EXPLANATIONS FOR ANOMALOUS experience

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EXPLANATIONS FOR ANOMALOUS experience
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Learning objectives

• Refer to research findings into personality
  factors underlying anomalous experience in order
  to discuss them.

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Research findings

• TOBACYK et al. (1988)

• Kumar et al. (1993)

• Found a link between locus of control,
  superstitious behaviour and paranormal belief

• Found that sensation-seeking personality scores
  were related to both a greater paranormal belief
  and a greater number of reported paranormal
  experiences.

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Gianotti et al (2001)

• Found a high positive correlation between belief
  in the paranormal and creative personality
  (people with high paranormal belief generated
  more original words in a word task than others.

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Fantasy proneness

• Lynn and Rhue (1988) suggest some individuals are
  more prone to fantasising than others and that
  these fantasies become very real.

• Irwin (1991) found a correlation between fanatasy
  proneness and belief.

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PERSONALITY FACTORS

• Ramakrishna (2001) tested a group of early
  adolescent high-school students in India for a
  correlation between personality traits and
  performance on ESP tasks.
• Psi hitters good performance
• Psi missers poor performance

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findings

• Tense
• Excitable
• Frustrated
• Demanding
• Impatient
• Dependent
• Sensitive
• Timid
• Threat-sensitive
• Shy
• Withdrawn
• Submissive
• Suspicious
• Depression-prone

• Warm, sociable
• Good natured, easy going
• Assertive, self-assured
• Tough
• Enthusiastic
• Talkative
• Cheerful
• Quick, alert
• Adventuresome, impulsive
• Emotional
• Carefree
• Realistic, practical
• Relaxed
• composed

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However

• When the ESP tests were administered to a group
  of people at once, the findings change.
• Why might this be?
• Deindividuation?
• What do we conclude from this?
• Anomalistic research is prone to confounding
  variables that need to be controlled before firm
  conclusions can be drawn?

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Extroverts and introverts

• In many studies, extroverts score better on ESP
  tasks than introverts (Palmer 1978, Palmer and
  Carpenter, 1998).

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• Honorton et al (1998) did a meta analysis of 38
  experiments.
• Extroverts scored higher in 77 of them.
• But can the results be generalised?
• Experimental situations are very artificial.
• There might be other variables causing the
  effect.

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The tendency to find links (where there are none)

• Brugger and Graves (1997)
• Participants were presented with random dot
  pattern images and asked to identify the images
  within them.
• Believers were more able than non-believers to
  find non-existent images.

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Can you see the picture?

• There is an animal in the following slide, but
  not everyone will see it
• Can you?

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• Research in the 1980s and 90s found a link
  between psychic ability and the ability to be
  hypnotised. However, these findings are hard to
  replicate.

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schizotypy
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Schizotypal personality

• Schizotypal personality disorder is characterized
  by someone who has great difficulty in
  establishing and maintaining close relationships
  with others. A person with schizotypal
  personality disorder may have extreme discomfort
  with such relationships, and therefore have less
  of a capacity for them. Someone with this
  disorder usually has cognitive or perceptual
  distortions as well as eccentricities in their
  everyday behavior.
• Individuals with Schizotypal Personality Disorder
  often have ideas of reference (e.g., they have
  incorrect interpretations of casual incidents and
  external events as having a particular and
  unusual meaning specifically for the person).
  People with this disorder may be unusually
  superstitious or preoccupied with paranormal
  phenomena that are outside the norms of their
  subculture.

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Argument

• Schizotypy is a disorder and so it is
  questionable whether it can be regarded as a
  personality factor.