Richard Wiseman

Encoding Strategies Dissociate Prefrontal Activity from Working Memory Demand

It is often proposed that prefrontal cortex is important in organization and control of working memory contents. In some cases, effective reorganization can decrease task difficulty, implying a dissociation between frontal activity and basic memory demand. In a spatial working memory task, we studied the improvement of performance that occurs when materials can be reorganized into higher level groups or chunks. Structured sequences, encouraging reorganization and chunking, were compared with unstructured sequences. Though structured sequences were easier to remember, event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) showed increased activation of lateral frontal cortex, in particular during memory encoding. The results show that, even when memory demand decreases, organization of working memory contents into higher level chunks is associated with increased prefrontal activity.

Does Psi exist? Lack of replication of an anomalous process of information transfer.

D. J. Bem and C. Honorton (1994) recently presented in this journal a set of ganzfeld extrasensory perception (ESP) experiments conducted by C. Honorton that appeared to support the existence of a communication anomaly. In this article, the authors present a meta-analysis of 30 ganzfeld ESP studies from 7 independent laboratories adhering to the same stringent methodological guidelines that C. Honorton followed. The studies failed to confirm his main effect of participants scoring above chance on the ESP task, Stouffer z = 0.70, p = .24, one-tailed; M effect size (z/N1/2) = 0.013, SD = 0.23. The new studies included replication attempts of 3 out of 5 internal effects reported as statistically significant by D. J. Bem and C. Honorton. Only 1 was confirmed, and the authors found that D. J. Bem and C. Honorton were mistaken in describing the original effect as being statistically significant. The authors conclude that the ganzfeld technique does not at present offer a replicable method for producing ESP in the laboratory.

Failing the Future: Three Unsuccessful Attempts to Replicate Bem's ‘Retroactive Facilitation of Recall’ Effect

Nine recently reported parapsychological experiments appear to support the existence of precognition. We describe three pre-registered independent attempts to exactly replicate one of these experiments, ‘retroactive facilitation of recall’, which examines whether performance on a memory test can be influenced by a post-test exercise. All three replication attempts failed to produce significant effects (combined n = 150; combined p = .83, one-tailed) and thus do not support the existence of psychic ability.

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.

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.

It's still bending: Verbal suggestion and alleged psychokinetic ability

Some alleged psychics appear to be able to deform metallic objects, such as keys and cutlery, by thought alone. This paper describes two studies that examined whether one aspect of these demonstrations could be created by verbal suggestion. In the first study, participants were shown a videotape in which a fake psychic placed a bent key on a table. Participants in one condition heard the fake psychic suggest that the key was continuing to bend, whilst those in the other condition did not. Participants in the suggestion condition were significantly more likely to report that the key continued to bend. These findings were replicated in the second study. In addition, participants who reported that the key continued to bend displayed a significantly higher level of confidence in their testimony than others, and were significantly less likely to recall that the fake psychic had suggested the continued bending of the key. Neither experiment revealed any differences between participants who expressed a prior belief in the paranormal compared with those who did not. The paper discusses the implications of these results for the psychology of suggestion and the assessment of eyewitness testimony for anomalous events.

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.

Testing alleged mediumship: Methods and results

Mediums claim to be able to communicate with the deceased. Such claims attract a considerable amount of public interest and, if valid, have important implications for many areas of psychology. For over 100 years, researchers have tested alleged mediums. This work has obtained mixed results and provoked a considerable amount of methodological debate. This paper reviews the key issues in this debate, describes how the authors devised a method of testing that aimed to prevent the many problems that have hindered past research, and how they then used this method to test several professional mediums. The results of this work did not support the existence of genuine mediumistic ability. Competing interpretations of these results are discussed, along with ways in which the methodology presented in the paper could be used to assess conceptually similar, but non-paranormal, claims made in clinical, occupational and forensic contexts.

Predicting Smartphone Operating System from Personality and Individual Differences

Android and iPhone devices account for over 90 percent of all smartphones sold worldwide. Despite being very similar in functionality, current discourse and marketing campaigns suggest that key individual differences exist between users of these two devices; however, this has never been investigated empirically. This is surprising, as smartphones continue to gain momentum across a variety of research disciplines. In this article, we consider if individual differences exist between these two distinct groups. In comparison to Android users, we found that iPhone owners are more likely to be female, younger, and increasingly concerned about their smartphone being viewed as a status object. Key differences in personality were also observed with iPhone users displaying lower levels of Honesty-Humility and higher levels of emotionality. Following this analysis, we were also able to build and test a model that predicted smartphone ownership at above chance level based on these individual differences. In line with extended self-theory, the type of smartphone owned provides some valuable information about its owner. These findings have implications for the increasing use of smartphones within research particularly for those working within Computational Social Science and PsychoInformatics, where data are typically collected from devices and applications running a single smartphone operating system.

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.