FACTORS AFFECTING JUDGMENTS ABOUT THE OCCURRENCE OF PSI IN SPONTANEOUS SETTINGS (CAROLINE DOW)

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worx together. However, this decision was not taken without reser-
vations. Several months elapsed between the time the work with
Tim ceased and his admission of being a magician. During this
period I still had doubts as to whether Tim might ha'e possessed
genuine PK ability and had only resorted to fraud lut of frustra- tion at not being abl Fortuna
With hindsight, these doubts seem surprisi
had discovered obviously fraudulent activity, ha
Why had I been willing to give Tim's PK abilit
question I discovere
Tim's claims were fals
feelings are inherent in m
Firstly, I was bi
relationship deve
y experimen
have a friendly and open rap
ful in this pursuit it seems a n
will, in turn, like them. This
work, where a subject and resea
a relatively lengthy time. Resear
come to know their subjects well,
velop. Having a good rapport w
in eliciting psi. But this shout
sibility that they may be more
or feel they know well than of
Another facet of liking
need them. In most cases s
and give their time for little
helping us with our work a
In Tim's case, he devoted
us and also had a relative
These things, particularly
This, in turn, may have
cer
1 not
rustin?
other s
ur subject
d wer are inde
great deal of
when combined
well have biased in
, given that I
other evidence
the benefit of the
In considering this
onship with Tim that
ed towards liking Tim,
ped. Secondly, I was
that gave rise to these
situations and thus may
includes wanting them to
ve that we have been success-
facet of human nature that we
be particularly true in macro-PK
er may work closely together for
ers thus may feel that they have
d a genuine friendship may de-
subjects may be quite beneficial.
p will not only make any inves-
d, but it may also be helpful
lind researchers to the pos-
nsation. Thus, they are
ed to them for doing so.
d from our lab.
his very cooperative
towards liking him.
It is also possib that I was biased towards believing Tim.
We are all familiar wit the difficulties arising from the so-called
"elusive nature of ps'." In short, we cannot study a phenomenon
unless we can first oduce it. Thus, Tim's claims that he could
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must never forget
against fraudul
these facto
deception
errors caused b3\ personal
ensure that they
FACTORS AFFECTING JUDGMENTS ABOUT THE OCCURRENCE
OF PSI IN SPONTANEOUS SETTINGS
Caroline Dow (Dept. of Psychology, University of Edinburgh,
7 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9JZ, Scotland)
This paper describes three areas of research in social and
cognitive psychology concerning errors in everyday human judg-
ment and decision making which may be relevant to the study of
errors in decisions about the operation of psi in spontaneous set-
tings. At their most general level, these decisions either take the
form "psi has occurred" or, alternatively, "psi has not occurred."
When somebody decides "I have witnessed psi" when in fact there
is a normal explanation for their experience, we may call this a
"false positive." Conversely, the conclusion "I have not witnessed
psi" when in fact psi was in operation may be called a "false nega-
tive. "
Attribution Theory. Objective Data
Vs. Subjective Theories
Attribution theory studies how people decide what caused an
event that they witnessed. It has often been described as the
study of the causal explanations of the layperson. In fact, there
produce macro-PK at will suggested exciting possibilities. I wanted
his claims to be true, and this desire m41 have influenced my eval-
ay have arisen from liking and
ditions was used in all the work with
criterion did not allow any judgmental
possible occurrence of these biases to
allowed to influence our findings.
reality which parapsychological researchers
on deception. Not only must we protect
for misleading activity on our subjects' part,
Only if we are aware of and guard against
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is no single attribution theory but rather a disparate collection of
theories. These traditional or classical theories in turn stimulated
a vast amount of research, which dominated social psychology in the
1970s. One of the traditional theories, developed by Kelley (Nebras-
ka Symposium on Motivation, 1967, 192-238), suggested that individ-
uals rationally make use of objective information available to them
when making judgments and inferences about their environment. In
other words, attributions are data driven. Researchers have con-
firmed that individuals do indeed make causal attributions in this
way, but only in certain very stylized situations where the objec-
tive information is presented to them in a clear-cut form. In more
realistic settings, however, people have to extract data from a com-
plex and continuous stream of information, and in these circum-
stances attributions are found to be theory driven rather than data
driven. That is, when making judgments and inferences about their
everyday environment, people tend to rely on their subjective be-
liefs about how the world works rather than on any objective infor-
mation available to them on how the world actually works.
Research testing Kelley's ideas in realistic settings finds that
people are generally unable to detect information about the covaria-
tion or correlation of events in their environment and do not make
use of available base-rate information.
Concerning the detection of covariation information it has
consistently been found that. individuals will see a covariation
where there is none if they expect or believe two factors to cor-
relate; individuals will not detect an unexpected but true covaria-
tion unless that covariation is extremely strong and there is no
"distracting" information also at hand.
The situation is similar with base-rate information concerning
the frequency of occurrence of any event or entity in some rele-
vant population or some specific evidence about the event or entity
currently under consideration. The findings of research based on
attribution theory which examines people's utilization of base-rate
information parallel those outlined above. That is, when making
predictions or estimating probabilities, people tend not to make use
of objective base-rate information. Instead, they rely on their in-
tuitive predictions for the single "target" case with which they are
particularly concerned.
Research in this field is useful in that it not only highlights
people's inferential weaknesses but in some cases also suggests re-
medial measures. For example, S.M. Kassin (J. Personality and
Social Psychology, 1979, 1966-1981) reviews measures to
proposed increase individuals' utilization of base-rate information.
The Effects of Focus of Attention and
Salience on Causal Attributions
This research, a spin-off from the early work in attribution
theory, has found that actors and observers consistently differ in
their explanations for the actor's behavior in that actors tend to
say that the situation caused their behavior while observers say
that something about the disposition of the actor caused that same
behavior.
For parapsychologists, it is interesting to note the proposed
explanation for the actor-observer effect: that causality will gen-
erally be attributed to the most salient feature of a person's en-
vironment. For actors, their attention is focused on the surround-
ing situation, while observers have their attention focused on the
actor. Researchers have found that it is possible to reverse the
usual actor-observer pattern of attributions by reversing actors'
and observers' focus of attention. As Taylor and Fiske (Advances
in Experimental Social Psychology, 1978, 249-288) note, these find-
ings suggest that it is possible to alter perceptions of causality by
altering an individual's focus of attention by manipulating which
aspects of the environment are salient to that person. Perhaps
this is another mechanism through which individuals may reach
mistaken conclusions about the operation of psi in spontaneous
settings.
A third area of psychological research which may be relevant
to the examination of false-positive and false-negative conclusions
about the occurrence of psi concerns the question of what causes
people's judgmental errors. Generally, researchers fall into two
schools of opinion on this subject: that judgmental errors derive
from the individual's drives, needs, desires--motivations, in other
words--or that errors result from the use of generally adaptive
information-processing strategies.
Proposed motivational influences. Researchers taking this
line are concerned with the possible psychological functions of
attributions. Firstly, it has been suggested that people are moti-
vated to explain their environment in ways that protect or enhance
their self-esteem. Secondly, to take account of the social context
of many judgments, it has been suggested that people's declara-
tions of what caused an event may be made with the aim of pre-
senting a creditable face to observers--that is, attributions serve
a self-presentation function. A third proposed motivational influ-
ence on attributions is the need for effective control over the en-
vironment, where people attribute the causes of events in their
environment to controllable factors, hence satisfying their need to
have a sense of control over their circumstances.
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108 Papers Concerning Fraud and Error 109
Proposed information-processing influences. The alternative
side to this debate suggests that errors are caused by generally
adaptive information-processing styles and short-cuts. This re-
search has spread from the attributional field into that of human
judgment and decision making in the more general sense. Research-
ers have pointed out many weaknesses in human cognition, but this
paper describes only three which have been highlighted by D.
Kahneman and A. Tversky (Psychological Review, 1973, 237-251).
This is because these three information-processing factors may rep-
resent the more general processes that underlie many more specific
cognitive errors.
conclusions that psi has occurred, psychological research on human
error logically cuts both ways, and can aid in the identification of
false-positive and false-negative conclusions about the occurrence of
psi.
ANOMALOUS HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION (AHCI):
TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT CONSTITUTES AN
ANOMALY (OR, HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE
COMPUTERS)
Kahneman and Tversky suggest that people habitually use
certain cognitive short-cuts to make their decisions and judgments
quickly and effectively. Generally these strategies, or heuristics,
are effective, but their use may also lead to errors. The first of
these heuristics is termed judgment by availability, where people's
judgments about the relative frequency of objects or the likelihood
of events may be influenced by the relative availability of these
objects or events, availability referring to the accessibility of items
in perception, memory, or imagination. The second heuristic is
termed judgment by representativeness or similarity, where an indi-
vidual's judgment of the probability that two events are related de-
pends very much on the degree to which these events have features
that are similar to each other. The final information-processing
strategy which can lead to errors is judgment by anchoring and
adjustment. Here, individuals are said to make judgments by start-
ing with an initial value or position which is then insufficiently ad-
justed to account for new incoming information--this is one way in
which erroneous beliefs may be maintained even in the face of dis-
confirming information.
This paper describes three areas of cognitive social psycho-
logical research that bear on the question of errors in everyday
human judgment and inference and consequently on the examination
of errors in conclusions about the occurrence of psi in spontaneous
settings. The research described does not as yet form any coher-
ent theory of human error and indeed, may not be new to parapsy-
chologists. However, this paper is intended to serve three func-
tions: (1) to integrate some findings of relevance to parapsychology
and present them in a way that shows their context within psycho-
logical research on human judgmental error; (2) to inform or remind
parapsychologists of the various ways in which false-positive or
false-negative conclusions about the occurrence of psi may be
reached, which may help in eventually identifying mistaken conclu-
sions about the operation of psi and consequently enhancing the
quality of data on the occurrence of psi; and (3) to stress that
while there is some emphasis in parapsychology on mistaken
K. Morgan (Dept. of Psychology, University of Edinburgh,
7 George Square, Edinburgh E118 9JZ, Scotland)
This paper is an attempt to clarify in what manner a genuine
anomaly can be distinguished from an incident explicable by known
physical means. It also tries to exemplify the various methods that
could be used to simulate an anomalous human-computer interaction
(AHCI). This paper does not dwell in any more than a superficial
manner upon the psychology involved in manipulating observers
which would allow the described physical strategies to be carried
out. That would demand a paper in its own right.
Part of the research being carried out at the Koestler Chair
and other institutions is the investigation of anomalous human-
computer interaction. As with any area of parapsychological re-
search there always exists the danger of the researcher mistaking
a normally explicable phenomenon as an anomaly. This paper was
written to help people who are confronted by an unusual happening
on a computer to evaluate the situation and to be aware of the pos-
.sibility of there being normal methods of simulating almost any
anomaly.
The various categories into which both simulated and genuine
anomalies could fall can be separated into the following:
(1) Human. The majority of so-called anomalies might be
found to be caused by the users' ignorance of their own computer
system or aspects of it. This, coupled with the human trait of
forcing unconnected events into meaningful patterns, might explain
many anomalies.
(2) Software Anomaly. The methods of achieving the simula-
tion of a software (nonhardware-based) anomaly can be broken down
into the following categories:
(a) Replacement of the target program. The target program
or process is exchanged for an amended version that contains the
extra "feature" that will become the "anomaly."
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