- enough to produce the dramatic shift necessary for enhanced productiveness. Viewer 454 was also skilled in the use of self hypnosis, which may have contributed something to the positive result.
Additional work also needs to be done in the area of induction-subject interactions. It is evident that individuals respond differently to the induction process, which may interact with susceptibility and personality factors, in the viewer as well as the hypnotist. More time and effort resolving these issues prior to an experiment may be required.
- The issue of hypnotic susceptibility in relation to psi performance remains unresolved and should be the starting point for further studies. Several other good viewers, who could not participate in the present study, showed high hypnotizability on the SHSS. Conducting a series of
- RV trials with a group of persons who have previously been administered a standardized test of susceptibility, such as the SHSS, could help to resolve this question.
An additional area that could be explored that would eliminate hypnotist-viewer interactions would be the use of a carefully constructed self-hypnotic protocol as a pre-RV procedure, for focusing attention processes on the RV task. A series of process-oriented studies could be designed to discover the optimum conditions necessary for enhanced RV.


In conclusion it must be said that because of the interaction effects of a large number of competing variables, the quest for a state of consciousness wherein anyone can improve psi performance is an ill-advised and illusive goal. The best that can be hoped for is that highly-selected individuals can be helped to improve performance under certain well-specified conditions.
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REFERENCES
- 1. Schechter, E. I., Hypnotic Induction vs. Control Conditions: Illustrating an Approach to the Evaluation of Replicability in Parapsychological Data, Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 78, 1-27, 1984.
- 2. Honorton, C., and Krippner, S., Hypnosis and ESP Performance: A Review of the Experimental Literature, Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 63, 214-252, 1969. 3. Weitzenhoffer, A. M., and Hilgard, E. R, Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale, Form C, Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc., Palo Alto, 1962. 4. Stanford, R. G., Ganzfeld and Hypnotic-Induction Procedures in ESP Research: Toward Understanding Their Success, In S. Krippner (Ed.), Advances in Parapsychological Research, 5, 39-76, McFarland and Co., Inc., Jefferson, N.C., 1987 5. Casler, L., Hypnotic Maximization of ESP Motivation, The Journal of Parapsychology, Vol. 40, 187-193, 1976. 6. Honorton, C., Psi and Internal Attention States, In B. Wolman (Ed.), Handbook of Parapsychology, 435-472, Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, New York, 1977.


III. (U) SIGNIFICANCE OF EFFORT
(S/NF/SG/LIMDIS/WN) STAR GATE is a new dynamic approach for pursuing this largely unexplored area of human consciousness and subconsciousness interaction. Its scope is comprehensive; a wide range of phenomenological issues are examined that include psychological, physiological/neurophysiological, advanced physics (new wave concepts) and other leading-edge scientific areas. Although broad in scope, STAR GATE is well grounded due to its solid independent scientific review base. STAR GATE is based on dynamic style in all its endeavors, especially in its pursuit of foreign work in this area.
SG1B
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SG1B
(S/NF/SG/LIMDIS) It is the intention of STAR GATE to pursue all aspects of this area with high intensity, drawing on an experienced and well-qualified staff along with appropriate external assistance, in order to quantify and evaluate all available classified and unclassified research. By so doing, discoveries into how these phenomena work may be achievable. How to identify people with such talent (or potential for it) and how to develop/train selected individuals should also be a natural end-result. STAR GATE also draw heavily from lessons learned in all previous research and application investigations on a worldwide basis.


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(S/NF/SG/LIMDIS) A fundamental premise of this plan is that a well-integrated interdisciplinary approach is the most appropriate strategy for making progress in this diverse field. Consequently, this plan includes a wide variety of research topics. Many of these topics are based on recent findings from leading-edge pursuits in other disciplines that are suspected to have relevance for this area. Other topics are derived from a review of worldwide research, consultations with leading experts, and on insight gained from previous investigations involving both research and application activities. Application investigations examined include intelligence, police, FBI, and various medicalrelated activities such as diagnostics.
V. (U) KEY ACTIONS/MILESTONES -- IN-HOUSE EFFORT
(S/NF/SG/LIMDIS) The initial FY 1991 STAR GATE effort set the stage and formed the basis for moving on into the long-range activities identified in this plan. This section identifies key in-house activities for achieving STAR GATE objectives. These key actions are organized according to the following main functional areas: (1) assessment of foreign efforts; (2) research support; (3) systematic review of potential intelligence applications; and (4) in-house project support.


o It is anticipated that the existing DIA assets would form the basis of this potential training/ seminar activity.

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VI (U) KEY ACTIONS/MILESTONES - EXTERNAL SUPPORT
(S/NF) The funding allocation for external research received in FY 1991 for STAR GATE permitted several important research areas to be continued, and allowed for several new areas to be initiated. It is anticipated that results of this research will assist in clarifying some of the possible future research directions; consequently, not all long-range research possibilities can identified in this plan. However, most all of the major investigation areas can be addressed, and many of the specifics can be identified with reasonable confidence.
(S/NF) The FY 1991 research activity is a balanced basic and applied research effort. Some of the funding is allocated for methodology development, scientific review support, equipment procurement, and for supporting DIA's foreign assessment and data base development activity. The primary basic research activities initiated in FY 1991 concentrated as the following; (1) validating findings from previous magnetoencephalograph (MEG) research and initiating new work with a variety of conditions and individuals; (2) performing a variety of anomalous cognition (AC) experiments to determine potential correlations (e.g., target type, environmental factors); (3) developing various theoretical constructs that might be testable and that could help explain the phenomena; (4) examining effects of altered states on data quality; (5) initiating review of and research into the energetics area; and (6) examining various application possibilities (e.g., communication, search).


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dynamics, or other parameters will be examined to explore this possible link. If not successful, other approaches to investigate the targets innate nature and its possible link to phenomenon occurrence will be initiated.
(2) (U) TRANSMISSION
(U) The pursuit of possible transmission mechanisms for AC phenomena is essentially the most significant basic research task and also the most difficult to formulate. In this effort, a theoretical bases will be developed from extensions of current theory in light of recent advanced physics formulations. Some of these formulations permit unusual "information flows" that may, in fact, have relevance for this phenomenon. Testable models/constructs will be developed and evaluated. A variety of other possible explanations involving extensions of gravitation theory, quantum physics or other areas will be constructed and tested where possible. Some of these tests may require close cooperation of leading-edge researchers using equipment in their facility.


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results at that time warrant, then refining of the techniques will continue to the end of FY 1996. The reason the initial research spans several years is that to validate even one psychological finding requires long-term testing the candidate Receiver. current statistical methods require many AC sessions per receiver, and experience has shown that only a few sessions can be conducted per week per receiver.
(C) To allow for indications of success with the associate-functioning approach, research of psychological and behavioral techniques for receiver selection will begin after the first year. Previous research has shown, while statistically significant results have been observed with these techniques, the effects are small and understanding them is problematical. While the same comments about the length of time required for validation are true, these techniques have a lengthy research history, and thus a definitive answer about their effectiveness should be available by mid FY 1994.


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director conducts periodic project reviews and provides guidance. Links with the IC Staff help provide a broader management and program review base for this activity.
(S/NF) Oversight for external contract activity is provided by a 5-member expert Scientific Oversight committee (SOC). These members are identified in Table 5. A Human Use Review Board has also been established to provide expert guidance/advice regarding contractor adherence to appropriate DOD human use regulation.
(U) The extensive nature and scope of these various program management and oversight activities will insure that all activities identified in this long-range plan can be appropriately monitored and evaluated on an on-going basis.
VIII. (U) ESTIMATED RESOURCE NEEDS
(S/NF/SG/LIMDIS) Due to the diversity of the STAR GATE mission/objectives, both external resources and in-house expertise are (and will be) required. A balance will be sought between external and internal activities, and every effort will be made to integrate and link these activities where appropriate. The external aspect permits a wide range of expertise covering many disciplines to be focused on this area: this also has the benefit of ensuring peer group review and of facilitating a variety of scientific interactions. In-house personnel will also require a wide-range of expertise, and will necessarily require retention of those with an already-demonstrated track record in this phenomenology.


(S/NF/SG/LIMDIS) The successful long distance SRI remote viewing experiments from the 1970's generated interest in operational pursuits with in-house government personnel. In the late 1970's, HQDA/INSCOM established a small unit for "development of a community capability" in RV. This unit was transferred to DIA in 1986 when 12 billets were authorized in the GDIP budget for this
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activity. A Special Access Program (SAP), SUN STREAK, was established in order to protect identity of the individuals and due to the nature of some of the projects examined. (S/NF/SG/LIMDIS) A variety of potential operational projects were investigated over the next few years; in 1989 the Military Intelligence Board (MIB) agreed to examine the utility of the project under field conditions involving counternarcotics projects. The MIB reviewed results of this test period in September, 1990. subsequently, the SUN STREAK operational development and SAP aspect of this activity was cancelled. STAR GATE was established to overcome the deficiencies of earlier efforts and to permit a more systematic and scientifically sound approach to the research and to application potential investigations. All STAR GATE activities are conducted in accordance with appropriate scientific procedures and methodologies.


SECRET

APPENDIX C STAR GATE BACKGROUND

(S/NF/SG/LIMDIS) STAR GATE was initiated by DIA in FY 1991 in order to carry out Congressional committee recommendations. The Congressional action established a new program "intended to provide a more systematic and scientifically sound approach to research in this area," and a "wider and more systematic review of potential intelligence applications" involving Anomalous Mental Phenomena (AMP). The Congressional conferees designated DIA as the executive agent for this new program, and agreed that DIA should:
"Formulate and provide to Congress a long-range comprehensive plan for research and applied research for the program."

SG1B

"Levy and prioritize requirements for the program as appropriate."
"Provide for systematic and independent assessment of program results."
"Assure proper documentation of all activities and plans based on scientific methodology and evalu.ation."
"Arrange for an appropriate level of external assistance to the program."
(S/NF) A funding level of $2 million was authorized in FY 1991 to initiate this program and to develop a comprehensive longrange plan. All of the key objectives for FY 1991 have been initiated and many have been accomplished (see Appendix D; STAR GATE Status). A limited access (LIMDIS) program, STAR GATE, was established for this overall effort in October 1990.


Quantum Measurement International Business Machines, Research Laboratories

Berkeley, CA Tucson, AZ
Menlo Park, CA San Francisco, CA
Menlow Park, CA
Los Alamos, NM San Diego, CA
Princeton, NJ New York, NY
Cambridge, MA Stanford, CA
Cambridge, MA Los Altos, CA
Davis, CA Cambridge, MA
Rochester, NY Stanford, CA

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Physics Department, University of Maryland College Park, MD

General Relativity

California Institute of Technology

Pasadena, CA

University of Texas at Austin

Austin, TX

Eleotromaqnetio/Basio Research

Electronetics Corp

Buffalo, NY

Batelle Corp

Columbus, OH

Institute for Advanced Study

Austin, TX

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APPENDIX F
RESOURCE LITERATURE
1. A.R.E. Journal 2. Abnormal hypnotic Phenomena 3. American Anthropologist 4. American Ethnologist 5. American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis 6. American Journal of Physiology 7. American Journal of Sociology 8. American Psychologist 9. American Society for Psychical Research 10. Annals of Eugenics 11. Annals of Mathematical statistics 12. Annales de Sciences Psychiques 13. Archive di Psicologica Neurologia e Psychiatra 14. Association for the Anthropological Study of Consciousness


Britain and Ireland 66. Metapsichica 67. Mind-Brain Bulletin 68. Motivation and Emotion 69. Nature 70. Naturwissenschaftliche Rundschau 71. New Horizons 72. New Scientist 73. New Sense bulletin 74. Newsletter of the Parapsychology Foundation 75. Parapsychology Bulletin 76. Parapsychology Abstracts International 77. Parapsychology Review 78. Perceptual and Motor Skills 79. Philosophy of Science 80. Physiology and Behavior 81. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 82. Psychedelic Review 83. Psychic 84. Psychic Science
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85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90.
91.
92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109.
110.

Psychoanalytic Quarterly Psychoanalytic Review Psychological Bulletin Psychometrika Psychophysiology Physics Today Renti Teyigongneng (EFHB Research) [PRC] Revue Metapsychique Revue Philosophique Revue Philosophique de la France et de L'Etranger Revue Philosophique Applique Science Skeptical Inquirer Social studies of Science Subtle Energies The Humanistic Psychology Institute The Journal of Parapsychology The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research Theta Tijdschrif voor Parapsychologie Tomorrow Voprosy Filosofi (Questions of Philosophy) [USSR] Western Canadian Journal of Anthropology Zeitschrift fur die Gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie Zietschrift fur Parapsychologie und Grenzgebeite der Psychologie Zietschrift fur Tierpsychologie


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Subject: DOES PSI EXIST? REPLICABLE EVIDENCE FOR AN ANOMALOUS PROCESS OF INFORMATION TRANSFER
Title: DOES PSI EXIST? REPLICABLE EVIDENCE FOR AN ANOMALOUS PROCESS OF INFORMATION TRANSFER
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Psychological Bulletin 1994, Vol. 115, No. l, 4-18

Copyright 1994 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0033-2909/94/$3.00

Does Psi Exist? Replicable Evidence for an Anomalous Process of Information Transfer
Daryl J. Bern and Charles Honorton
Most academic psychologists do not yet accept the existence of psi, anomalous processes ofinformation or energy transfer (such as telepathy or other forms of extrasensory perception) that are currently unexplained in terms of known physical or biological mechanisms. We believe that the replication rates and effect sizes achieved by one particular experimental method, the ganzfeld procedure, are now sufficient to warrant bringing this body of data to the attention of the wider psychological community. Competing meta-analyses of the ganzfeld database are reviewed, I by R. Hyman (1985), a skeptical critic of psi research, and the other by C. Honorton ( 1985), a parapsychologist and major contributor to the ganzfeld database. Next the results of 11 new ganzfeld studies that comply with guidelines jointly authored by R. Hyman and C. Honorton ( 1986) are summarized. Finally, issues of replication and theoretical explanation are discussed.


tized us to the arun illld bWn thiat plague intuitive attempts to dr;aw \oUid inf~c~'" frvm the data of everyday experience

(G1lv\11:h. 199 I. "'it..h:tt" Rot.\. 1980; Tversky & Kahneman,

1971 ). 1lm iaJl U\ to snc mtiWJy no probative weight to ant<.-doul or pwn41nt;.; irpa-u oC Pli. the main source cited by

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academic colleagues as evidence for their beliefs about psi agner & Monnet, 1979). ronically, however, psychologists are probably not more faliar than others with recent experimental research on psi. ke most psychological research, parapsychological research is orted primarily in specialized journals; unlike most psychoical research, however, contemporary parapsychological rerch is not usually reviewed or summarized in psychology's xtbooks, handbooks, or mainstream journals. For example, ly I of 64 introductory psychology textbooks recently suryed even mentions the experimental procedure reviewed in is article, a procedure that has been in widespread use since e early 1970s (Roig, lcochea, & Cuzzucoli, 1991 ). Other secndary sources for nonspecialists are frequently inaccurate in heir descriptions of parapsychological research. (For discusions of this problem, see Child, 1985, and Palmer, Honorton, Utts, 1989.) This situation may be changing. Discussions of modern psi escarch have recently appeared in a widely used introductory extbook (Atkinson, Atkinson, Smith, & Bern, 1990, 1993), two mainstream psychology journals (Child, 1985; Rao & Palmer, 1987), and a scholarly but accessible book for nonspecialists (Broughton, 1991). The purpose of the present article is to supplement these broader treatments with a more detailed, metaanalytic presentation of evidence issuing from a single experimental method: the ganzfeld procedure. We believe that the replication rates and effect sizes achieved with this procedure arc now sufficient to warrant bringing this body of data to the attention of the wider psychological community.


Toward the end of the REM period, the receiver was awakened and asked to describe any dream just experienced. This procedure was repeated throughout the night with the same target. A transcription of the receiver's dream reports was given to outside judges who blindly rated the similarity of the night's dreams to several pictures, including the target. In some studies, similarity ratings were also obtained from the receivers themselves. Across several variations of the procedure, dreams were judged to be significantly more similar to the target pictures than to the control pictures in the judging sets (failures to replicate the Maimonides results were also reviewed by Child, 1985).
These several lines of evidence suggested a working model of psi in which psi-mediated information is conceptualized as a weak signal that is normally masked by internal somatic and external sensory "noise." By reducing ordinary sensory input, these diverse psi-conducive states are presumed to raise the signal-to-noise ratio, thereby enhancing a person's ability to detect the psi-mediated information (Honorton, 1969, 1977). To test the hypothesis that a reduction of sensory input itself facilitates psi performance, investigators turned to the ganzfeld procedure (Braud, Wood, & Braud, 1975; Honorton & Harper, 1974; Parker, 1975), a procedure originally introduced into experimental psychology during the 1930s to test propositions derived from gestalt theory (Avant, 1965; Metzger, 1930).


Like the dream studies, the psi ganzfeld procedure has most often been used to test for telepathic communication between a sender and a receiver. The receiver is placed in a reclining chair in an acoustically isolated room. Translucent ping-pong ball halves are taped over the eyes and headphones are placed over the ears; a red floodlight directed toward the eyes produces an undifferentiated visual field, and white noise played through the headphones produces an analogous auditory field. It is this homogeneous perceptual environment that is called the Ganzfeld ("total field"). To reduce internal somatic "noise," the receiver typically also undergoes a series of progressive relaxation exercises at the beginning of the ganzfeld period.
The sender is sequestered in a separate acoustically isolated room, and a visual stimulus (art print, photograph, or brief videotaped sequence) is randomly selected from a large pool of such stimuli to serve as the target for the session. While the sender concentrates on the target, the receiver provides a continuous verbal report of his or her ongoing imagery and mentation, usually for about 30 minutes. At the completion of the ganzfeld period, the receiver is presented with several stimuli (usually four) and, without knowing which stimulus was the target, is asked to rate the degree to which each matches the imagery and mentation experienced during the ganzfeld period. Ifthe receiver assigns the highest rating to the target stimulus, it


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is scored as a "hit." Thus, if the experiment uses judging sets containing four stimuli (the target and three decoys or control stimuli), the hit rate expected by chance is .25. The ratings can also be analyzed in other ways; for example, they can be converted to ranks or standardized scores within each set and analyzed parametrically across sessions. And, as with the dream studies, the similarity ratings can also be made by outside judges using transcripts ofthe receiver's mentation report.
Meta-Analyses ofthe Ganzfeld Database
In 1985and1986, the Journal ofParapsychology devoted two entire issues to a critical examination of the ganzfeld database. The 1985 issue comprised two contributions: (a) a meta-analysis and critique by Ray Hyman (1985), a cognitive psychologist and skeptical critic of parapsychological research, and (b) a competing meta-analysis and rejoinder by Charles Honorton (1985), a parapsychologist and major contributor to the ganzfeld database. The 1986 issue contained four commentaries on the Hyman-Honorton exchange, a joint communique by Hyman and Honorton, and six additional commentaries on the joint communique itself. We summarize the major issues and conclusions here.


Replication Rates
Rates by study. Hyman's meta-analysis covered 42 psi ganzfeld studies reported in 34 separate reports written or published from 1974 through 1981. One of the first problems he discovered in the database was multiple analysis. As noted earlier, it is possible to calculate several indexes of psi performance in a ganzfeld experiment and, furthermore, to subject those indexes to several kinds of statistical treatment. Many investigators reported multiple indexes or applied multiple statistical tests without adjusting the criterion significance level for the number of tests conducted. Worse, some may have "shopped" among the alternatives until finding one that yielded a significantly successful outcome. Honorton agreed that this was a problem.
Accordingly, Honorton applied a uniform test on a common index across all studies from which the pertinent datum could be extracted, regardless of how the investigators had analyzed the data in the original reports. He selected the proportion of hits as the common index because it could be calculated for the largest subset of studies: 28 of the 42 studies. The hit rate is also a conservative index because it discards most of the rating information; a second place ranking-a "near miss"-receives no more credit than a last place ranking. Honorton then calculated the exact binomial probability and its associated z score for each study.


A variant ofthe selective reporting problem arises from what
1 Stouffer's z is computed by dividing the sum of the z scores for the
individual studies by the square root of the number of studies (Rosenthal, 1978).

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)man ( 1985) has termed the "retrospective study." An investor conducts a small set of exploratory trials. If they yield II results, they remain exploratory and never become part of official record; if they yield positive results, they are defined a study after the fact and are submitted for publication. In
pport of this possibility, Hyman noted that there are more gnificant studies in the database with fewer than 20 trials than e would expect under the assumption that, all other things ing equal, statistical power should increase with the square
t of the sample size. Although Honorton questioned the asrnption that "all other things" are in fact equal across the udies and disagreed with Hyman's particular statistical analys. he agreed that there is an apparent clustering of significant udics with fewer than 20 trials. (Of the complete ganzfeld dahasc of 42 studies, 8 involved fewer than 20 trials, and 6 of osc studies reported statistically significant results.) lkcause it is impossible, by definition, to know how many nknown studies-exploratory or otherwise-are languishing file drawers, the major tool for estimating the seriousness of lcctivc reporting problems has become some variant of Ronthal's file-drawer statistic, an estimate of how many unre-


Cohen (1988, 1992) has also categorized effect sizes into small, medium, and large, with medium denoting an effect size that should be apparent to the naked eye of a careful observer. For a statistic such as 71", which indexes the deviation of a pro-

portion from .5, Cohen considers .65 to be a medium effect size: A statistically unaided observer should be able to detect the bias ofa coin that comes up heads on 65% ofthe trials. Thus, at .62, the psi ganzfeld effect size falls just short of Cohen's naked-eye criterion. From the phenomenology of the ganzfeld experi. menter, the corresponding hit rate of 35% implies that he or she will see a subject obtain a hit approximately every third session rather than every fourth.
It is also instructive to compare the psi ganzfeld effect with the results of a recent medical study that sought to determine whether aspirin can prevent heart attacks (Steering Committee of the Physicians' Health Study Research Group, 1988). The study was discontinued after 6 years because it was already clear that the aspirin treatment was effective (p < .00001) and it was considered unethical to keep the control group on placebo medication. The study was widely publicized as a major medical breakthrough. But despite its undisputed reality and practical importance, the size of the aspirin effect is quite small: Taking aspirin reduces the probability of suffering a heart attack by only .008. The corresponding effect size (h) is .068, about one third to one fourth the size of the psi ganzfeld effect (Atkinson et al., 1993, p. 236; Utts, 1991 b).


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that used only laboratory-assigned senders (44% vs. 26%), t(23) = 2.39, p = .025, two-tailed.
The Joint Communique
After their published exchange in 1985, Hyman and Honorton agreed to contribute a joint communique to the subsequent discussion that was published in 1986. First, they set forth their areas of agreement and disagreement:
We agree that there is an overall significant effect in this data base that cannot reasonably be explained by selective reporting or multiple analysis. We continue to differ over the degree to which the effect constitutes evidence for psi, but we agree that the final verdict awaits the outcome of future experiments conducted by a broader range of investigators and according to more stringent standards. (Hyman & Honorton, 1986, p. 351)
They then spelled out in detail the "more stringent standards" they believed should govern future experiments. These standards included strict security precautions against sensory leakage, testing and documentation of randomization methods for selecting targets and sequencing the judging pool, statistical correction for multiple analyses, advance specification of the status of the experiment (e.g., pilot study or confirmatory experiment), and full documentation in the published report of the experimental procedures and the status of statistical tests (e.g., planned or post hoc).


3 In a troubling development, the chair of the NRC Committee phoned Rosenthal and asked him to delete the parapsychology section of the paper (R. Rosenthal, personal communication, September 15, 1992). Although Rosenthal refused to do so, that section of the HarrisRosenthal paper is nowhere cited in the NRC report.
4 Because Honorton and his colleagues have complied with the Hyman-Honorton specification that experimental reports be sufficiently complete to permit others to reconstruct the investigator's procedures, readers who wish to know more detail than we provide here are likely to find whatever they need in the archival publication of these studies in the Journal ofParapsychology (Honorton et al., 1990).

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the TV monitor after each clip was shown. The receiver was permitted to see each clip and to change the ratings repeatedly until he or she was satisfied. The computer then wrote these and other data from the session into a file on a floppy disk. At that point, the sender moved to the receiver's chamber and revealed the identity of the target to both the receiver and the experimenter. Note that the experimenter did not even know the identity of the four-clip judging set until it was displayed to the receiver for judging.


Pilot studies. Sample sizes were not preset in the three pilot studies. Study 1 comprised 22 sessions and was conducted during the initial development and testing ofthe autoganzfcld system. Study 2 comprised

9 sessions testing a procedure in which the experimenter, rather than the receiver, served as the judge at the end of the session. Study 3 comprised 35 sessions and served as practice for participants who had completed the allotted number ofsessions in the ongoing formal studies but who wanted additional ganzfeld experience. This study also included several demonstration sessions when TV film cre.ws were present.
Novice studies. Studies 101-104 were each designed to test 50 participants who had had no prior ganzfeld experience; each participant served as the receiver in a single ganzfeld session. Study 104 included 16 of20 students recruited from the Juilliard School in New York City to test an artistically gifted sample. Study 105 was initiated to accommodate the overflow of participants who had been recruited for Study 104, including the 4 remaining Juilliard students. The sample size for this study was set to 25, but only 6 sessions had been completed when the laboratory closed. For purposes ofexposition, we divided the 56 sessions from Studies 104 and 105 into two parts: Study !04/!05(a) comprises the 36 non-Juilliard participants, and Study 104/I05(b) comprises the 20 Juilliard students.


is equivalent to a four-alternative hit rate of 34%. Alternatively, if Studies 104 and 105 are retained as separate studies, 9 of the 10 studies again yield positive effect sizes, with a mean effect size (7r) of.62, t(9) = 3.73, p = .002, one-tailed. This effect size is equivalent to a four-alternative hit rate of 35% and is identical to that found across the 28 studies ofthe earlier meta-analysis.6
Considered together, sessions with novice participants (Studies 101-105) yielded a statistically significant hit rate of32.5% (p = .009), which is not significantly different from the 31.6% hit rate achieved by experienced participants in Studies 201 and 301. And, finally, each of the eight experimenters also achieved
a positive effect size, with a mean 7r of .60, t(7) = 3.44, p = .005,
one-tailed.
The Juilliard sample. There are several reports in the liter-
ature of a relationship between creativity or artistic ability and psi performance (Schmeidler, 1988). To explore this possibility in the ganzfeld setting, 10 male and 10 female undergraduates were recruited from the Juilliard School. Ofthese, 8 were music students, 10 were drama students, and 2 were dance students. Each served as the receiver in a single session in Study 104 or 105. As shown in Table 1, these students achieved a hit rate of 50% (p = .014), one of the five highest hit rates ever reported for a single sample in a ganzfeld study. The musicians were particularly successful: 6 of the 8 (7 5%) successfully identified their


targets (p = .004; further details about this sample and their ganzfeld performance were reported in Schlitz & Honorton,
1992).
Study size and effect size. There is a significant negative cor-
relation across the 10 studies listed in Table 1 between the number of sessions included in a study and the study's effect size (7r),
r = -.64, t(8) = 2.36, p < .05, two-tailed. This is reminiscent
of Hyman's discovery that the smaller studies in the original ganzfeld database were disproportionately likely to report statistically significant results. He interpreted this finding as evidence for a bias against the reporting of small studies that fail to achieve significant results. A similar interpretation cannot be

applied to the autoganzfeld studies, however, because there are no unreported sessions.
One reviewer of this article suggested that the negative correlation might reflect a decline effect in which earlier sessions of a study are more successful than later sessions. Ifthere were such an effect, then studies with fewer sessions would show larger effect sizes because they would end before the decline could set in. To check this possibility, we computed point-biserial correlations between hits (1) or misses (0) and the session number within each of the 10 studies. All of the correlations hovered around zero; six were positive, four were negative, and the overall mean was .01.


receivers in ganzfeld sessions, whereas sexual imagery is rarely reported. (Some participants probably are reluctant both to report sexual imagery and to give the highest rating to the sexrelated clip.) Ifa video clip containing popular imagery (such as water) happens to appear as a target more frequently than a clip containing unpopular imagery (such as sex), a high hit rate might simply reflect the coincidence of those frequencies of occurrence with participants' response biases. And, as the second column of Table 2 reveals, the tidal wave clip did in fact appear more frequently as the target than did the sex clip. More generally, the second and third columns of Table 2 show that the frequency with which each film clip was ranked first closely matches the frequency with which each appeared as the target.
One can adjust for this problem by using the observed frequencies in these two columns to compute the hit rate expected ifthere were no psi effect. In particular, one can multiply each proportion in the second column by the corresponding proportion in the third column-yielding the joint probability that the clip was the target and that it was ranked first-and then sum across the four clips. As shown in the fourth column of Table 2, this computation yields an overall expected hit rate of 34.08%. When the observed hit rate of 64% is compared with this baseline, the effect size (h) is .61. As shown in Table I, this is equivalent to a four-alternative hit rate of 54%, or a 7r value of. 78,


The personality trait of extraversion is also associated with better psi performance. A meta-analysis of 60 independent studies with nearly 3,000 subjects revealed a small but reliable positive correlation between extraversion and psi performance, especially in studies that used free-response methods ofthe kind used in the ganzfeld experiments (Honorton, Ferrari, & Bern, 1992). Across 14 free-response studies conducted by four independent investigators, the correlation for 612 subjects was .20
(z = 4.82, p = 1.5 X 10-6). This correlation was replicated in
the autoganzfeld studies, in which extraversion scores were
available for 218 of the 240 subjects, r = .18, t(2 I6) = 2.67, p =
.004, one-tailed. Finally, there is the strong psi performance of the Juilliard
students, discussed earlier, which is consistent with other studies in the parapsychological literature suggesting a relationship between successful psi performance and creativity or artistic ability.
Discussion
Earlier in this article, we quoted from the abstract of the Hyman-Honorton (1986) communique: "We agree that the final verdict awaits the outcome of future experiments conducted by a broader range ofinvestigators and according to more stringent standards" (p. 351 ). We believe that the "stringent standards" requirement has been met by the autoganzfeld studies. The results are statistically significant and consistent with those in the earlier database. The mean effect size is quite respectable in comparison with other controversial research areas of human


Statistical Power and Replication
Would-be replicators also need to be reminded of the power requirements for replicating small effects. Although many academic psychologists do not believe in psi, many apparently do believe in miracles when it comes to replication. Tversky and Kahneman (1971) posed the following problem to their col. leagues at meetings ofthe Mathematical Psychology Group and the American Psychological Association:
Suppose you have run an experiment on 20 subjects and have obtained a significant result which confirms your theory (z = 2.23,
top < .05, two-tailed). You now have cause run an additional group
of 10 subjects. What do you think the probability is that the results will be significant, by a one-tailed test, separately for this group? (p. 105)
The median estimate was .85, with 9 of 10 respondents providing an estimate greater than .60. The correct answer is approximately .48.
As Rosenthal (1990) has warned: "Given the levels of statistical power at which we normally operate, we have no right to expect the proportion of significant results that we typically do expect, even ifin nature there is a very real and very important effect" (p. 16). In this regard, it is again instructive to consider the medical study that revealed a highly significant effect of aspirin on the incidence of heart attacks. The study monitored more than 22,000 subjects. Had the investigators monitored 3,000 subjects, they would have had less than an even chance of


1 As the closing of the autoganzfeld laboratory exemplifies, it is also difficult to obtain funding for psi research. The traditional, peer-refer. eed sources of funding familiar to psychologists have almost never funded proposals for psi research. The widespread skepticism of psychologists toward psi is almost certainly a contributing factor.

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14 DARYL J. BEM AND CHARLES HONORTON

finding a conventionally significant effect. Such is life with small effect sizes.
Given its larger effect size, the prospects for successfully replicating the psi ganzfeld effect are not quite so daunting, but they are probably still grimmer than intuition would suggest. If the true hit rate is in fact about 34% when 25% is expected by chance, then an experiment with 30 trials (the mean for the 28 studies in the original meta-analysis) has only about 1chance in 6 offinding an effect significant at the .05 level with a one-tailed test. A 50-trial experiment boosts that chance to about 1 in 3. One must escalate to 100 trials to come close to the break-even point, at which one has a 50-50 chance of finding a statistically significant effect (Utts, 1986). (Recall that only 2 of the 11 autoganzfeld studies yielded results that were individually significant at the conventional .05 level.) Those who require that a psi effect be statistically significant every time before they will seriously entertain the possibility that an effect really exists know not what they ask.


Significance Versus Effect Size
The preceding discussion is unduly pessimistic, however, because it perpetuates the tradition of worshipping the significance level. Regular readers of this journal are likely to be familiar with recent arguments imploring behavioral scientists to overcome their slavish dependence on the significance level as the ultimate measure of virtue and instead to focus more of their attention on effect sizes: "Surely, God loves the .06 nearly as much as the .05" (Rosnow & Rosenthal, 1989, p. 1277). Accordingly, we suggest that achieving a respectable effect size with a methodologically tight ganzfeld study would be a perfectly welcome contribution to the replication effort, no matter how untenurable the p level renders the investigator.
Career consequences aside, this suggestion may seem quite counterintuitive. Again, Tversky and Kahneman (1971) have provided an elegant demonstration. They asked several of their colleagues to consider an investigator who runs 15 subjects and obtains a significant t value of 2.46. Another investigator at~ tempts to duplicate the procedure with the same number of subjects and obtains a result in the same direction but with a nonsignificant value oft. Tversky and Kahneman then asked their colleagues to indicate the highest level oft in the replication study they would describe as a failure to replicate. The ma-


jority of their colleagues regarded t = 1.70 as a failure to replicate. But if the data from two such studies (t = 2.46 and t = 1.70) were pooled, the t for the combined data would be about
3.00 (assuming equal variances):
Thus, we are faced with a paradoxical state of affairs, in which the same data that would increase our confidence in the finding when viewed as part of the original study, shake our confidence when viewed as an independent study. (Tversky & Kahneman, 1971, p. 108)
Such is the iron grip of the arbitrary .05. Pooling the data, of course, is what meta-analysis is all about. Accordingly, we suggest that two or more laboratories co.uld collaborate in a ganzfeld replication effort by conducting independent studies and then pooling them in meta-analytic fashion, what one might call real-time meta-analysis. (Each investigator could then claim the pooled p level for his or her own curriculum vitae.)

Maximizing Effect Si=e
Rather than buying or borrowing larger sample sizes, those who seek to replicate the psi ganzfeld effect might find it more intellectually satisfying to attempt to maximize the effect size by attending to the variables associated with successful outcomes. Thus, researchers who wish to enhance the chances of successful replication should use dynamic rather than static targets. Similarly, we advise using participants with the characteristics we have reported to be correlated with successful psi performance. Random college sophomores enrolled in introductory psychology do not constitute the optimal subject pool.


Finally, we urge ganzfeld researchers to read carefully the detailed description of the warm social ambiance that Honorton et al. (1990) sought to create in the autoganzfeld laboratory. We believe that the social climate created in psi experiments is a critical determinant of their success or failure.
The Problem of"Other" Variables
This caveat about the social climate of the ganzfeld experiment prompted one reviewer of this article to worry that this provided "an escape clause" that weakens the falsifiability of the psi hypothesis: "Until Bern and Honorton can provide operational criteria for creating a warm socfal ambiance, the failure of an experiment with otherwise adequate power can always be dismissed as due to a lack of warmth."
Alas, it is true; we devoutly wish it were otherwise. But the operation of unknown variables in moderating the success of replications is a fact of life in all of the sciences. Consider, for example, an earlier article in this journal by Spence ( 1964). He reviewed studies testing the straightforward derivation from Hullian learning theory that high-anxiety subjects should condition more strongly than low-anxiety subjects. This hypothesis was confirmed 94% of the time in Spence's own laboratory at the University of Iowa but only 63% of the time in laboratories at other universities. In fact, Kimble and his associates at Duke University and the University of North Carolina obtained results in the opposite direction in two of three experiments.


significance (Stouffer z = l.31, p = .095). So far, then, there is
no firm evidence for psi in the ganzfeld in the absence of a sender. (There are, however, nonganzfeld studies in the literature that do report significant evidence for clairvoyance, including a classic card-guessing experiment conducted by J. B. Rhine and Pratt [1954).)

accepted. Ifand when that occurs, psi phenomena would cease to be anomalous.
But we have learned that all such talk provokes most of our colleagues in psychology and in physics to roll their eyes and gnash their teeth. So let's just leave it at that.
Skepticism Revisited
More generally, we have learned that our colleagues' tolerance
for any kind of theorizing about psi is strongly determined by
the degree to which they have been convinced by the data that psi has been demonstrated. We have further learned that their diverse reactions to the data themselves are strongly determined by their a priori beliefs about and attitudes toward a number of quite general issues, some scientific, some not. In fact, several statisticians believe that the traditional hypothesis-testing methods used in the behavioral sciences should be abandoned in favor of Bayesian analyses, which take into account a person's a priori beliefs about the phenomenon under investigation (e.g., Bayarri & Berger, 1991; Dawson, 1991 ).


In the final analysis, however, we suspect that both one's Bayesian a prioris and one's reactions to the data are ultimately determined by whether one was more severely punished in childhood for Type I or Type II errors.

The Physics ofPsi
The psychological level of theorizing just discussed does not, of course, address the conundrum that makes psi phenomena anomalous in the first place: their presumed incompatibility with our current conceptual model of physical reality. Parapsychologists differ widely from one another in their taste for theorizing at this level, but several whose training lies in physics or engineering have proposed physical (or biophysical) theories of psi phenomena (an extensive review oftheoretical parapsychology was provided by Stokes, 1987). Only some of these theories would force a radical revision in our current conception of physical reality.
Those who follow contemporary debates in modern physics, however, will be aware that several phenomena predicted by quantum theory and confirmed by experiment are themselves incompatible with our current conceptual model ofphysical reality. Of these, it is the 1982 empirical confirmation of Bell's theorem that has created the most excitement and controversy among philosophers and the few physicists who are willing to speculate on such matters (Cushing & McMullin, 1989; Herbert, 1987). In brief, Bell's theorem states that any model of reality that is compatible with quantum mechanisms must be


Cohen, J. ( 1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences

(2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Cohen, J. (1992). Statistical power analysis. Current Directions in Psychological Science, I, 98-10 I.
Costa, P. T. Jr., & McCrae, R. R. ( 1992). Revised NED Personality In-

ventory (NEO-PI-R) and NED Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI):

Professional manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Re-

sources.

Cushing, J. T., & McMullin, E. (Eds.). ( 1989). Philosophical conse-

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quences of quantum theory: Reflections on Bell's theorem. Notre Dame, IN: University ofNotre Dame Press. Dawson, R. ( 1991). Comment. Statistical Science, 6, 382-385. Delanoy, D. L. (1990). Approaches to the target: A time for reevaluation. In L.A. Henkel & J. Palmer (Eds.), Research in parapsychology 1989 (pp. 89-92). Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press. Dingwall, E. J. (Ed.). (1968). Abnormal hypnotic phenomena (4 vols.). London: Churchill. Druckman, D., & Swets, J. A. (Eds.). ( 1988). Enhancing human performance: Issues. theories, and techniques. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Eysenck, H. J. ( 1966). Personality and extra-sensory perception. Journal ofthe Societyfor Psychical Research, 44, 55-71. Gilovich, T. ( 1991 ). How we know what isn't so: Thefallibility ofhuman reason in everyday life. New York: Free Press. Green, C. E. (1960). Analysis of spontaneous cases. Proceedings ofthe Societyfor Psychical Research, 53, 97-161. Harris, M. J., & Rosenthal, R. (1988a). Human performance research: An overview. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Harris, M. J., & Rosenthal, R. (1988b). Postscript lo "Human performance research: An overview." Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Herbert, N. ( 1987). Quantum reality: Beyond the new physics. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.


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Holographic aspects of X Lucid X (used only when X stands for Dreams) Medical aspects of X Neurological aspects of X Neurophysical aspects of X Personalities involved with X Police cases involving X Physiological aspects of X Psychological aspects of X Psychophysical aspects of X Research in X Screening/selecting subjects for research in X Spontaneous cases involving X Theories and explanations for X
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Moreover, the conferees have agreed to.designate the Defense Intelligence Agency as executive agent for the program, an::i en=ourage DIA to foarulate. guidance for progr.am execution. 'lbe DIA should: formulate and provide to the Congress a long-range cc::mprehensive plan for research and applied research for the program; develop an integrated data base oh foreign efforts on these phenom;:na, particularly those of the Soviets and the Chinese; levy and prioritize requirerren.ts for the program as appropriate and provide for systerretic am independent assessrrent of program results; assure proper dccurrentation of all activities and plans based on scientific rrethodology and evaluation; arrl arrange for an appropriate level of external assistance to the program.


 by this study.
 4. Since this study will be performed in response to
 Congressional direction, the anticipated period of
 performance of this study is schedule driven at three months.
 The sponsor will endeavor to extend the deadline; however,
 the sponsor believes that the probability this deadline will
 be extended will increase if the study is actually initiated
 and producing some results.    The anticipated level of effort
 is about 1/2 man year.  The study manager will be the office
 of Research and Development working in cooperation with the
 US Army Research Institute.
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1. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been tasked by Congress to transfer a technical program currently managed by another government agency to CIA by July 1, 1995. Congress also has directed a twenty-year retrospective review of this program including a technical analysis of all program results. The CIA's Office of Research and Development (ORD) believes that the National Research Council (NRC) is the single best organization to perform the mandated review. This is because of its Congressional charter to address questions of Congressional interest, and its ready access to a variety of world-class experts having expertise in the area in question. Therefore, we would like the NRC perform the following tasks:


Techniques to Determine Location of Targets - Countermeasures: A Survey and Evaluation - Review of the Research Conducted at SRI International
(1973-1988) - Screening and Selection of Personnel: The Personality
Assessment System (PAS) - The Effects of Hypnosis of Remote Viewing Quality - Photon Production (Chinese Replication) - Audiolinguistic Correlations with the Quality of
Remote Viewing Sessions
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For Official Use Only
/(_q_,_,,,' J Draft
3. The review and analysis of NRC's Blue Ribbon Panel will be unclassified, but cannot not be released until Congress and the sponsoring Agencies have been briefed on the results. Therefore, during the review all work product shall be treated as "For Official Use Only" anticipating eventual release of all unclassified information reviewed or generated by this study. 4. Since this study will be performed in response to Congressional direction, the anticipated period of performance of this study is schedule driven at three months. The sponsor will endeavor to extend the deadline; however, the sponsor believes that the probability this deadline will be extended will increase if the study is actually initiated and producing some results. The anticipated level of effort is about 1/2 man year. The study manager will be the Office of Research and Development working in cooperation with the US Army Research Institute.


 Therefore, during the review all work product shall be
 treated as "For Official Use Only" anticipating eventual
 release of all unclassified information reviewed or generated
 by this study.
 4. Since this study will be performed in response to
 Congressional direction,  the anticipated period of
 performance of this study is schedule driven at three months.
 The anticipated level of effort is about 1/2 man year.  The
 research manager will be the office of Research and
 Development working in cooperation with the US Army Research
 Institute.
 For Official Use Only
 Draft
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1. The Central Intelligence Agency has been tasked by Congress to transfer a technical program currently managed by another government agency to CIA by July 1, 1995. Congress also has directed a twenty-year retrospective review of this program including a technical analysis of all program results. At the CIA's Office of Research and Development (ORD), we believe that because of its Congressional charter and ready access to a variety of world-class experts who can evaluate various technical programs, the National Research Council (NRC) is the ideal organization to perform the mandated review. Therefore, we would like the NRC perform the following tasks:


2. The NRC will be provided with a preliminary bibliography of 45 short-term, contract studies. The following titles (not an exhaustive list) illustrate by way of example the general areas of investigation:
- Remote Viewing Evaluation Techniques - The Effects of Remote Viewing - Remote Viewing Reliability Enhancement and Evaluation
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- Feasibility Study on the Use of RV Detection Techniques to Determine Location of Targets
- Countermeasures: A Survey and Evaluation - Review of the Research Conducted at SRI International
(1973-1988) - Screening and Selection of Personnel: The Personality
Assessment System (PAS) - The Effects of Hypnosis of Remote Viewing Quality - Photon Production (Chinese Replication) - Audiolinguistic Correlations with the Quality of
Remote Viewing Sessions
3. The review and analysis of NRC's Blue Ribbon Panel will be unclassified, but cannot not be released until Congress and the sponsoring Agencies have been briefed on the results. Therefore, during the review all work product shall be treated as "For Official Use Only" anticipating eventual release of all unclassified information reviewed or generated by this study.


 professors toward extra-sensory perception. Zetetic
 Scholar, 5, 7-17.
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Title: DOES PSI EXIST? REPLICABLE EVIDENCE FOR AN ANOMALOUS PROCESS OF INFORMATION TRANSFER
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Does Psi Exist? Replicable Evidence for an Anomalous Process of Information Transfer

Daryl J. Bern
Cornell University

Charles Honorton
University ofEdinburgh

Most academic psychologists do not yet accept the existence of psi, anomalous processes of information or energy transfer (like telepathy or other forms of extrasensory perception) that are currently unexplained in terms of known physical or biological mechanisms. We believe that the replication rates and effect sizes achieved by one particular experimental method, the ganzfeld procedure, are now sufficient to warrant bringing this body of data to the attention of the wider psychological community. We review competing meta-analyses of the ganzfeld database, one by Hyman (1985), a skeptical critic of psi research, the other by Honorton (1985), a parapsychologist and major contributor to the ganzfeld database. Next we summarize the results of 11 new ganzfeld studies that comply with guidelines jointly authored by Hyman and Honorton (1986). Finally, we discuss issues of replication and theoretical explanation.


blurring of this critical distinction is aided and abetted by the mass media, "new age" books and mind-power courses,
and by "psychic" entertainers who present both genuine
hypnosis and fake "mindreading" in the course of a single performance. Accordingly, moat laypersons would not
have to revise their conceptual model of reality as radi-
cally as we would in order to assimilate the existence of psi. For us, psi is simply more extraordinary.
And finally, research in cognitive and social psychology
has sensitized us to the errors and biases that plague intuitive attempts to draw valid inferences from the data of everyday experience (Gilovich, 1991; Nisbett & Rosa, 1980; Tversky & Kahneman, 1971). This leads us to give
virtually no probative weight to anecdotal or journalistic reports of psi-the main source cited by our academic col· leagues as evidence for their beliefs about psi (Wagner &
Monnet, 1979). Ironically, however, psychologists are probably not more
familiar than others with recent experimental research on psi. Like most psychological research, parapsychological research is reported primarily in specialized journals; unlike most psychological research, however, contemporary parapsychological research is not usually reviewed or summarized in psychology's textbooks, hand~ks, or mainstream journals. For example, only 1 of 64 mtroduc-


Toward the end of the REM period, the receiver was awakened and asked to describe any dream just experienced. Thiis procedure was repeated throughout the night

with the same target. A transcription of the receiver's dream reports was given to outside judges who blindly rated the similarity of the night's dreams to several pictures, including the target. In some studies similarity ratings were also obtained from the receivers themselves. Across several variations of the procedure, dreams were judged to be significantly more similar to the target pic-
tures than to the control pictures in the judging sets. (Failures to replicate the Maimonides results are also reviewed by Child (1985).)
These several lines of evidence suggested a working
model of psi in which psi-mediated information is conceptualized as a weak signal that is normally masked by internal somatic and external sensory "noise." By reducing ordinary sensory input, these diverse psi-conducive states are presumed to raise the signal-to-noise ratio, thereby enhancing a person's ability to detect the psi-mediated information (Honorton, 1969, 1977). In order to test the hypothesis that a reduction of sensory input itself facilitates psi performance, investigators turned to the ganzfeld procedure (Braud, Wood, & Braud, 1975; Honorton & Harper, 1974; Parker, 1975), a procedure originally introduced into experimental psychology during the 1930s to test propositions derived from Gestalt theory (Avant, 1965; Metzger, 1930).


Like the dream studies, the psi ganzfeld procedure has most often been used to test for telepathic communication . between a sender and a receiver. The receiver is placed in a reclining chair in an acoustically-isolated room. Translucent ping-pong ball halves are taped over the eyes and headphones are placed over the ears; a red floodlight directed toward the eyes produces an undifferentiated visual field and white noise played through the headphones produces an analogous auditory field. It is this homogeneous perceptual environment that is called the Ganzfeld ("total field"). In order to reduce internal somatic "noise," the receiver typically also undergoes a series of progressive relaxation exercises at the beginning of the ganzfeld period.
The sender is sequestered in a separate acousticallyisolated room, and a visual stimulus (art print, photo-
graph, or brief videotaped sequence) is randomly selected from a large pool of such stimuli to serve as the target for the session. While the sender concentrates on the target, the receiver provides a continuous verbal report of his or her ongoing imagery and mentation, usually for about 30 minutes. At the completion of the ganzfeld period, the receiver is presented with several stimuli (usually four) and, without knowing which stimulus was the target, is asked to rate the degree to which each matches the imagery and mentation experienced during the ganzfeld period. If the receiver assigns the highest rating to the target stimulus, it is scored as a "hit." Thus, if the experiment employs judging pools containing four stimuli (the target and three "decoys" or control stimuli), then the hit rate expected by chance is .25. The ratings can also be analyzed in other ways; for example, they can be converted to ranks or standardized scores within each set and analyzed parametrically across sessions. And, as with the dream studies, the similarity ratings can also be made by outside judges using transcripts of the receiver's mentation report.


Meta-analyses of the Ganzfeld Database
In 1985 and 1986, the Journal of Parapsycholcgy devoted two entire issues to a critical examination of the

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ganzfeld database. The 1985 issue comprised two contributions: (a) a meta-analysis and critique by Ray Hyman . (1985), a cognitive psychologist and skeptical critic of parapsychological research; and (b) a competing metaanalysis and rejoinder by Charles Honorton (1985), a parapsychologist and major contributor to the ganzfeld database. The 1986 issue contained four commentaries on the Hyman-Honorton exchange, a joint communique by Hyman and Honorton, and six additional commentaries on the joint communique itself. We summarize the major issues and conc:lusions here.
Replication Rates
By study. Hyman's meta-analysis covered 42 psi ganzfeld studies reported in 34 separate reports written or published from 1974 through 1981. One of the first problems he discov1ffed in the database was multiple analysis. AB noted above, it is possible to calculate several indices of psi performance in a ganzfeld experiment and, further, to subject those indices to several kinds of statistical treatment. Many investigators reported multiple indices or applied multiple e1tatistical tests without adjusting the criterion significan<:e ·level for the number of tests conducted. Worse, some may have "shopped" among the alternatives until finding one that yielded a significantly successful outcome. Honorton agreed that this was a problem.


d,ecoya. Moreover, the process of transferring the stimulus materials to the receiver's room itself opens up other potential channels of sensory leakage. Although contemporary ganzfeld studies eliminate both of these possibilities by using duplicate stimulus sets, some of the earlier studies"did not.
Independent analyses by Hyman and Honorton agreed
that there was no correlation between inadequacies of se-
curity against sensory leakage and study outcome. Honor-
ton further reported that if studies that failed to use du-
plicate stimulus sets were discarded from the analysis,
the remaining studies are still highly significant (Stouffer
z =4.35,p =6.8 x lo-6)
Randomization. In many psi experiments, the issue of target randomization is critical because systematic patterns in inadequately randomized target sequences might be detected by subjects during a session or might match subjects' pre-existing response biases. In a ganzfeld study, however, randomization is a much leas critical issue because only one target is selected during the session and most subjects serve in only one session. The primary concern is simply that all targets be sampled about equally over the course of the study. Similar considerations govern the second randomization, which takes place after the ganzfeld period and determines the sequence in which the target and decoys are presented to the receiver (or external judge) for judging.


Nevertheless, Hyman and Honorton disagreed over the findings here. Hyman claimed there was a correlation between flaws of randomization and study qutcome; Honorton claimed there was not. The sources of this disagreement were in conflicting definitions of flaw categories, in the coding and assignment of flaw ratings t.o individual studies, and in the subsequent statistical treatment of those ratings.
Unfortunately, there have been no ratings of flaws by independent raters who were blind to the studies' outcomes (Morris, 1991). Nevertheless, none of the contributors t.o the subsequent debate concurred with Hyman's conclusion whereas four nonparapsychologists--two statisticians and two psychologists-explicitly concurred with Honorton'a conclusion (Harris & Rosenthal, 1988b; Saunders, 1985; Utts, 199la). For example, Harris and Rosenthal (one of the pioneers in the use of meta-analysis in psychology) used Hyman's own flaw ratings and failed to find any significant relationships between flaws and study outcomes in each of two separate analyses: "Our analysis of the effects of flaws on study outcome lends no support to the hypothesis that Ganzfeld research results are a significant function of the set of flaw variables" (1988b, p. 3). (For a more recent exchange over Hyman's analysis, see Hyman (1991), Utts (199la), and Utts (199lb).)


The experime:ntal program included three pilot and eight formal studies. Five of the formal studies employed novice (first-time) participants who served as the receiver in one session each. The remaining three formal studies employed experiEmced participants.
Pilot Studies. Sample sizes were not preset in the three pilot studies. Study 1 comprised 22 sessions and was con-

ducted during the initial development and testing of the autoganzfeld system. Study 2 comprised 9 sessions testing a procedure in which the experimenter, rather than the receiver, served as the judge at the end of the session. Study 3 comprised 36 sessions and served as practice for participants who had completed the allotted number of sessions in the ongoing formal studies but who wanted additional ganzfeld experience. This study also included several demonstration sessions when TV film crews were present.
Novice Studies. Studies 101-104 were each designed to test 50 participants who had had no prior ganzfeld experience; each participant served as the receiver in a single ganzfeld session. Study 104 included 16 of20 students recruited from the Juilliard School of Music in New York City in order to test an artistically gifted sample. Study 105 was initiated to accommodate the overflow of participants who had been recruited for Study 104, including the four remaining Juilliard students. Sample size for this study was set to 25, but only 6 sessions had been completed when the laboratory closed. For purposes of exposition, we have divided the 56 sessions from Studies 104 and 105 into two parts: Study 104/105 (a) comprises the 36 non-Juilliard participants; Study 104/105 (b) comprises the 20 Juilliard students


50 50 12

102 Novice

50 50 18

103 Novice

50 50 15

104/105 (a)

Novice

36 36 12

104/105 (b)

Juilliard Sample

20 20 10

201 Experienced

3 73

301 Experienced

25 50 15

302 Experienced

25 25 16

Overall (Studies 1-301)

241

330 106

Note. Z scores are based on the exact binomial probability with p = .25 and q = .75.
acorrected for maximum possible response bias. Hit rate actually observed was 64%.

% Effect size

hits 1r

z

36 .62 .99

33 .60 .25

28 .54 .22

24 .47 -.30

36 .63 1.60

30 .55 .67

33 .60 .97

50 .75 2.20

43 .69 .69

30 .56 .67

44a

.70a

2.02a

32 .59 2.85

responds to an effect size (n) of .59, with a 95% confidence interval from .5;3 to .64.
Table 1 also e1hows that when Studies 104 and 105 are combined and re-divided into the non..Juilliard and Juilliard samples, 9 of the 10 studies yield positive effect sizes, with a mjean effect size (rr) of .61, t (9) = 4.35, p = .0009, one-tailed. This effect size is equivalent to a four-alternative hit rate of 34%. Alternatively, if we retain Studies 104 and lOti as separate studies, 9 of the 10 studies again yield positive effect sizes, with a mean effect size (1t') of .62, t (9) = 3.H7, p = .003, one-tailed. This effect size is equivalent to a four-alternative hit rate of 35% and is identical to that found across the 28 studies of the earlier meta-analysis.5


Considered together, sessions with novice participants (Studies 101-105) yielded a statistically significant hit rate of 32.5% (p = .009), which is not significantly different from the 31.6% hit rate achieved by experienced participants in Studies 201and301. And finally, each of the 8 experimenters also achieved a positive effect size, with a mean 1t' of .60, t (7) = 3.44, p = .005, one-tailed.
5As noted above, the laboratory was forced to close before three of the fonnnl studies could be completed. If we assume thnt the remaining trials in Studies 105 and 201 would have yielded only
=chance results, this would reduce the overall z for the first 10
autoganzfold studiies from 2.85 to 2.73 (p .003). Thus, inclusion of the two incompllete studies does not pose an optional stopping problem. The third incomplete study, Study 302, is discussed below.

The Juilliard sample. There are several reports in the literature of a relationship between creativity or artistic ability and psi performance (Schmeidler, 1988). In order to explore this possibility in the ganzfeld setting, 10 male and 10 female undergraduates were recruited from the Juilliard School of Music in New York City. Of these, 8 were music students, 10 were drama students, and 2 were dance students. Each served as the receiver in a single session in Studies 104 or 105. AB shown in Table 1, these students achieved a hit rate of 50% (p = .014), one of the five highest hit rates ever reported for a single sample in


But the preceding discussion is unduly pessimistic because it perpetuates the tradition of worshipping the significance level. Hegular readers of this journal are likely to be familiar with recent arguments imploring behavioral scientists to ovurcome their slavish dependence on the significance level as the ultimate measure of virtue and to focus more of 1their attention on effect sizes instead: "Surely, God loves the .06 nearly as much as the .05" (Rosnow & Roa<enthal, 1989, p. 1277). Accordingly, we suggest that achieving a respectable effect size with a methodologically tight ganzfeld study would be a perfectly welcome contribution to the replication effort-no matter how untenurable· the p level renders the investigator.

Career consequences aside, this suggestion may seem quite counterintuitive. Again, 'I'versky and Kahneman (1971) provide an elegant demonstration. They asked several of their colleagues to consider an investigator who runs 15 subjects and obtains a significant t value of 2.46. Another investigator attempts to duplicate the procedure with the same number of subjects and obtains a result in the same direction but with a nonsignificant value of t. 'I'versky and Kahneman then asked their colleagues to indicate the highest level oft in the replication study they would describe as a failure to replicate. The majority of their colleagues regarded t = 1. 70 as a failure to replicate.


But if the data from two such studies (t = 2.46 and t =
1.70) were pooled, the t for the combined data would be about 3.00 (assuming equal variances):
Thus, we are faced with a paradoxical state of affairs, in · which the same data that would increase our confidence in the finding when viewed as part of the original study, shake our confidence when viewed as an independent study. (p.
108)
Such is the iron grip of the arbitrary .05. Pooling the data, of course, is what meta-analysis is all about. Accordingly, we suggest that two or more laboratories could collaborate in a ganzfeld replication effort by conducting independent studies and then pooling them in meta-analytic fashion-what we might call real-time meta-analysis. (Each investigator could then claim the pooled p level for his or her own curriculum vitae.)
Maximizing Effect Size
Rather than buying or borrowing larger sample sizes, those who seek to replicate the psi ganzfeld effect might find it more intellectually satisfying to attempt to maximize the effect size by attending to the variables associated with successful outcomeo. Thus researchers who wish to enhance the chances of successful replication should use dynamic rather than static targets. Similarly we advise using participants with the characteristics we have reported to be correlated with successful psi performance. Random college sophomores enrolled in introductory psychology do not constitute the optimal subject pool.


The superior psi performance of creative or artistically
gifted individuals-like the Juilliard students-may reflect individual differences that parallel some of the hypothesized effects of the ganzfeld, mentioned above: Artistically gifted individuals may be more receptive to alien imagery, be better able to transcend rational or contextual
constraints on the encoding or reporting of information, or be more divergent in their thinking. It has also been suggested that both artistic and psi abilities might be rooted
in superior right-brain functioning. The observed relationship between extraversion and
psi performance has been of theoretical interest for many years. Eysenck (1966) reasoned that extraverts should perform well in psi tasks because they are easily bored and respond favorably to novel stimuli. In a setting like the ganzfeld, extraverts may become "stimulus starved" and thus be highly sensitive to any stimulation, including weak incoming psi information. In contrast, introverts would be more inclined to entertain themselves with their own thoughts and thus continue to mask psi information despite the diminished sensory input. Eysenck also speculated that psi might be a primitive form of perception antedating cortical developments in the course of evolution, and, hence, cortical arousal might suppress psi functioning. Because extraverts have a lower level of cortical arousal than introverts, they should perform better in psi tasks. (The evolutionary biology of psi is also discussed by Broughton (1991, pp. 347-352).)


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But there are more mundane possibilities. Extraverts might perform 1better than introverts simply because they are more relaxed and comfortable in the social setting of the typical psi experiment (e.g., the "warm social ambiance" of the autoganzfeld studies). This interpretation is strengthened by the observation that introverts outperformed extraveirts in a study in which subjects had no contact with an experimenter but worked alone at home with materials they received in the mail (Schmidt & Schlitz, 1989). In order to help decide among these interpretations, ganzfeld experimenters have begun to use the extraversion scafo of the NEO personality inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1981>), which assesses six different facets of the extraversion-introversion factor.
The sender. I:n contrast to all this information about the receiver in psi experiments, virtually nothing is known about the characteristics of a good sender or about the effects of the sender's relationship to the receiver. AB we have seen, the initial suggestion from the meta-analysis of the original ganzfeld database that psi performance might be enhanced when the sender and receiver are friends was not replicated a1t a statistically significant level in the autoganzfeld studies.


predicted by quantum theory and confirmed by experiment are themselves incompatible with our current conceptual model of physical reality. Of these, it is the 1982 empirical confirmation of Bell's theorem that has created the most excitement and controversy among philosophers and the few physicists who are willing to speculate on such matters (Cushing & McMullin, 1989; Herbert, 1987). ' In brief, Bell's theorem states that any model of reality . that is compatible with quantum mechanics must be nonlocal. This implies, among other things, that any model of reality compatible with quantum mechanics must allow for the possibility that information about an event at one location can be instantaneously available at some other arbitrarily distant location, unattenuated and without the mediation of any kind of transmitting signal (Herbert, 1987).
Several possible models of reality that incorporate nonlocality have been proposed by both philosophers and physicists. Some of these clearly rule out psi-like information transfer; others permit it; and some actually require it. Thus, at a grander level of theorizing, some parapsychologists believe that one of the more radical models of reality compatible with both quantum mechanics and psi will eventually come to be accepted. If and when that occurs, psi phenomena would cease to be anomalous.


Rosenthal, R. (1979). The "file drawer problem" and tolerance for null results. Psychofugical Bulletin, 86, 638641.
Rosenthal, R. (1990). Replication in behavioral research. Journal of S'ocial Behavior and Personality, 5, 1-30.
Rosenthal, R. (1991). Meta-analytic procedures for social
research (Revised ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Rosenthal, R., & Rubin, D. B. (1989). Effect size estima-
tion for one-sample multiple-choice-type data: Design,
analysis, and meta-analysis. Psychofugical Bulletin, 106, 332-337. Rosnow, R. L., & Rosenthal, R. (1989). Statistical procedures and the justification of knowledge in psychological science. .American Psychofugist, 44, 1276-1284. Sannwald, G. (1959). Statistische untersuchungen an
Spontanphanomene. Zeitschrift fur Parapsychofugie and Grenzgebiete der Psychologie, 3, 59-71. Saunders, D. R. (1985). On Hyman's factor analyses. Journal ofParapsychology, 49, 86-88. Schechter, E. I. (1984). Hypnotic induction vs. control conditions: Illustrating an approach to the evaluation of replicability in parapsychology. Journal ofthe American Society for Psychical Research, 78, 1-27. Schlitz, M. J., & Honorton, C. (1992). Ganzfeld psi performance within an artistically gifted population. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 86, 83-98. Schmeidler, G. R. (1988). Parapsychology and psychology:


The ganzfeld procedure tests for telepathic communication between a subject acting as the "receiver'' and another person who serves as the "sender." The subject is sequestered in an acoustically-isolated room and placed into a mild form of perceptual isolation: translucent ping··pong ball halves are taped over the eyes and headphones are placed over the ears; diffuse red lilght illuminates the room, and white noise is played through the headphones. (White noise is a random mixture of sound frequencies similar to the hiss made by a radio tuned between stations.) This homogeneous visual and auditory environment is called the Ganzfeld, a German word meaning "total field."
The sender is sequestered "in a separate acoustically-isolated room, and a visual stimulus (picture, slide, or brief videotaped sequence) is randomly selected from a large pool of similar stimuli to serve as the "target" for the session. While the sender concentrates on the target, the subjc:ct attempts to describe it by providing a continuous verbal report of his or her ongoing imag:ery and free associations. Upon completion of the session, the subject is presented with four stimuli-one of which is the target-and asked to rate the degree to which each matches the imagery and associations experienced during the ganzfeld period. A "direct hit" is scored if he or she assigns the highest rating to the target (In some studies, individuals unconnected with the experiment also attempt to match a transcript of the subject's verbal report to the targe:t.)


More than 50 ganzfeld experiments have been conducted since the procedure was first introduced in 1974. An overall analysis of 28 studies reported through 1981-comprising 835
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ganzfeld sessions conducted in 10 different laboratories-reveals that subjects selected the target 38% of the time on the average. (Because there are 4 alternatives, we would expect a succe:ss rate of 25% if only chance were operating.) Statistically this result is highly significant: the probability that it could have arisen by chance is less than one in a billion (Honorton, 1985).

Debate over the Evidence In 1985 and 1986, the Journal ofParapsychology published an extended examination
of the~ ganzfeld studies, focusing on a debate between Ray Hyman, a cognitive psychologist and critic of parapsychology, and Charles Honorton, a parapsychologist and major contributor to the: ganzfeld database. They agree on the basic quantitative results but disagree on points of interpretation (Hyman, 1985; Hyman & Honorton, 1986; Honorton, 1985). We shall use their debat:e as a vehicle for examining the major issues involved in evaluating all claims of psi.


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reliability of the phenomenon rather than simply being dismissed as a failure to replicate (Glass, McGaw, & Smith, 1981; Rosenthal, 1984).
From this perspective, the ganzfeld studies provide impressive replicability: 23 (82%) of th~~ 28 studies obtain positive results (more direct hits than chance would predict}, a result whose probability of occurring by chance is less than 1 in a thousand.
The conventional criterion of replication further requires that any competent investigator be able to reproduce the claimed phenomenon, not just one or two gifted experimenters. This is often a difficult criterion to achieve in new areas of investigation because a number of unsu:spected variables might affect the outcome. In psychological experiments, the expeirimenter is often an important social stimulus for the subject and hence a poorly controlled sourc!e of variability. Even in such an established area as classical conditioning, investigators at one university were obtaining positive results 94% of the time while other investigators could do so only 62% of the time (Rosenthal, 1966; Spence, 1964). Nor is psychology alone here. Similar replication difficulties have been reported in medical studies of placebo efficacy (Momman, 1981) and in the physical science area of laser technology (Collins, 1974).


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Methodological inadequacies plague all the sciences, but the history of parapsychology is embarrassingly full of promising results that collapsed when the procedures were critically examined (Akers, 1984). One common charge against parapsychology is that preliminary, poorly controlled studies often obtain positive results, but that as soon as better controls and safeguards are introduced, the results weaken or disappear.
Meta-analysis provides an empirical way of evaluating this charge, too. Once a flaw is discovered in a completed experiment, there is no persuasive way of arguing that the flaw did not contribute illegitimately to a positive outcome; the only remedy is to redo the experiment correctly. In a database of several studies, however, it is possible to test whether the more poorly controlled studies in the database did in fact obtain more positive results than the well controlled studies. If there is a correlation between a procedural flaw and positive results across the studies, then there is a problem. In the case of the ganzfeld database, both critic Hyman and parapsychologist Honorton agree that flaws of inadequate security and possible sensory leakage do not correlate with positive results. Hyman claimed to find a correlation between flaw!; of randomization and positive results, but both Honorton's analysis and two additional analyses by nonparapsychologists dispute his conclusion (Harris & Rosenthal, 1988; Saunders, 1985). Moreover, a series of 10 new studies designed to control for flaws identified in the~ original database yielded results quite consistent with the original set of 28 studies (Hariris & Rosenthal, 1988).


The problem is particularly tricky because it is impossible, by definition, to know how many unknown studies are languishing in file drawers somewhere. Nevertheless, parapsychologists offer two lines of defense against the charge that the file-drawer problem seriously compromises their database.
First they point out that the Parapsychological Association may be the only professional scien1ific society to have an official policy against selective reporting of positive findings and that negative findings are frequently reported in the Association's five affiliated journals. Moreover, the community of parapsychologists is relatively small, and most investigators know about ongoing work in the active laboratories around the world When conducting metaanalyses, they attempt to ferret out all unpublished studies through their personal networks.
But the major defense is statistical, and again meta-analysis provides an empirical approach to the problem. By knowing the overall statistical significance of the known database, it is possible to compute the number of studies with null results that would have to exist in file drawc::rs to cancel out that significance. In the case of the ganzfeld database, it is estimated that there would have to be over 400 unreported ganzfeld studies with null results-the equivalent of 12,000 sessions-to cancel out the statistical significance of the 28 studies analyzed in the debab~ (Honorton, 1985). Not surprisingly, there is consensus that the overall significance of the ganzfeld studies cannot reasonably be explained by the file-drawer effect (Hyman & Honorton, 1986).


Rather than continuing their debate, Hyman and Honorton issued a joint communique in which they set forth their areas of agreement and disagreement and made a series of · suggestions for the conduct of future ganzfeld studies (Hyman & Honorton, 1986). Their debate and the subsequent discussion provide a valuable model for evaluating all disputed domains of scientific inquiry.
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Anecdotal Evidence
pi the public mind, the evidence for psi consists primarily of personal experiences and anecdotes. Virtually all such evidence is scientifically unacceptable because it suffers fatally from the same problems that threaten experimental evidence-nonreplicability, inadequate controls, and the file-drawer problem.
The replication problem is insurmountable because most such evidence consists of onetime ,occurrences that cannot be repeated. A woman announces a premonition that she will win the lottery that day-and she does. You dream about an unlikely event that actually occurs a few clays later. A "psychic" correctly predicts the assassination of a public figure. And because such incidents occur under unexpected and ambiguously specified conditions, the problem of inadequate controls is also decisive. There is usually no way of ruling out such alternative interpretations as coincidence (chance), faulty memories, and deliberate deception.


The fullest file drawers probably belong to the so-called "psychics" who make annual predictions in the tabloid newspapers. Everybody remembers their occasional "direct hits," but

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nobody remembers the predictions that fail. In fact, these psychics are almost always wrong (Frazier, 1987; Tyler, 1977).

Ske1>tlclsm About Psi If some of the experimental evidence for psi is as impressive as it seems, why hasn't it
become part of established science? Why the continuing skepticism? Extraordinary Claims Most scientists believe that extraordinary claims require
extraordinary proof. A study reporting that students who work harder get higher grades will be believed even if the study was seriously flawed because the data are consistent with our understanding of how the world works. But the claim that two people in a ganzfeld study conmllunicate telepathically is more extraordfnary; it violates our a priori beliefs about reality. We thus rightly demand a higher measure of proof from parapsychologists because their claims, if true,.would require us to radically revise our model of the world-something we should not undertake lightly. In this way, science is justifiably conservative. Many open··minded nonparapsychologists are genuinely impressed by the ganzfeld studies, for example, but they reasonably can and do ask to see more evidence before committing themselves to the reality of psi.


Extraordinariness is a matter of degree. Telepathy seems less extraordinary to most of us thim precognition because we are already familiar with the invisible transmission of infonnation through space. We may not all understand how television pictures get to our living rooms, but we know that they do so. Why should telepathy seem that much more mysterious? Precognition on the other hand seems more extraordinary because we have no familiar phem:>mena in which information flows backward in time.
Extraordinariness also depends upon our current model of reality. As our understanding of the world changes, a phenomenon that seemed extraordinary at an earlier time may :no longer seem so-even if the quality of the evidence has not changed. Any child who has visited a museum of natural history has seen fragments of a meteorite. But before the
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asymmetries in the human brain (see Chapter 2) have spawned a host of pop-psychology books and media reports containing unsubstantiated claims about left-brained and right-brained persons. Irresponsible reports about states of consciousness-including hypnosis and psiappear daily in the media. It is thus pertinent to note that when the college professors in the survey cited above were asked to name the sources for their beliefs about ESP, they most freqm~ntly cited reports in newspapers and magazi~es.


 is put for-
 olution of
 veness of
 ative insen-
 000 km.
 Alt1ough such phenomena might appear to be in
 conflict with the laws of physics, we anticipate
 that with further work much of the data will be
 accounted for either within the framework of
 physics as presently understood, or on the basis
 of extrapolations that have been proposed to ac-
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Subject: PSYCHOPHYSICAL INTERACTION
Title: PSYCHOPHYSICAL INTERACTION
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_______________Charles Honorton
2. Psychophysical Interaction
The Problem of Psychophysical Interaction 1 The nature of mifu;l and its relationship to the physical world remains \a fundamental mystery. Does mind 'emerge' out of or represent some 'inner' dimension of physical states? Or is mind an independent entity that interacts with but is not reducible to physical states? Is the brain a generator or a transmitter of mind? If the former, what is the magical algorithm through which physical states achieve consciousness? If the latter, what is the mode of interaction between mind and brain? Is the traffic one-way or two-way: are mental states always effects of brain states and never their causes, or are brain states sometimes. effects as well as causes of mental states?