The Trickster and the Paranormal

by George P. Hansen

  There is another incompatibility between macro-PK and other types of psi. Unlike ESP and PK detected with statistics, macro-PK appears to be severely limited by distance. In almost all cases, the person putatively responsible for an event is within a few meters of it.

  Macro-PK phenomena have received little attention from laboratory researchers, who view them with suspicion because of their frequent association with fraud. There is very little quantitative data on macro-PK, and few theories address it; most consider only statistical effects. An exception is the work of Kenneth Batcheldor, a British psychologist who spent decades studying macro-PK in séance-like situations. He gathered groups to hold sessions to elicit macro-PK. They interpreted their séance phenomena not as caused by spirits of the dead, but rather by the unconscious minds of the participants. Batcheldor died in 1988, and in 1994 Patric V. Giesler compiled and edited his notes discussing his theoretical ideas. Some of the salient issues included ambiguity, indeterminacy, and elusiveness. These are congruent with, and even reinforce, the theoretical perspectives discussed in this book.

  Psi appears to be essentially independent of space and time, but if people in the future can influence the past (e.g., precognition, retroactive PK), how can we know whether an experiment is ever finished? If a study is conducted and published, could someone later read it and alter the outcome? This, in a nutshell, is the divergence problem. Fundamentally it is a problem of boundaries and limits, and one not encountered in the usual frameworks of science. The term, in this usage, was introduced by Helmut Schmidt in his 1975 article “Toward a Mathematical Theory of Psi.”38 Schmidt borrowed the term from an analogous divergence problem in quantum electrodynamics.39

  Several researchers have offered ideas to limit divergence. Some suggest that only the first observer causes a psi effect (e.g., the subject watching a set of lights controlled by an RNG in a PK test), but others propose that diminishing contributions come from later observers. Walker argues that those suggestions are simply ad hoc and fail to deal with the space-time independence. He addressed the matter in the Journal of Research in Psi Phenomena (1977), noting that not only subjects but also experimenters and later observers play potential roles. He pointed out that any result obtained in an experiment incorporates the effects of future observers, though the experimenter has little or no control over them. Walker used his theory to calculate the potential influence of future observers, by making some plausible assumptions about the strength of their effects. He concluded that while there is a problem, it is not too severe.40

  The issue of divergence highlights two problematic areas: the definition of observation, and the social aspect of psi. Because the definition of “observation” is not included in the formalism of QM, defining consciousness is problematical. Within parapsychology a number of experiments explored the notion of observation by varying the amount of information available to an observer, using multiple observers, and by comparing animals and humans as observers. These were tentative steps, and the issue is still open for theoretical speculation.

  In Walker’s theory, observing an event (i.e., becoming consciously aware of it) collapses the wave function, and it is there that PK can operate. For his formulation, consciousness is essentially equivalent to awareness, though he admits that that is not yet completely defined, and that the concept needs more development. One objection to Walker’s model is that psi often appears to act unconsciously. Nevertheless consciousness seems somehow involved, and it may play an important role, perhaps somehow limiting or restraining psi. Becoming fully aware of an object or event in some sense stabilizes it in the mind. If the event is spoken of, artistically portrayed, or written about, it becomes “firmer.” Such representations give the object or event attention; awareness of it is enhanced. It is through representation that other people can learn of the item or event.

  If awareness is required in the operation of psi, some interesting theoretical connections arise. To be aware of something is to distinguish it from its background, to make a distinction. Becoming aware entails the construction of a mental representation; part of the brain’s information processing capacity is allotted to that task. Thus the issue of “representation” can be tied to Walker’s theory. In nearly all sciences, representation is assumed to be unproblematic; the fundamental questions about it are ignored. The issue is central to semiotics and literary theory, and in the argot of semiotics, Walker’s theory establishes a connection between the signifier and signified.

  The second matter highlighted by divergence is that psi has a social aspect: multiple people may affect a paranormal event. In Walker’s formulation, the act of observing collapses the wave function, and it is there that PK operates. When more than one person observes an event (whether in the present or future), there is a collective effect because of psi’s space-time independence. Reporting an event to others makes those persons observers and links them to it.

  I am not aware of anyone discussing divergence explicitly in terms of social factors, but it suggests connections between parapsychology and other disciplines. When groups are involved, representations are made collectively, bringing to mind Durkheim’s notion of “collective representations.” For social activity some level of consensus and coherence is required, and consciousness might be seen as a collective function, a social process. Walker did not elaborate on the implications of divergence as much as he might have, but he did make some provocative statements about the consensus required for “fundamental laws of nature.” 41

  The topic of divergence stimulates speculation about psi. For instance, strong psi effects may operate so that relatively few people learn of them. If they do become known, they may be of such a nature as to be easily dismissed. They may be surrounded by fraud, or reported only by those who have a reputation for gullibility. Similarly this may explain why secrecy and ambiguity surround many groups engaging in occult practices. Such speculations could be multiplied endlessly, and that is why it would help to have some clear limits on psi.

  Walker’s theory was truly innovative; it was a radical departure from previous theories. There had been nothing comparable in parapsychology before its arrival. Like all important new works, revisions have been and will be made, elaborations are required. The theory remains controversial among psi researchers, and maybe it will be ultimately rejected. Nevertheless Walker made several exceptional contributions. Perhaps most importantly, he formally introduced randomness and uncertainty into theories of psi. He tied his theory to physical processes (e.g., tumbling dice and brain activity) in a way that had not been accomplished before, and he went to considerable effort to link his theories to quantitative data.

  Further, Walker directly addressed some of the most problematical aspects of psi including its independence of space, time, and task complexity. Any successful theory must accommodate these.

  Rex Stanford’s Conformance Behavior

  Walker’s theory was from physics, and it was not immediately well understood by many in other disciplines. Some of the general ideas were discussed within parapsychology, and a few researchers began formulating them in terms congenial to other fields. One of those was psychologist Rex Stanford, who was introduced earlier.

  In the 1970s Stanford began rethinking the vexing conceptual difficulties of psi. He questioned the traditional models that many parapsychologists adopted implicitly, wherein ESP was conceived as something transmitted, and PK was thought to be a capacity to act upon the environment. Psi was usually assumed to be similar to other psychological and biological processes (e.g., perception) which involve some transmission (e.g., light, sound). The traditional conceptions have been referred to as transmission models, communication models, and psycho-biological models. Sometimes these were explicit in the theorizing about psi, but often they were not.

  Stanford proposed a model that he called “conformance behavior.” He strived to simplify and clarify the crucial components of the psi process and look at them anew, by discarding the usual
assumptions. His model was abstractly formulated; it had two parts: a disposed system and a random event generator (REG). By “disposed system” Stanford meant an organism that had a need or disposition (presumably his use of the term “disposition” was more comprehensive than “need” and included negative human moods, feelings, and expectations). By “random event generator” Stanford referred to systems like those discussed by Walker. Stanford’s random processes were those that could affect the disposed system, perhaps even very indirectly. The conformance behavior model obviates the idea of sending and receiving information. It simply postulates that the random process affects an event in accord with the disposed system. The model does not specify how that happens, but only that it does; that is how the universe is built.

  Stanford’s model requires no conscious intent to use psi, and it subsumes synchronicity, i.e., meaningful coincidence. He gave an example of a person forgetting to change subway trains on the way to visit friends. Because of that forgetfulness, the person encountered the very people he was planning to visit. Had he been alert and changed trains, he would have completely missed his friends. Here the subway rider had the goal of (i.e., disposition toward) meeting friends. Various contingencies provided a result that conformed to that goal.

  Stanford’s conformance behavior model was not nearly as developed as Walker’s, and it was criticized, somewhat justifiably, for lacking much predictive value. But what it lacked there, it compensated with clarity and simplicity. It was couched in terms more congenial to psychologists and was more easily adapted to testing by them. It stimulated experiments that otherwise might not have been conducted, such as those of Gruber, described earlier. Stanford’s model helped emphasize the then-new ideas of the goal-oriented nature of psi and the fundamental role of randomness.

  William Braud’s Lability and Inertia

  William G. Braud is a psychologist who was a leading experimenter in the field in the 1970s and 1980s. For much of that period he worked at the Mind Science Foundation in San Antonio, Texas, along with Helmut Schmidt. Braud published many innovative and successful experiments. He was the first to report an ESP ganzfeld study, but he is rarely given credit for that. Braud was known for methodological rigor. I had the good fortune of serving as a reviewer of several of his papers, and it was difficult to find much to criticize in them. He undertook his theoretical work with a very strong grounding in empirical data and experience (somewhat like Victor Turner in anthropology). He did not start with some grand philosophical scheme.

  Because Braud is known as an exemplary experimentalist, his conceptual insights have been largely overlooked. His most important theoretical contributions addressed the matters of “lability and inertia.” Lability is the ready capacity for change, “the ease with which a system can change from one state to another, the amount of ‘free variability’ in the system.” Inertia is the opposite: the tendency to resist change. Braud’s model proposed that the magnitude of a PK effect should be directly related to the amount of lability in the target system, and the likelihood of an ESP event should be proportional to the amount of lability in the brain or mind of the percipient.

  Braud drew upon the theorizing of Walker and Stanford, and he gave them explicit credit. In fact his first paper on the topic was titled “Lability and Inertia in Conformance Behavior,” thus incorporating Stanford’s phrase.

  Braud understood that lability is directly related to randomness, which was central to the models of both Walker and Stanford. He explained how many systems and processes can be described in terms of lability and inertia, and he reviewed a number of lines of research that indicate that psi has more influence on labile systems than on inert ones. The concept has great applicability, including to areas not immediately obvious. ESP in altered states of consciousness is an example. Meditation, progressive relaxation, hypnosis and other altered states have been found to enhance ESP in the laboratory. They are typified by an inward focus, with the outer physical and social environments given diminished attention. The physical and social worlds have a stability and a capacity to structure and organize a person’s attention. In contrast, in dreaming and meditation, the mind can quickly flit from one idea to another. There is less patterning of cognitive processes in those states, and less structure to them. The imagery is labile; it changes rapidly.

  Braud’s concept also subsumes research on “response bias avoidance behavior.” In ESP card-guessing tests, subjects tend to call some symbols more frequently than others. Those preferred symbols are the response bias; the calls (responses) are biased (the symbols are not called equally often). When a subject made a guess that he or she made relatively infrequently (i.e., avoided the response bias), the guess was more likely to be correct than those guesses of symbols called more often. Thus when a subject broke from the usual pattern (i.e., the usual structure), ESP was more likely to manifest.

  Novelty also facilitates ESP. Novelty, by definition, is a change from an old pattern. In many ESP card experiments and PK dice studies, the first part of a run was likely to have especially strong scoring. Again, the beginning of a run is a break from whatever was happening before. As an experiment continues, it becomes less novel and more routinized, and scores typically decline. Thus transition periods produce better psi scores than more routine conditions.

  Braud carried out additional experiments to test the model. He set up a PK study with two different targets: a candle flame, and an electric lamp with a DC power supply. A small fan was placed near the candle flame, causing it to flicker. The electric lamp gave more stable illumination. These were monitored by a photocell attached to an amplifier, and in another room a chart recorder and a digital readout device displayed the output. The subjects and experimenter were in the second room with the recording devices and were able to watch them. During randomly selected periods the subjects were asked to increase the activity of the flame or electric light and in other periods to reduce the activity. With the “high aim” and “low aim” conditions, a subject’s performance could be evaluated statistically. The analysis showed that the subjects influenced the candle flame (the labile target) but not the electric lamp (the inert target).

  Braud frequently used biological organisms in his PK experiments (e.g., cells, small animals, humans). He argued that they should be especially suitable because of their natural variability and unpredictability. Inanimate systems generally have less lability. His experiments with organisms as PK targets were quite successful.

  Braud’s concept provides an encompassing vision. It integrated and extended the work of Walker and Stanford. Braud showed the great generality of their ideas and explained where they apply. He discussed physical and biological systems but did not carry the idea to higher levels such as small groups of people, societies, and large cultures. Those too show a similar pattern.

  Braud’s model guided much of my thinking since I became professionally active in parapsychology. His two papers allowed me to see the theoretical possibilities inherent in Victor Turner’s concept of antistructure. Both “anti-structure” and “lability” referred to instability and transition, and that suggested linkages to psi. Further, Braud’s work depended upon Walker’s, which focussed on information rather than energy, force, or power. Likewise, Edmund Leach’s conception of structural anthropology was also formulated in terms of information. The common language expressing the ideas clarified the shared patterns across seemingly unrelated fields.

  Conclusion

  This has been an all-too-short presentation of parapsychology. The scientific journals contain over a century of material, and much more of it bears on the topics in this book. It’s too vast to present it all here.

  Both parapsychologists and their critics acknowledge that psi experiments are not fully repeatable. Psi is detected only intermittently, and the effects are usually weak. Some researchers succeed; others don’t. If the results were strong and robust and anyone could easily replicate them, there would be no controversy, and this b
ook would not have been written.

  The replication problems signal psi’s profound properties, but introductory texts give the implications scant treatment, and few researchers consider them at length. I presented some of the perplexities in this chapter because I don’t believe that they should be minimized in order to make the field appealing to other scientists or to a popular audience. If progress is to be made, the troubles must be confronted. I will summarize some of the key issues.

  In any given psi experiment, it is difficult, if not impossible, to fully determine who causes any result. Experimenters, subjects, checkers, and others may all contribute some influence even without conscious intent. ESP is not blocked by distance or time. Retroactive PK suggests that persons in the future can influence the past. It is probably impossible, in principle, for a researcher to control all factors that affect an experiment. “Participation” may be far greater than an investigator envisions.

  The future may show that these problems can be overcome, that clear limits can be demonstrated, and that high levels of replicability can be achieved. Indeed, progress has been made. Research demonstrates that a variety of factors affect psi including: belief in ESP, personality traits, spontaneity, and altered states of consciousness, among others. So far, psychic phenomena can be influenced, if not fully controlled. Some believe that continuing experiments along traditional lines will solve the control problem, and I think progress will be made by such efforts. Nevertheless, everyone agrees that psi violates common sense assumptions. Any theory must accommodate those violations.