Paranormality: Why we see what isn't there
Page 24
18
B. Lenggenhager, T. Tadi, T. Metzinger and O. Blanke (2007). ‘Video ergo sum: Manipulation of bodily self consciousness’. Science. 317, pages 1096–9.
19
E. L. Altschuler and V. S. Ramachandran (2007). ‘A simple method to stand outside oneself’. Perception, 36(4), pages 632–4.
20
S. J. Blackmore and F. Chamberlain (1993). ‘ESP and Thought Concordance in Twins: A Method of Comparison’. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. 59, pages 89–96.
21
S. J. Blackmore (1987). ‘Where am I?: Perspectives in imagery, and the out-of-body experience’. Journal of Mental Imagery, 11, pages 53–66.
3. MIND OVER MATTER
1
For further information about Hydrick, see: D. Korem (1988). Powers: Testing the psychic & supernatural. InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL.
‘Psychic Confession’, a documentary made by Korem about his time with Hydrick.
J. Randi (1981). ‘“Top Psychic” Hydrick: Puffery and Puffs’. The Skeptical Inquirer, 5(4), pages 15–18.
2
D. Korem and P. D. Meier (1981). The Fakers: Exploding the myths of the supernatural. Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, MN.
3
R. Beene (1989). ‘“Sir James” molest suspect says he’s misunderstood, but prosecutors insist he’s a con man’. LA Times, February 2006.
4
This test is based on a similar task described in: L. Wardlow Lane, M. Groisman and V. S. Ferreira (2006). ‘Don’t talk about pink elephants! Speakers’ control over leaking private information during language production’. Psychological Science, 17, pages 273–7.
5
J. Steinmeyer (2006). Art and Artifice and Other Essays of Illusion. Carroll & Graf, New York.
6
B. Singer and V. A. Benassi (1980–81). ‘Fooling some of the people all of the time’. Skeptical Inquirer, 5(2), pages 17–24.
7
R. Hodgson and S. J. Davey (1887). ‘The possibilities of malobservation and lapse of memory from a practical point of view’. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 4, pages 381–404.
8
A. R. Wallace (1891). Correspondence: ‘Mr S. J. Davey’s Experiments’. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 5, page 43.
9
R. Hodgson (1892). ‘Mr. Davey’s imitations by conjuring of phenomena sometimes attributed to spirit agency’. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 8, pages 252–310.
10
Images reproduced by permission of J. Kevin O’Regan, Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception CNRS, Université Paris Descartes.
11
R. Wiseman and E. Haraldsson (1995). ‘Investigating macro-PK in India: Swami Premananda’. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 60, pages 193–202.
12
H. Münsterberg (1908). On the Witness Stand: Essays on Psychology and Crime. Page & Co., Doubleday, New York.
13
R. Buckhout (1974). ‘Eyewitness testimony’. Scientific American, 231, pages 23–31.
14
R. Buckhout (1975). ‘Nearly 2000 witnesses can be wrong’. Social Action and the Law, 2, page 7.
4. TALKING WITH THE DEAD
1
For further information about the Fox sisters, see: B. Weisberg (2004). Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism. HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco.
2
P. Lamont (2004). ‘Spiritualism and a mid-Victorian crisis of evidence’. Historical Journal, 47(4), pages 897–920.
3
For a comprehensive account of the confession, see: R. B. Davenport (1888). The Death-Blow to Spiritualism: being the true story of the Fox sisters, as revealed by authority of Margaret Fox Kane and Catherine Fox Jencken. G. W. Dillingham, New York.
4
P. P. Alexander (1871). Spiritualism: a narrative with a discussion. William Nimmo, Edinburgh.
5
N. S. Godfrey (1853). Table Turning: the Devil’s Modern Masterpiece; Being the Result of a Course of Experiments. Thames Ditton, UK.
6
D. Graves (1996). Scientists of Faith. Kregel Resources, Grand Rapids, MI.
7
M. Faraday (1853). ‘Experimental investigation of table moving’. Athenaeum, 1340, pages 801–3.
8
J. Jastrow (1900). Fact and Fable in Psychology. Houghton Mifflin Company, New York.
9
For a review of this work, see: E. Jacobson (1982). The Human Mind: A physiological clarification. Charles C. Thomas, Springfield, IL.
10
H. H. Spitz (1997). Nonconscious Movements: From Mystical Messages to Facilitated Communication. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Princeton, NJ.
11
D. M. Wegner and D. J. Schneider (2003). ‘The White Bear Story’. Psychological Inquiry, 14, pages 326–29.
12
O. P. John and J. J. Gross (2004). ‘Healthy and unhealthy emotion regulation: Personality processes, individual differences, and life span development’. Journal of Personality, 72, pages 1301–17.
A. G. Harvey (2003). ‘The attempted suppression of presleep cognitive activity in insomnia’. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 27, pages 593–602.
13
D. M. Wegner, M. E. Ansfield and D. Pilloff (1998). ‘The putt and the pendulum: Ironic effects of the mental control of action’. Psychological Science, 9, pages 196–9.
14
F. C. Bakker, R. R. D. Oudejans, O. Binsch and J. Van der Kamp (2006). ‘Penalty shooting and gaze behavior: Unwanted effects of the wish not to miss’. International Journal of Sport Psychology, 37, pages 265–80.
15
J. Etkin (2001). ‘Erratic Pitching – performance anxiety of baseball players’. Baseball Digest, August 2001, pages 52–6.
16
W. F. Prince (1964). The Case of Patience Worth. University Books, Inc., New York.
17
D. Wegner (2002). The Illusion of Conscious Will. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
18
B. Libet, C. A. Gleason, E. W. Wright and D. K. Pearl (1983). ‘Time of conscious intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral activity (readiness-potential). The unconscious initiation of a freely voluntary act’. Brain, 106, pages 623–42. B. Libet (1985). ‘Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action’. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 8, pages 529–66.
19
Described in ‘Time and the Observer’ by D. C. Dennett and M. Kinsbourne, in The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical debates, (Ned Block, Owen Flanigan, et al., eds., 1997), The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, page 168.
INTERMISSION
1
For further information about Gef, see:
H. Price (1936). Confessions of a Ghost-Hunter. Putnam & Co. Ltd, London.
H. Price and R. S. Lambert (1936). The Haunting of Cashen’s Gap: A Modern ‘Miracle’ Investigated. Methuen & Co. Ltd., London.
5. GHOST-HUNTING
1
D. P. Musella (2005). ‘Gallup poll shows that Americans’ belief in the paranormal persists’. Skeptical Inquirer, 29(5), page 5.
2
R. Lange, J. Houran, T. M. Harte and R. A. Havens (1996). ‘Contextual mediation of perceptions in hauntings and poltergeist-like experiences’. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 82, pages 755–62.
3
D. J. Hufford (1982). The Terror That Comes in the Night. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philidelphia.
T. Kotorii, N. Uchimura, Y. Hashizume, S. Shirakawa, T. Satomura et al. (2001). ‘Questionnaire relating to sleep paralysis’. Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 55, pages 265–6.
4
C. Bron (2003). ‘The stubborn scientist who unraveled a mystery of the night’. Smithsonian Magazine, October 2003.
5
E. Aserinsky and N. Kleitman (1953). ‘Regularly occurring periods of eye motility,
and concomitant phenomena, during sleep’. Science, 118, pages 273–4.
6
For additional information about this work, see:
R. Wiseman, C. Watt, E. Greening, P. Stevens and C. O’Keeffe (2002). ‘An investigation into the alleged haunting of Hampton Court Palace: Psychological variables and magnetic fields’. Journal of Parapsychology, 66(4), pages 387–408.
R. Wiseman, C. Watt, P. Stevens, E. Greening and C. O’Keeffe (2003). ‘An investigation into alleged “hauntings”’. The British Journal of Psychology, 94, pages 195–211.
7
G. W. Lambert (1955). ‘Poltergeists: a physical theory’. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 38, pages 49–71.
8
A. Gauld and A. D. Cornell (1979). Poltergeists. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.
9
A. Cornell (1959). ‘An experiment in apparitional observation and findings’. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 40, pages 120–4.
A. Cornell (1960). ‘Further experiments in apparitional observations’. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 40, pages 409–18.
10
V. Tandy and T. Lawrence (1998). ‘The ghost in the machine’. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 62, pages 360–4.
11
V. Tandy (2000). ‘Something in the cellar’. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 64, pages 129–40.
12
C. M. Cook and M. A. Persinger (1997). ‘Experimental induction of the “sense presence” in normal subjects and an exceptional subject’. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 85, pages 683–93.
C. M. Cook and M. A. Persinger (2001). ‘Geophysical variables and behavior: XCII. Experimental elicitation of the experience of a sentient being by right hemispheric, weak magnetic fields: Interaction with temporal lobe sensitivity’. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 92, pages 447–8.
13
P. Granqvist, M. Fredrikson, P. Unge, A. Hagenfeldt, S. Valind,
D. Larhammar and M. Larsson (2005). ‘Sensed presence and mystical experiences are predicted by suggestibility, not by the application of transcranial weak complex magnetic fields’. Neuroscience Letters, 379, pages 1–6.
M. Larsson, D. Larhammar, M. Fredrikson and P. Granqvist (2005). ‘Reply to M.A. Persinger and S. A. Koren’s response to Granqvist et al. “Sensed presence and mystical experiences are predicted by suggestibility, not by the application of transcranial weak complex magnetic fields”’. Neuroscience Letters, 380, pages 348–50.
For additional information about this work, see: http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041206/full/news041206-10.html
14
C. C. French, U. Haque, R. Bunton-Stasyshyn and R. Davis (2009). ‘The “Haunt” Project: An attempt to build a “haunted” room by manipulating complex electromagnetic fields and infrasound’. Cortex. 45, pages 619–29.
For further information about the possible relationship between hauntings and electromagnetism, see:
J. J. Braithwaite (2008) ‘Putting magnetism in its place: A critical examination of the weak-intensity magnetic field account for anomalous haunt-type experiences’. Journal for the Society of Psychical Research, 890, pages 34–50.
J. J. and M. Townsend (2005). ‘Sleeping with the entity: A quantitative magnetic investigation of an English castle’s reputedly haunted bedroom’. European Journal of Parapsychology. 20.1, pages 65–78.
15
E. E. Slosson (1899). ‘A lecture experiment in hallucinations’. Psychology Review, 6, pages 407–8.
16
M. O’Mahony (1978). ‘Smell illusions and suggestion: Reports of smells contingent on tones played on television and radio’. Chemical Senses and Flavour, 3, pages 183–9.
17
R. Lange and J. Houran (1999). ‘The role of fear in delusions of the paranormal’. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 187, pages 159–66.
18
R. Lange and J. Houran (1997). ‘Context-induced paranormal experiences: Support for Houran and Lange’s model of haunting phenomena’. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 84, pages 1455–8.
19
J. Houran and R. Lange (1996). ‘Diary of events in a thoroughly unhaunted house’. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 83, pages 499–502.
20
Much of the information in this section is based on a report of Smyth’s work in the 1970s BBC documentary series, Leap in the Dark.
21
J. M. Bering (2006). ‘The cognitive psychology of belief in the supernatural’. American Scientist, 94, pages 142–9.
22
J. L. Barrett (2004). Why Would Anyone Believe in God? AltaMira Press, Lanham, MD.
6. MIND CONTROL
1
For further information about Bishop, see:
H. H. Spitz (1997). Nonconscious Movements: From mystical messages to facilitated communication. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Princeton, NJ.
R. Jay (1986). Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women. Robert Hale, London.
B. H. Wiley (2009). ‘The Thought-Reader Craze’. The Conjuring Arts Research Center. 4(1), pages 9–134. Gibeciere, NY.
2
For more information about Clever Hans, see: H. H. Spitz (1997). Nonconscious Movements: From Mystical Messages to Facilitated Communication. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Princeton, NJ.
O. Pfungst (1911). Clever Hans (The horse of Mr. von Osten): A contribution to experimental animal and human psychology. Henry Holt, New York.
3
R. Rosenthal and K. Fode (1963). ‘The effect of experimenter bias on the performance of the albino rat’. Behavioral Science, 8, pages 183–9.
4
R. Rosenthal and L. Jacobson (1968). Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher expectations and pupils’ intellectual development. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York.
5
G. L. Wells (1988). Eyewitness Identification: A system handbook. Carswell, Toronto.
6
H. B. Gibson (1991). ‘Can hypnosis compel people to commit harmful, immoral and criminal acts?: A review of the literature’. Contemporary Hypnosis, 8, pages 129–40.
7
M. T. Orne and F. J. Evans (1965). ‘Social control in the psychological experiment: Antisocial behavior and hypnosis’. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1, pages 189–200.
8
For further information about Jim Jones, see: J. Mills (1979). Six Years with God. A&W Publishers, New York.
D. G. Myers (2010). Social Psychology (10th ed.). McGraw-Hill, New York.
9
J. L. Freedman and S. C. Fraser (1966). ‘Compliance without pressure: The foot-in-the-door technique’. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 4, pages 196–202.
10
S. E. Asch (1951). ‘Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgment’. In Groups, Leadership and Men (ed. H. Guetzkow). Carnegie Press, Pittsburgh, PA.
11
E. Aronson and J. Mills (1959). ‘The effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group’. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 59, pages 177–81.
12
L. Festinger, H. W. Riecken and S. Schachter (1956). When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN.
7. PROPHECY
1
J. C. Barker (1967). ‘Premonitions of the Aberfan Disaster’. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, December 1967, 44, pages 168–81.
2
A. MacKenzie (1974). The Riddle of the Future: A modern study of precognition. Arthur Barker, London.
3
A. M. Arkin, J. S. Antrobus and J. Ellman (1978). The Mind in Sleep: Psychology and psychophysiology. Erlbaum, New Jersey.
4
J. Nickell (1999). ‘Paranormal Lincoln’. Skeptical Inquirer, 23, 127–31.
5
L. Breger, I. Hunter and R.W. Lane (1971). The Effect of Stress on Dreams. In
ternational Universities Press, New York.
6
Taken from: http://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/politics/aberfan/dowintro.htm
7
D. M. Wegner, R. M. Wenzlaff and M. Kozak (2004). ‘Dream rebound: The return of suppressed thoughts in dreams’. Psychological Science, 15, pages 232–6.
8
H. A. Murray and D. R. Wheeler (1937). ‘A note on the possible clairvoyance of dreams’. Journal of Psychology, 3, pages 309–13.
9
C. K. Morewedge and M. I. Norton (2009). ‘When dreaming is believing: The (motivated) interpretation of dreams’. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96, pages 249–64.
10
K. M. T. Hearne (1978). ‘Lucid dreams: an electrophysiological and psychological study’. PhD thesis, University of Hull.
11
The information in this section is based on Stephen LaBerge’s ‘Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams’.