An upcoming study claims that test subjects were able to accurately predict future events—and that pornography was one of the tools used in research for the project. Crazy, right?
But the methodology is sound. Sceptics are impressed. Do humans really have extra-sensory perception (ESP)? Can it really be triggered by the latest issue of Penthouse?
The paper, “Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Effect,” has a pre-publication version available online. Professor Daryl Bem of Cornell University carried out nine separate experiments with 1,000 university students. These experiments were intended to find evidence of “psi”—precognition or premonition. Bem defines it this way:
The term psi denotes anomalous processes of information or energy transfer that are currently unexplained in terms of known physical or biological mechanisms. Two variants of psi are precognition (conscious cognitive awareness) and premonition (affective apprehension) of a future event that could not otherwise be anticipated through any known inferential process. Precognition and premonition are themselves special cases of a more general phenomenon: the anomalous retroactive influence of some future event on an individual’s current responses, whether those responses are conscious or nonconscious, cognitive or affective.
The most interesting of the nine experiments used pornography to test for ESP. Experimentees were asked 36 times to guess whether an image of “couples engaged in nonviolent but explicit consensual sexual acts” or a blank picture would show up on different sectors of a video screen. Subjects were able to predict the appearance of the pornographic picture 53.1% of the time—significantly above the statistical average of 50%.
That number, while low, is significant enough to imply something more significant than a simple statistical anomaly. Bem’s conclusion: there is a “precognitive detection of erotic stimuli” and a “precognitive avoidance of negative stimuli.”
Bem is a prominent social psychologist who is currently Professor Emeritus at Cornell and who has written extensively on sexual orientation and personality theory. In his paper, Bem states his wish to make it more socially acceptable in the academy for studies to be conducted on psi and related topics.
Critics are taking the paper seriously. Writing in Psychology Today, Brown University’s Joachim Krueger—a noted skeptic—praised the paper’s methodology and scientific rigor while still damning psi as “belief in processless causation.” But we doubt we’ve heard the last of ESP in academia—or the study of porn’s predictive powers.
[Image via Flickr user brain_blogger]
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Tom
Sunday, November 28, 2010 at 5:54 PMUntil this study is consistently replicated, I will still be a sceptic concerning all things ESP and precognition. The very nature of the experiments makes them difficult to understand- from a linear time perspective. The specifics of all 9 of Bem’s experiments are detailed here (this website helps clarify the nebulous order of proceedings): http://somerandomstuff1.wordpress.com/2010/11/19/an-explanation-of-the-experiments-within-bems-esp-study/
Richard Wiseman has suggested that the 2 word recall experiments may have involved a subjective bias relating to the scoring methods. Wiseman claims that this may be due to the computer program used not recognising misspelt words and hence the experimenters potentially biasing the experiment. He elaborates on this possible bias here: http://richardwiseman.wordpress.com/2010/11/18/bems-esp-research/
Wagenmakers et al. have written an article (http://www.ruudwetzels.com//articles/Wagenmakersetal_subm.pdf) that examines the Bem study data using a Bayesian t-test. Using this analysis, the authors found that Bem’s data is slightly in favour of the null hypothesis. Wagenmakers et al. concluded that statistically, the evidence for psi in Bem’s paper is “weak to nonexistent.”
William Irving
Sunday, November 28, 2010 at 6:27 PM53% is hardly good evidence. 3% is easily within a humans natuaral pattern and probability calculating capabilities.
for instance if you flip a coin 5 times you know statistically that its gonna flip heads up probably twice or 3 times where as its less likely to show heads 4 times and less likely again to show heads 5 times. so if you randomly choose heads then tails then tails and its tails all 3 times you will probably either subconciously or conciously call heads the last 2 times because you can guess its probable that the average is going to even out. that gives you a slight advantage maybe only 1 or 2 percent but within this studys error.
this applys to this study because we know that over the repeated cycles of the test the averages of each section of the screen being constantly either porn or not will even out so if a section of the screen hasnt shown porn in a while you can guess its probaly going to soon.
Andrew Champ
Sunday, November 28, 2010 at 11:50 PMwilliam, flipping a coin 5 times is 5 isolated events. it has just as much chance of comming up 0t 5h as 2t 3h or any other combination as the outcome of the pervious toss has no effect on the next.