DEFENSIVENESS AND PSI: PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS (CAROLINE WATT)

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DEFENSIVENESS AND PSI:
PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS'
Caroline Watt
Psychology Department
University of Edinburgh
ABSTRACT
The link between defensiveness and psi scoring has long interested
parapsychologists. Probably the most systematic research into this relationship has
examined individuals' scores on the Defense Mechanism Test (DMT) in relatiion to
their scores on an ESP task. These DMT-ESP studies have found that individuals
rated as high defensive on the DMT tend to score below chance on an ESP
measure, while those who are low defensive on the DMT tend to have above
chance ESP scores. This promising line of research has not been replicated or
followed-up by other parapsychologists,
methodological and theoretical difficulties associated with the DMT.f This outlines these difficulties and suggests future lines of research into the relationship
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between defensiveness and psi scoring.
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0
I would like to thank Deborah Delanoy, Julie Milton and Robert Morris for their
helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
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 1. INTRODUCTION
Humans seem to vary in how they operate under stress. Some excel in difficult
circumstances, yet others perform badly under the same conditions, and stress is one
factor which may contribute to human error :(Dixon, 1987). Unpleasant or threatening
information is one possible source of stress and a wide body of research has focused on
how individuals respond to such information; this is generally known as defensiveness
research. Some of this research has been conducted in the area of subliminal perception,
where individuals are presented, under difficult perceptual circumstances, with emotional
and neutral information. "Perceptually defensive" individuals take longer to report
awareness of emotional than neutral stimuli, while others who are "perceptually vigilant"
report awareness of the emotional stimuli more quickly than for neutral stimuli. Another
area of research into defensiveness originates from the Freudian theory of defense
mechanisms (the ego's various tactics to combat anxiety provoked by both internal and
external events). The Defense Mechanism Test (DMT) is perhaps the most extensively
researched instrument which purports to identify the operation of defense mechanisms in
both clinical and applied settings (Kline, 1981). It is of interest to parapsychologists
because of several studies which have compared individuals' DMT scores with their
scores on an ESP task. These studies, to be described in more detail below, have
repeatedly found a relationship between defensiveness and psi scoring, whereby low
defensive individuals tend to score above chance at an ESP task, and high defensive
individuals tend to score below chance at an ESP task. These findings suggest that the
DMT, or some other measure of defensiveness, may provide parapsychologists with a
valuable tool for examining the interaction between various situational, target-related,
cognitive and personality factors, and how this affects the direction and degree of
individuals' ESP scoring. Evidently a greater understanding of these factors might allow
their manipulation so as to enable parapsychologists to stabilize or improve psi scoring.
This paper outlines studies which have indicated a defensiveness-psi relationship,
focusing especially on the DMT-ESP studies. It points out the problems associated with
the use of the DMT and suggests future lines of research which might overcome these
problems and increase our understanding of the defensiveness-psi relationship.
2. DEFENSIVENESS AND PSI
Parapsychologists have used a variety of different measures relating defensiveness to
ESP scoring, as well as using a variety of definitions of defensiveness. For instance,
Braud (1976, 1977), Williams & Duke (1980), and Bellis & Morris (1980) used an
"openness questionnaire" which defined non-defensiveness as an ability to deal with
unpleasant or threatening material, and a self-disclosing attitude. All of these studies
have generally found the same trend towards more psi-hitting from more "open" subjects.
A subsequent study using a shorter version of this questionnaire found no significant
difference between psi-hitters and psi-missers on questionnaire scores, however the entire
sample consisted of low-defensive subjects (Sondow, Braud & Barker, 1982). Reports of
bizarre and chaotic dreams, considered to reflect tolerance for "uncensored primary
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process material and low defensiveness", were found to correlate significantly with psi
success (Sondow, 1987, p.43). Similarly, Roney-Dougal (1982) found that success at
both subliminal and extrasensory perception tasks was related to openness to experience
of altered states of consciousness. An unusual performance measure of defensiveness
was suggested by Stanford & Schroeter (1978): the degree to which subjects chose to
recline a chair for a word association ESP task. It was felt that low defensive individuals
might choose the fully reclined position, while high defensive individuals might feel
more vulnerable, threatened and less able to relax in such a position and should therefore
choose a more upright seating posture. This study found that subjects who fully reclined
the chair had significantly greater than chance ESP scores, while remaining subjects
scored non-significantly below MCE, although the difference between the two groups
was not significant.
Despite the variety of methods, measures and definitions of defensiveness seen in the
above studies, their results generally agree that less defensive subjects tend to psi-hit and
more defensive subjects tend to psi-miss. The reliability of this observation is further
strengthened by a group of studies which have relatively systematically examined the
defensiveness-psi relationship: the DMT-ESP studies.
2.1. The Defense Mechanism Test (DMT)
The DMT was developed in Sweden by Ulf Kragh (1955). Subjects are repeatedly
shown a picture meant to provoke defensiveness in a series of gradually lengthening
exposures. The picture usually portrays a central "hero" figure (of the same sex as the
subject) with an older, ugly "threat" figure emerging from the shadows behind the hero.
This picture series is preceded and followed by an exposure of a neutral "distractor"
picture (responses to which are not evaluated), and then a second picture is shown in
another series of successively lengthening exposures. Using psychoanalytic assumptions,
Kragh argued that through projection the subject would identify with the hero figure;
then defense mechanisms would be provoked by the apparent threat to the hero from the
secondary figure. Initial exposures are very brief and the subject is expected to gain only
fragmentary information about the picture content; however for each exposure he or she
is required to draw or describe what he or she thought was in the picture, until finally a
correct description is given. The various transformations and distortions which occur in
the subject's responses can be interpreted by a trained judge as signs of the operation of
Freudian defense mechanisms. The technique of presenting the stimulus picture serially
and in increasingly lengthy steps is based on the principle known as percept-genetics
(Kragh & Smith, 1970; Smith & Westerlundh, 1980). This theory suggests that
perception is a constructive or an adaptive process, and that it is possible to examine this
process by disrupting or "fractioning" perception through presenting the stimulus very
briefly and serially. It is thought that some of the perceptual distortions which occur
during the fractioning process may indicate the operation of defense mechanisms. At
very brief ("stimulus distal") exposures, the stimulus is highly ambiguous and the
subject's perception of it is thought to be dominated by internal, personality factors. At
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 longer ("stimulus proximal") exposures the stimulus becomes increasingly clear and early
perceptions are modified until an accurate description of the stimulus is given. The DMT
therefore has three basic theoretical assumptions: that through projection the subject
identifies with the hero figure; that the presence of the secondary figure activates
Freudian or neo-Freudian defenses; and that by fractioning perception these defenses can
be studied and scored.
In applied settings the DMT can reliably predict how people will react in stressful or
dangerous situations (for a review of these studies, see Cooper, 1988a). For instance,
Kragh (1970) describes two studies which successfully used the DMT to predict which
aviation cadets would be unsuccessful in their training, and to predict the training success
of Danish attack divers. For the former study, the inter-rater reliabilities (from .59 to .90)
were judged to be low to satisfactory compared with ordinary aptitude tests, and as good
as or better than those found with other projective tests. The most experienced DMT
rater achieved the highest validity. For the latter study, inter-rater reliabilities were
higher (from .69 to .92) and again there was a significant correlation between DMT
scoring and the criteria set for success or failure in training. The DMT has also been
successfully used to predict accident prone parachutists and deep sea divers (Vaernes,
1982; Vaernes & Darragh, 1982). Nowadays, the DMT is used as part of the standard
screening procedure for Scandinavian military personnel.
The above research indicates the ability of the DMT to predict susceptibility to stress. It
is less clear, however, whether the DMT is actually measuring the operation of Freudian
defense mechanisms (Cooper 1982, Cooper & Kline 1986, Kline 1987, Cooper 1988a.,
1988b.); I will enlarge on this point in section 2.3. below. For the moment, therefore,
one can only say that the DMT appears to be measuring responses to emotional or
threatening stimuli, and it has been successfully used in applied settings.
2.2. DMT-ESP Studies
Traditionally, there are 13 studies (listed in the Appendix) which have been regarded as
the principal DMT-ESP studies. These 13 have systematically compared people's DMT
scores with their performance on forced-choice ESP tasks. There are also a number of
other studies which have compared scores on the DMT (or approximations to it) with
ESP scores. These studies, it appears, have not been included in a recent meta-analysis
of DMT-ESP research (Haraldsson, Houtkooper & Hoeltje, 1987) because they are not
directly comparable with the principal studies. Some are merely pilot studies; some use
free-response rather than forced-choice methodologies; and some use "unofficial" or
exploratory versions of the DMT. For the sake of completeness, however, I will briefly
outline the findings of these additional studies before moving on to describe the 13
principal DMT-ESP studies.
Johnson & Hartwell (1979) conducted an exploratory study, testing no specific
hypotheses, relating defensiveness as measured by the DMT to success at trying to guess
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whether an agent was looking at a pleasant picture or a group of unpleasant pictures.
Post hoc analyses found that, contrary to expectation, the more defensive subjects were
non-significantly more accurate at guessing than the less defensive subjects. With
hindsight, however, the authors were critical of their experimental procedure (the
environment was noisy and the interactions with subjects were rushed) and in future they
would plan to work with extreme DMT scorers. Another pilot study (Johnson &
Nordbeck, unpublished) related subjects' DMT scores with their performance at an ESP
test of precognition with Zener card symbols as targets. Using an exploratory scoring
system for the DMT, it was found that significantly more psi-hitters showed relatively
undistorted perceptions of the DMT stimuli than did psi-missers. This study also found
another sign, non-significant but in the expected direction, that more defensive subjects
tended to psi-miss.
Selecting high and low scorers on their own "unofficial" version of the DMT to
participate in a subsequent free-response clairvoyance task incorporating a relaxation
tape: with an "impression period", Miller & York (1976) found no significant
"DMT"-ESP correlation, though results were in the expected direction. A follow-up
study by York (1977), presented at the 1976 PA Convention, gave subjects the DMT and
subsequently subjects participated in a free-response "ganzfeld" clairvoyance procedure.
(It is questionable whether this could be considered a standard ganzfeld, since subjects
were not exposed to red light, and did not hear continuous white or pink noise. Instead,
they listened to a muscular and mental relaxation tape concluding with five minutes of
white noise as an impression period, followed by a reminder to relax, then a second five
minute white noise impression period.) This study yielded significant psi scoring overall
(Z=2.92, p