Methods for investigating goal-oriented PSI

Journal of Parapsychology, The, March, 1995 by J.E. Kennedy

Although the available data strongly support the goal-oriented psi hypothesis for certain aspects of information-processing, the data are much less clear for other aspects. Goal-oriented psi appears to apply with tasks that involve (a) redundant opportunities for psi to operate, as in majority-vote procedures, and (b) varying amounts of information about the psi task, as with blind PK. However, task complexity or information-processing pertaining to the a priori probability of a hit remains relatively unexplored despite the long recognition that this factor provides important insights into the psi process (Kennedy, 1978; Scott, 1961; Thouless, 1935). Various aspects of information-processing are summarized in the appendix. The main body of this paper focuses on redundant opportunities for psi to operate because this factor has profound implications for scientific research and the evidence is strong that psi can function in a goal-oriented manner relative to this factor.

The strong evidence that psi can be goal oriented on the level of individual trials suggests the logical extension of the goal-oriented psi hypothesis to problematic areas such as experimenter effects. However, this extension requires empirical verification. The determination of what exactly constitutes a goal is a vital issue.

HIERARCHIES OF GOALS

Virtually all experimental research involves a hierarchy of goals. As shown in Figure 1, experimenters and participants may focus on successful outcomes for: (a) individual trials or RNG events, (b) groups of trials for within subjects designs, (c) individual subjects, (d) groups of subjects for between subjects designs, (e) individual experiments, (f) the line of research (i.e., groups of experiments), (g) the research institution, (h) their personal careers, and (i) the field of parapsychology. The existing evidence for goal-oriented psi is evidence that psi sources sometimes focus on goals that are not at the bottom of this hierarchy.

Each of the different levels of the hierarchy of goals involves a higher level of data aggregation. A majority vote is an aggregation of random events or guesses. An experiment is an aggregation of data for trials and subjects.

Statistical research methods and communication theory are based on the assumption that data aggregation follows certain properties. The key property is that the reliability or accuracy of estimation improves as more data are aggregated or combined. This property occurs because each event or outcome in the sample is assumed to be an opportunity to measure the effect. In essence, each measurement or observation is redundant. However, data aggregation under goal-oriented psi does not result in increased reliability or accuracy of estimation in certain situations because psi basically ignores or bypasses the redundant opportunities.

The goal-oriented psi concept implies that this key assumption of communication theory does not apply for outcomes below the psi source's goal on the hierarchy, but does apply for outcomes above the goal. Under the normal assumptions of communication theory, each RNG event in a majority vote is a redundant opportunity for psi to operate, and therefore a majority-vote procedure will enhance the accuracy or scoring rate of psi. However, Schmidt's (1974) study shows that when the goal of the psi source is the outcome of the majority vote (or a higher level on the hierarchy), psi bypasses the redundant opportunities and applies directly to the outcome of the goal as a unit. Thus, majority-vote processes do not lead to enhanced scoring when majority-vote outcomes are the goal of the psi source. Presumably, if the goal of the psi source was success on each individual event that comprised the majority vote, then the assumptions of communication theory would apply - that is, communication theory applies on the hierarchy above the goal of the psi source.