Caroline Watt

Belief in psychic ability and the misattribution hypothesis: A qualitative review

This paper explores the notion that people who believe in psychic ability possess various psychological attributes that increase the likelihood of them misattributing paranormal causation to experiences that have a normal explanation. The paper discusses the structure and measurement of belief in psychic ability, then reviews the considerable body of work exploring the relationship between belief in psychic ability, and academic performance, intelligence, critical thinking, probability misjudgement and reasoning, measures of fantasy proneness and the propensity to find correspondences in distantly related material. Finally, the paper proposes several possible directions for future research, including: the need to build a multi-causal model of belief; to address the issue of correlation versus causation; to resolve the inconsistent pattern of findings present in many areas; and to develop a more valid, reliable and fine-grained measure of belief in psychic ability.

There is nothing paranormal about near-death experiences: how neuroscience can explain seeing bright lights, meeting the dead, or being convinced you are one of them

Approximately 3% of Americans declare to have had a near-death experience. These experiences classically involve the feeling that ones soul has left the body, approaches a bright light and goes to another reality, where love and bliss are all encompassing. Contrary to popular belief, research suggests that there is nothing paranormal about these experiences. Instead, near-death experiences are the manifestation of normal brain function gone awry, during a traumatic, and sometimes harmless, event.

Creativity and ease of ambiguous figural reversal

Two studies examined the relationships between self-rated and objectively measured creative ability and ease of perceiving alternative interpretations of the ambiguous Duck-Rabbit figure. The studies found empirical support for what has previously been a largely analogical connection between figural reversal and creativity, using both self-rated trait creativity and objectively scored creative productivity. We discuss the hypothesis that executive functioning is the likely common cognitive factor linking perception of ambiguous figures and creative ability.

The Eyes Don’t Have It: Lie Detection and Neuro-Linguistic Programming

Proponents of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) claim that certain eye-movements are reliable indicators of lying. According to this notion, a person looking up to their right suggests a lie whereas looking up to their left is indicative of truth telling. Despite widespread belief in this claim, no previous research has examined its validity. In Study 1 the eye movements of participants who were lying or telling the truth were coded, but did not match the NLP patterning. In Study 2 one group of participants were told about the NLP eye-movement hypothesis whilst a second control group were not. Both groups then undertook a lie detection test. No significant differences emerged between the two groups. Study 3 involved coding the eye movements of both liars and truth tellers taking part in high profile press conferences. Once again, no significant differences were discovered. Taken together the results of the three studies fail to support the claims of NLP. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Misinformation lingers in memory: Failure of three pro-vaccination strategies

People’s inability to update their memories in light of corrective information may have important public health consequences, as in the case of vaccination choice. In the present study, we compare three potentially effective strategies in vaccine promotion: one contrasting myths vs. facts, one employing fact and icon boxes, and one showing images of non-vaccinated sick children. Beliefs in the autism/vaccines link and in vaccines side effects, along with intention to vaccinate a future child, were evaluated both immediately after the correction intervention and after a 7-day delay to reveal possible backfire effects. Results show that existing strategies to correct vaccine misinformation are ineffective and often backfire, resulting in the unintended opposite effect, reinforcing ill-founded beliefs about vaccination and reducing intentions to vaccinate. The implications for research on vaccines misinformation and recommendations for progress are discussed.

Judging a book by its cover: the unconscious influence of pupil size on consumer choice.

Past research suggests that men perceive women with large pupils as especially attractive. We employed an innovative methodology to examine whether this effect influences consumer decision-making. A popular psychology book was published with two slightly different front covers. Both covers contained the same photograph of a woman; however, the womans pupils on one cover were digitally enlarged. Readers indicated whether they were male or female, and whether they possessed the cover with small or large pupils. A significantly greater percentage of men than women had chosen the cover with the large pupils. None of the participants who attempted to guess the nature of the experiment was correct, suggesting that the influence exerted by pupil size was unconscious. These findings provide further support for the notion that peoples judgments are unconsciously swayed by pupil size, and demonstrate that this effect operates in a real world setting.

It's good to know: How treatment knowledge and belief affect the outcome of distant healing intentionality for arthritis sufferers

OBJECTIVE This small-scale study explores the role of expectancy in response to distant healing by testing two hypotheses: 1) Participants aware of placement in the healing condition will report greater relief than those aware they are not receiving distant healing; 2) Participants who express belief in distant healing will report greater relief than those expressing disbelief. METHODS Sixty patients were recruited from a rheumatology outpatient clinic, and through online support networks and blogs. Participants were randomly allocated to one of four conditions, those in the healing condition received distant healing from self-reported healers, while participants in the control condition received no intervention. Half of the participants knew their treatment allocation and half were blinded. The primary outcome measures were the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) and the Short-form McGill Pain Questionnaire. The Paranormal Belief Scale and a measure designed to assess belief in distant healing were given to determine if belief was correlated with healing outcomes. RESULTS Awareness of being a recipient of distant healing appeared to be associated with improved outcomes for those in the healing group. Medium to large improvements in GHQ scores (d=.76) and McGill Pain scores (d=.45) were calculated for the groups aware of their condition. Participants unaware that they were receiving healing showed no evidence of improved outcomes. Belief in healing did not have an effect on self-reported outcomes. CONCLUSIONS Improvements in reported pain and well-being appear to have been caused by knowledge of allocation in the distant healing condition rather than distant healing alone.

Options for Prospective Meta-Analysis and Introduction of Registration-Based Prospective Meta-Analysis

Many psychological researchers have recently recognized the need for preregistered, well-powered confirmatory studies (Nosek et al., 2012; Wagenmakers et al., 2012; Open Science Collaboration, 2015; van’t Veer and Giner-Sorolla, 2016). These practices should eliminate most undetected methodological biases or “questionable research practices” that can distort study findings (Ioannidis, 2005; Simmons et al., 2011; John et al., 2012; Kaplan and Irvin, 2015; Franco et al., 2016) and they allow researchers to document verifiably that they used good methodology. The present paper points out that the principles of preregistered, well-powered confirmatory research apply for meta-analyses as well as for individual studies. Typical retrospective meta-analyses resemble exploratory rather than confirmatory research. Decisions about studies to be included, statistical analyses, and moderating factors are made after the analysts know the outcomes of the studies. These retrospective decisions provide high potential for bias. Those wishing to challenge the findings of a retrospective meta-analysis easily find methodological decisions to debate. As Ferguson and Heene (2012) commented:

Lessons from the first two years of operating a study registry.

The need for improved methodology for psychological research has recently received much attention. The primary recommendation has been increased emphasis on confirmatory or replication research that is carefully planned with adequate sample size and is pre-registered (Wagenmakers et al., 2012; Nosek and Lakens, 2014; Simons et al., 2014). Study registration options are currently being developed and implemented. Based on our experience operating a study registry, we offer practical recommendations and observations that may be useful when implementing study registration more widely. In the fall of 2012, we opened a study registry at the University of Edinburghs Koestler Parapsychology Unit (KPU) (KPU Registry, 2012). Consistent with the standards for registering clinical trials (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, 2005), the registry focuses on public, prospective registration with specified registration information, and is not affiliated with a specific journal. The present discussion addresses methodology, not the findings of the registered studies. Parapsychological researchers have strived to utilize the established research methods of experimental psychology. This aspiration has resulted in increasing publications in high profile psychology journals (Bosch et al., 2006; Storm et al., 2010; Bem, 2011), but has not provided noticeable progress in resolving the debates about parapsychology. This situation was a significant factor in the recognition by psychologists that improved research methodology was needed (Pashler and Wagenmakers, 2012; Wagenmakers et al., 2012). Based on experience working in regulated medical research, the second author has long advocated that the standard research methods for academic psychology were not adequate for controversial research like parapsychology and that formal, pre-registered, well-powered confirmatory research was needed (Kennedy, 2004). The first author also pointed out the value of pre-registered confirmatory research (Watt, 2005). However, these proposals received little interest at that time. The limitations of the common psychological research methods became increasingly apparent over the years and we began developing the KPU Registry (2012). As we were starting to send notices that the registry was open, a group of articles was published (Pashler and Wagenmakers, 2012) that significantly increased awareness of the need for these practices. Discussions of study registration now usually focus on how registration should be done rather than whether registration is beneficial. In the present paper we make several recommendations for avoiding pitfalls and obtaining the full benefits of study registration.

Testing the implicit processing hypothesis of precognitive dream experience

Seemingly precognitive (prophetic) dreams may be a result of ones unconscious processing of environmental cues and having an implicit inference based on these cues manifest itself in ones dreams. We present two studies exploring this implicit processing hypothesis of precognitive dream experience. Study 1 investigated the relationship between implicit learning, transliminality, and precognitive dream belief and experience. Participants completed the Serial Reaction Time task and several questionnaires. We predicted a positive relationship between the variables. With the exception of relationships between transliminality and precognitive dream belief and experience, this prediction was not supported. Study 2 tested the hypothesis that differences in the ability to notice subtle cues explicitly might account for precognitive dream beliefs and experiences. Participants completed a modified version of the flicker paradigm. We predicted a negative relationship between the ability to explicitly detect changes and precognitive dream variables. This relationship was not found. There was also no relationship between precognitive dream belief and experience and implicit change detection.