect, including: experimenter belief, experimenter behaviour, the confidence instilled in participants by experimenters, the experimenter’s ability to select participants likely to perform well on the psi task and, most controversially, the experimenter’s own psi abilities. (If psi exists, what is to stop the experimenter from inadvertently using his or her psi to obtain the desired study outcome?)
Dr Watt has investigated the question of experimenter effects through a number of different studies:
Experimenter effects in remote helping. These studies suggested that experimenter belief was the most important factor influencing study outcome.
Reference:
Watt, C., & Ramakers, P. (2003). Experimenter effects with a remote facilitation of attention focusing task: A study with multiple believer and disbeliever experimenters. Journal of Parapsychology, 67, 99-116. Download pdf (170KB).
Experimenter effects in remote staring detection. This work, focusing on psi-skeptic Richard Wiseman and psi-proponent Marilyn Schlitz as experimenters, and co-authored by Schlitz, Wiseman, Watt and Dean Radin, attempted to explain why Wiseman and Schlitz found different psi results even when using the same participants and procedures.
Reference:
Schlitz, M., Wiseman, R., Watt, C., & Radin, D. (2006). Of two minds: Skeptic-proponent collaboration within parapsychology. British Journal of Psychology, 97, 313-322. Download pdf (119KB).
Experimenter expectancy effects. This research has shown that participants’ responses on psychological measures such as IQ tasks can be influenced by the experimenter. This may explain some of the inconsistencies in the psychological literature on correlates of psi belief.
Reference:
Watt, C., & Wiseman, R. (2002). Experimenter differences in cognitive correlates of paranormal belief, and in psi. Journal of Parapsychology, 66, 371-385. Download pdf (299KB).
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