CHARACTERISTICS OF SUCCESSFUL FREE-RESPONSE TARGETS: THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS (CAROLINE WATT)

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CHARACTERISTICS OF SUCCESSFUL FREE-RESPONSE TARGETS:
THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS
by
Caroline Watt
Psychology Department
University of Edinburgh
ABSTRACT
This paper describes theoretical ideas from a variety of
sources as to what might be expected to make a
successful free-response GESP target. Popular "how to
be psychic" literature, analyses of the characteristics of
spontaneous cases, and theoretical suggestions from
psychology and parapsychology show considerable
consistency in their suggestions about the likely features of
a good target. Two main recommendations appear to
emerge from these sources - good GESP targets should
be psychologically salient and physically salient: 1. targets
in parapsychological research should be meaningful, have
emotional impact and human interest - this may make
them salient in the minds of our experimental participants;
and, 2. targets should also be physically salient by
standing out from their backgrounds - properties such as
movement, novelty, brightness and contrast tend to make
stimuli physically salient.
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tWgvX8TFo' ERISTICS OF SUCCESSFUL FREE-RESPONSE TARGETS:
THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS, .
INTRODUCTION
Deborah Delanoy (1,988) examined the observations from some free-response
literature on what makes a good GESP target. Despite the flaws and contradictory
findings seen in this literature, it was possible to make a few general statements
about what experimenters believe constitutes a good GESP target. This paper can
be seen as forming the second half of our observations and thoughts about targets in
parapsychological research. Delanoy described what is currently believed about the
characteristics of successful GESP targets, concentrating on relatively formal
free-response experiments in parapsychology. In contrast this paper describes
theoretical suggestions as to what might be expected to make good targets, roaming
more widely (and consequently with less depth) over some varied literature which has
something relevant to say on this question.
As stressed by Delanoy, our combined efforts are far from comprehensive, being
primarily aimed at getting some idea of what kind of targets we should use in our
research in Edinburgh. To do this, we looked through some parapsychological
journals (JASPR, JP, JSPR, EJP, IJP), parapsychological abstracts, PA and PF
convention proceedings, RIP, Parapsychology Review, certain "relevant" books held
in the Koestler Chair library, and I have also examined some psychological research
which I consider relevant to the target question. Particular attention was given to
cases where authors made specific comments about the characteristics of successful
GESP targets.
Firstly, this
paper briefly considers so-called "Airport Project" books [named after
some research by Professor Robert Morris and his students using the kind of "how to
be psychic" books which can be found in airport bookshops (Morris, 1977)].
Secondly, the paper examines (again briefly) the kind of "target" information which
seems to be transmitted in people's spontaneous psychic experiences. Thirdly, this
paper considers some theoretical suggestions by parapsychologists as to what might
be expected to make a good GESP target, Then I make some suggestions of my
own on possible characteristics of a successful GESP target, derived from some of
the psychological literature on human-environment interactions, curiosity, attention,
and attributions of causality. The paper ends with a summary and conclusions.
1 I would like to thank Prof. Jim Crandall, Dr. Deborah Delanoy, Dr. Julie Milton, Prof.
Robert Morris and Mr. Robin Taylor for their valuable criticisms of and contributions to
this paper.
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1. "AIRPORT PROJECT" BOOKS
A skim through the 21 "how to be psychic" books which form part of the Koestler
Chair library, and which I felt might have some comments to make about targets,
found only 6 authors who made recommendations on what might make a good target
when training psychic powers. Even then, the authors invariably failed to define their
terms or write more than a sentence on the subject. These recommendations should
therefore be treated with caution, as they do not represent the findings of careful
scientific experimentation. On the other hand, they may have something to suggest
about popular ideas of what makes a good GESP target, and these ideas may be
based on some grain of truth.
Boswell (1969) recommended the use of ".mentally stimulating" targets. Also, he felt
that physical sensation and especially emotion were easily transmitted, and that
colour was picked up better than black and white. Edwards (no date) suggests that
faces and pictures make good targets. Denning & Phillips (1981) recommend trying
to transmit a message of emotional significance to the receiver. Likewise, Sherman
(1960) says that It is crucial to have some emotional content to the target. A related
area of interest is psychometry, where an object is used to provide further information
about its owner. Powell (1979) recommends using as a token object metal or leather
which has been close to the skin for a long time and therefore has had a chance to
build up some personal association with the owner. Finally, Burns (1981) feels the
following make good practice targets for developing GESP: pictures (rather than
words); something experienced vividly by the agent; flavours; body position of the
agent, or whether the agent is sitting in the light or dark; and sizes and weights of
objects.
There do seem to be some common themes in these authors' suggestions, though
the small sample covered here means that any patterns could be illusory: emotional
impact seems to be important (though little is said about whether the specific
emotions should be positive or negative ones); and targets conveying information
about events happening to humans seem popular.
2. SPONTANEOUS CASES
There is a considerable literature concerning the sort of information conveyed in
spontaneous cases of ESP, and so as a necessary constraint this section is limited to
observations from Sybo Schouten's (1979b, 1982)_. examination of two great
collections of spontaneous cases - Phantasms of the Living and the Louisa Rhine
collection.
Schouten made a quantitative analysis of these collections with a view to finding
patterns and relationships which might stimulate further experimental research. As he
pointed out, the two collections covered quite different cultures and eras, and were
gathered for different purposes. The collectors of the "Phantasms" cases took great
pains to investigate and verify their cases, and had a special interest in receiving
apparition reports as they felt these might lend support to their hypothesis that
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information transmitted in spontaneous cases came..from living rather than deceased
persons. In contrast, the\ Rhine collection took cases more or less at face value, with
the idea that inaccuracies' would cancel each other out over a large number of cases,
and the reports were gathered with the aim of providing suggestions for future
laboratory research (Schouten, 1986).
Excluding 150 of the cases (for reasons outlined in Schouten 1979b), Schouten
analysed the remaining "Phantasms" cases according to 32 previously-defined
categories (Schouten, 1979a) and found that about 75% of the cases involved death,
illness or injury to the target person, though a tendency to remember serious events
for longer than trivial events accounted for some of this pattern. Only 1.4% of cases
conveyed information about positive experiences of the target person.
Table 1 (from Schouten, 1979b, p.432)
Situation of target person at time of experience
death 66.7%
serious illness 12.5%
slight injuries 8.7%
serious material .5%
slight material .2%
trivial 10.0%
positive 1.4%
It is interesting to note that slight personal injuries were more often the topic of
spontaneous experiences (8.7%) than serious material damage (for example, a
building on fire, considerable financial loss) (0.5%). This suggests that negative
events related to humans are particularly strong targets in spontaneous cases.
Similar patterns are observed in Schouten's (1982) study of the Rhine collection,
where he analysed a representative saniple (15%) of cases (excluding PK). About
75% of the sample concerned negative events such as death, injury and accident
while almost no cases concerned material damage. As with the Phantasms study, a
tendency to remember and report serious events more often than non-serious events
accounts for some of this pattern. However, the distribution of negative events in the
Rhine collection differs from the Phantasms collection, with the former having fewer
cases involving death of the target person ($7.7% compared with 66.7%), but more
cases involving serious accidents and slight injuries. As Schouten points out, part of
this difference may be due to the Phantasms collectors' preference for apparition
cases.
In summary, Schouten's analyses of spontaneous case collections suggest that
negative events related to humans feature predominantly as "targets", although this
observation may be partly due to a reporting bias. It is significant that both the Rhine
and the Phantasms cases share this pattern despite the very different methods used
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to gather these collections. Evidently parapsychologists cannot inflict physical injury
on their experimental participants in order to simulate real-life spontaneous cases.
However, negative physical events are likely to have a negative emotional impact
both on the target person and on the percipient (especially if they are emotionally
close). Possibly, therefore, targets which have some strong negative emotional
impact on a person may have more success in a free-response experimental setting
than trivial or impersonal targets. Further, it might be expected that any emotional
impact is better than none, and so positive emotional targets could perhaps be
successfully used in experimental research - this might circumvent any researcher's
concern about the ethics of exposing experimental participants to unpleasant targets.
3. THEORETICAL SUGGESTIONS BY PARAPSYCHOLOGISTS
Although this is not a comprehensive review, I have tried to cover instances where
authors have made specific comments about likely successful targets. Their
suggestions range from post hoc inferences based on the kinds of targets which were
successful in experimental studies to observations of what makes a good target in
areas of research related to parapsychology.
Le Shan (1977) criticizes parapsychologists for often neglecting to consider the
theoretical assumptions underpinning their research. There has been little discussion,
he feels, of what kind of Information psi transmits even though there seems to be
wide agreement that psi does transmit information. As an example of how theorising
on this issue might influence our experimental design and choice of target material,
Le Shan considers the possibility that psi might depend on individual differences,
being better adapted for one purpose with one person and another purpose in a
different person. In this case, he suggests we should "customize" our targets by
examining experimental participants for their personal interests, philosophies,
preferred sensory modalities, and so on.
One of the few studies specifically to examine how target characteristics relate to psi
performance was conducted by Williams & Duke (1979), who go on to discuss
theoretical suggestions derived from their observations. Taking an evolutionary
perspective and asking what sort of information might have been most crucial to
communicate before language evolved in humans, they conclude that targets
reflecting "emotion, sex, survival, nature, food and other basic concerns might be
psychically perceived better than other types of targets" (p.1 5)
In a similar vein, a theoretical paper by Nash (19.80) on the characteristics of psi
communication considers that, to be effective, psi communication must convey
"meaningful information". Also, one of the Maimonides experimental participants, in a
letter to Ullman and Krippner, gave her overall impressions of a dream telepathy
series in which she had recently participated. She felt that the more "potent and
unusual" the target material the better, because with subjects who might be
subconsciously afraid of telepathy this kind of target might be less likejy to be "kept
out" (Ullman & Krippner, 1973). Perhaps unfortunately, it is very rare to find any
published opinions from the experimental participants-,who play a crucial part in
parapsychological research.
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William Braud (1982) questioned the assumption.which appears to underlie much of
our research - that psi Involves redundancy with our other known senses. For
instance, most of our `experimentation involves primarily visual targets such as art
prints. Braud suggests that it would be useful if psi provided information which is not
immediately evident to our other known senses. Such non-evident information could
concern the larger relationships in which a target participates, for example its history.
Similarly, Gertrude Schmeidler in her 1971 PA Presidential Address stated that the
ESP target Is not the physical stimulus variables, but the "meaning" of the target or
an "informational pattern" (Schmeidler, 1972). Braud conducted a pilot experiment to
test the theory of non-evident psi, where subjects were confronted with five identical
boxes containing, respectively, three control objects and two samples of hair cut from
one person's head. The hair samples were therefore related to each other, while the
control objects had no long-term association to a particular person. Subjects were
told which box was the "key" (one of the two boxes containing a hair sample) and,
while remaining unaware of the contents of all the boxes, were asked to rank the
remaining four boxes according to how "related" their contents were to the contents of
the key box. This study failed to achieve significant results, but this may still be an
idea worth further investigation.
The 1986 Esalen Conference discussed techniques to improve the reliable practical
use of psi abilities. Targ (1987) recommended that experimenters look for common
elements in the "psychic appearance" of targets (i.e. in mentations), and that they
should compose a glossary of typical target transformation errors. Tart (1987), at the
same conference, suggested that experimenters create a pool of "hot" targets - ones
that are consistently successful, either because they are correctly described or are
described in a recognisable fashion. In other words, what makes a good target would
be defined operationally.
So far, this section has considered research purely within parapsychology. Some
parapsychologists have taken a more interdisciplinary approach, however, and have
related the findings from other areas of research back to the question of what makes
a good GESP target.
Tart (1982) looked at how responses to targets are measured In conventional
psychophysiology, and asked what were the characteristics of a successful target in
this field of research: what kind of stimuli are most readily responded to, and easiest
to analyse. To be successful, a target stimulus in psychophysiology should stand
out from Its background. For targets In, parapsychological research, this may be
achieved by having the target stimulus occur suddenly, be discrete in time, and have
what Tart calls "psychic intensity" - the sense that the target is important and
meaningful within the experimental context. Tart suggests that we could instruct our
experimental participants on the significance of the target in order to give it the
required meaningfulness. Psychic intensity could also reflect an intense event
happening to an agent - a methodology which Tart finds attractive. The idea that a
good target should stand out from its surroundings is strongly supported by the
psychological literature on human attention which I will be introducing later.
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research concerns subliminal perception, or preconscious processing (Dixon, 1981).
Comparisons of psi and subliminal perception have noted that "right hemisphere"
processing facilitates subliminal perception (Roney-Dougal, 1981, 1986) - a
suggestion which has also been made for psi perception (e.g. Braud, 1975). This
could suggest that "right hemisphere targets" such as music, pictures and other
non-analytic targets might be preferable to "left-hemisphere" targets such as words
and numbers. Another parallel between psi and subliminal perception is that emotive
stimuli can evoke clear autonomic responses In the percipient In both cases
(Roney-Dougal, 1986).
Serena Roney-Dougal feels that the use of negative emotional targets is both morally
and methodologically unsound, partly because some of her subjects reported
unpleasant experiences while receiving target impressions and might psi-miss with
this kind of target, and also because of the perceptual defence phenomenon seen in
subliminal perception. Sondow, Braud & Barker (1981) considered that "defensive"
subjects might be likely to psi-miss with unpleasant targets, and devised an
"Openness Questionnaire" to identify such subjects. They found no significant
difference between the "openness" of receivers who psi-hit and those who psi-missed
in a ganzfeld study. Unfortunately, no extensive description is made of the format of
the questionnaire, or of whether or not it measures perceptual defensiveness as seen
in subliminal perception or some other, unspecified, form of defensiveness.
In perceptual defence, a person may raise his or her recognition threshold for a
threatening or unpleasant stimulus - in other words, they perceive it less clearly.
Roney-Dougal interprets this as being due to the person's desire or motivation not to
perceive the threatening stimulus, a motivation which, she feels, may underlie
psi-missing also. However, Dixon reports experiments which suggest that the
perceptual defence effect, rather than representing the motivations of the
experimental participant, is best explained in physiological terms: emotive stimuli
cause changes in a person's arousal level which in turn affect the sensitivity of the
sensory receptors.
Whatever the mechanism of the effect of emotional stimuli on recognition thresholds,
it is clear that this effect is not uni-directional. One aspect of perceptual defence
which, it seems, tends to be overlooked is sometimes called vigilance. While some
people may raise their recognition thresholds to emotional stimuli, others may actually
lower them (Brown, 1961; Dixon, 1981). Without digressing too much on the reasons
for this apparent contradiction, it has been found that there is a correlation between
personality-type and a person's tendency to raise or lower his or her recognition
threshold, with extroverts raising their thresholds,..-.and introverts lowering them
(Brown, 1961; Corcoran, 1965). This has some interesting implications for
parapsychology. While Roney-Dougal felt that the raised recognition thresholds seen
In perceptual defence might be linked with the psi-missing of her own subjects with
negative emotional targets, other researchers have found the opposite (Delanoy,
1988), and the vigilance effect suggests that some parapsychological subjects could
even psi-hit with unpleasant targets. Donn Byrne (1961, 1963, 1964) has developed
a "repression-sensitization" scale which indicates whether a person might be
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expected to be defensive or vigilant - perhaps parapsychologists could study the
mechanisms of psi-hitting and psi-missing with the help of this scale (Crandall,
personal communication, 1988).
Having looked at popular literature, spontaneous cases, and theoretical suggestions
from parapsychologists on what might make a good target, I will now make some
inferences from areas of psychology which I consider to be relevant to this discussion.
(1) EMOTIONAL RESPONSES TO STIMULI
Mehrabian and Russell (1974) outline a theoretical approach to environmental
psychology (the study of the impact of the physical and social environment on man's
emotions, attitudes and behaviour). In their own words, "Evidence suggests that
there are three basic emotional responses (pleasure, arousal, and dominance) (the
dominance-submissiveness dimension refers to the degree of control which
individuals feel they have over a situation or environment), combinations of which can
be used to describe adequately any emotional state (e.g. anxiety). By considering
their impacts on these basic emotional dimensions, the effects of diverse stimulus
components within or across sense modalities (e.g. color, pitch, texture, temperature)
can be readily compared" (preface, Mehrabian & Russell, 1974, [my italics]).
There is evidence of considerable intermodality of human response to stimulation -
that is, stimulation in one sensory modality may affect perception in another. For
instance, people who visualize auditory stimulation tend to agree in associating colour
names and mood adjectives with types of music: "Such persons were found to
visualize exciting music in bright forms or sharp and angular figures, and slow music
in rounder forms" ( p. 11, Mehrabian & Russell, 1974). The three basic emotional
responses to stimuli reported above (pleasure, arousal and dominance) are seen as
providing a measure with which to compare people's varied intermodal responses to
stimuli. This is relevant because it suggests that an additional important aspect to.
our consideration of'what might be expected to be salient features of a GESP target
is not only the actual physical characteristics of the target, but also the emotional
response (a combination of pleasure, arousal and dominance) which that target elicits
in the percipient.
Further, the theory may provide a methodological framework for the consideration of
the impact of various target characteristics on our experimental participants (Delanoy,
personal communication, 1988). A semantic differential scale is used to measure
people's emotional state in particular settings, or to measure their characteristic
emotions over time. Mehrabian and Russell's scale comprises 18 adjective pairs
describing various aspects of pleasure, arousal and dominance, and their subjects
are asked to mark on the scale the degree to which one or other of the adjective pair
most accurately reflects their feelings. Semantic differential scales have already been
used in parapsychology, though for different purposes than suggested here. McBain
et al (1970) used Osgood's Semantic Differential to find pairs of people with common
affective reactions to the same concept, though, contrary to their expectations, they
found no relation between the degree to which people agreed in their reactions to the
target stimulus and their GESP scores with that stimulus. Sondow, Braud & Barker
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(1981) used Osgood's Semantic Differential as one of several measures of target
picture emotionality. However, it should be possible to make more extensive use of
the semantic differential, and it Is planned to investigate further how a scale such as
Mehrabian & Russell's could be adapted to measure the reactions of
parapsychological subjects to targets and to provide a method. to standardise
descriptions of successful targets.
The second aspect of Mehrabian and Russell's theory of environmental psychology
which may be relevant to our discussion about targets is their consideration of how
emotional reactions to physical environmental stimuli are related to the concept of
approach-avoidance. This they define broadly as including "... physical movement
toward, or away from, an environment or stimulus, degree of attention,
exploration ... favourable attitudes such as.. .preference or liking..." (p.96, Mehrabian &
Russell, 1974). Arousal is seen as a mediator of approach-avoidance behaviour. A
literature review suggests that approach-avoidance is an inverted-U-shaped function
of arousal: an organism seeks an optimum level of arousal - whether or not it
approaches or avoids a stimulus depends on how arousing the stimulus is, and
extremely high or low levels of arousal are avoided.
In animals, there is a tendency to explore the unfamiliar. When the stimuli are
fear-inducing, animals repeatedly withdraw and approach the stimuli. Mehrabian and
Russell note that the animals are maintaining an optimum level of arousal with this
behaviour. Similar behaviour is seen in human children and adults (for references
see Mehrabian & Russell, 1974; Berlyne, 1960). Anecdotally, humans do seem to
have a penchant for voluntarily and repeatedly exposing themselves to negative
emotive and fear-inducing stimuli - hair-raising roller coaster rides and horror films, for
example.
The idea of approach-avoidance being mediated by arousal relates to the
consideration above (re perceptual defence and vigilance) of the merits of using
negative emotive targets in parapsychology. It suggests that people might have
some attraction to negative emotive targets insofar as these targets tend to increase
arousal. Too much arousal, however, will cause people to withdraw from an
unpleasant target. On the other hand the use of neutral and bland GESP targets is
unlikely to arouse our experimental participants at all, consequently failing to elicit
approach. Of course, positive emotive targets would also be expected to influence
the arousal of our subjects and to elicit approach-avoidance behaviour.
A second area of psychological research which may make suggestions relevant to the
question of what makes a good GESP target concerns the characteristics of stimuli
which attract people's attention.
(2) STUDIES OF ATTENTION
While the theory discussed in the preceding section suggested that stimuli could be
described in terms of people's basic emotional responses to them, other research has
examined characteristics of the stimuli themselves, to see what stimulus features tend
to attract attention. Insofar as it may be possible to generalise from research on
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I r asses to currently unknown psi, processes, this research may be
relevant to the discussion here as it could suggest the kind of target features which
might attract the attention of our experimental percipients in free-response GESP
tasks.
Berlyne (1970) noted the difficulty of even defining what is meant by the word
"attention". In his series of experiments (described in Berlyne, 1960) on curiosity,
conflict and arousal he seems to use an operational definition. These experiments
typically presented the subject simultaneously with several stimuli and observed the
percipient's eye fixation movements - the Inference being that attention was given to
the stimulus which attracted most eye fixation (e.g. Berlyne, 1958). Other
experiments used a different measure of attention, allowing subjects to expose
themselves to very brief sights of stimulus: pictures as many times as they liked -
presumably attention was attracted by the stimuli which were chosen to be seen most
often by subjects. The characteristics of stimuli which seemed to influence direction
of attention included: intensity; brightness; contrast; colour; novelty; complexity; and
incongruity.
Intensity. Berlyne (1960) states that the intensity of stimulation is seen in "the
frequency of nerve impulses and the number of fibers activated" (p.170) in the
reticular arousal system. Generally, large stimuli are more intense than small
stimuli; "warm" colours (e.g. red) are more intense and arousing than "cold"
colours (e.g. blue); high-frequency sounds are more intense than low
frequency sounds; and (in cats and monkeys) painful stimuli are most intense,
followed by proprioceptive, auditory, and visual stimuli respectively. Berlyne
found that attention was attracted by relatively intense stimuli - for example, to
larger than to smaller circles; to brighter than to dimmer visual stimuli.
Intensity is related to brightness, which also appears to attract attention.
Colour. Infants preferred looking at colour to looking at black and white
stimuli. Adults' attention was attracted more to a coloured stimulus than to a
white one (Berlyne, 1960).
Contrast. It was found that attention was attracted to a lighter stimulus on
black and medium grey backgrounds, and to a darker stimulus on a white
background. So, contrast with the background attracted attention. Above we
saw that brightness also attracts attention. When presenting subjects with
stimuli which differed from their background to equal extents but in different
directions, it was found that subjects were more likely to respond to the lighter
stimulus - that is, in the absence of a contrast difference, brightness was a
secondary determinant of attention (McDonnell, 1968).
Novelty. This can be defined as an unusual combination of parts of various
objects, or a change from the kind of stimulus to which the organism has
recently been exposed (Stotland & Canon, 1972). It has repeatedly been
found that novel stimuli attract more attention than familiar stimuli (e.g. Langer,
Fiske, Taylor & Chanowitz, 1976; Berlyne, 1958), though the effect of novelty
declines over time (perhaps as the subject habituates to the stimulus and
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arousal drops). Berlyne (1960) considers attention to be most effectively
attracted by a stimulus whose novelty is often renewed. Novelty is related to
change or surprisingness of a stimulus (Stotland & Canon, 1972). On surprise,
Berlyne says "In experiments on learning, orienting behaviour (a set of
psychological and physiological responses through which the organism "sits up
and takes notice" when an aspect of its environment changes) is often found to
be strengthened by an unheralded change in experimental conditions" (p. 98,
Berlyne, 1960, [my italics]). This observation strongly resembles one made
from a parapsychological experiment by Roll & Harary (1972), that "some of
the more interesting results came when unannounced changes in the
experiment were made spontaneously", and similar results occurred "when
there was a last-minute change in,the target materials" (p.4).
Complexity. This can be defined as the number of distinguishable parts which
a stimulus possesses, the degree of difference among these parts, and the
difficulty of Integrating the parts involved (Stotland & Canon, 1972).
Incongruity, evidently related to both complexity and novelty, was found by
Berlyne (1958) to attract attention. Under examination, the distinction between
complexity and novelty grows blurred, and, as Stotland & Canon point out,
both involve stimulus change. Humans seem compelled to attend to stimulus
change - a response which might be expected to be evolutionarily adaptive.
Infants are attracted to relatively complex visual patterns-and the attention of
adults is also determined partly by stimulus complexity (Berlyne, 1960; Jeffrey,
1968).
This research on the determinants of selective attention also states that, consistent
with the discussion earlier of approach-avoidance behaviour, people seek an optimum
level of arousal: either too much or too little arousal is unpleasant for individuals, and
factors such as stimulus novelty, complexity, intensity and incongruity are seen as
contributing to an organism's arousal.
The research outlined above tended to use fairly sterile tachistoscopic stimulus
presentation, however more recent studies of human causal judgement in social
situations have shown that these early findings can generalise to much more realistic
and complex situations. Shelley Taylor and Susan Fiske (1978), reviewing the
literature on the influence of salient stimuli on people's causal judgements, found that
bright, contrasting,.,moving and novel stimuli all attract attention in social situations
(e.g. Langer et. al., 1976; McArthur & Post, 1977). Movement can be regarded as
simply another aspect of stimulus complexity/novelty, and we have already seen that
stimulus change (a feature of movement) compels attention.
As it is not yet clear whether the process of psi perception is similar to perception
with our known senses it may be argued that the above findings from psychology on
attention-grabbing stimulus characteristics may not generalise to the "psi stimulus".
However, it would seem to be evolutionarily adaptive for any organism to attend to
bright, contrasting, moving and novel stimuli as such features may indicate either food
or threat to the organism. Insofar as psi perception may be an evolved attribute or
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aft
~, we can expect it to have become especially sensitive to survival-related
stimulus features such as those outlined above.
For parapsychologists, these findings suggest that: I. stimuli which are likely to
attract the attention of Our experimental participants and consequently make
successful GESP targets may possess the following characteristics in some (as yet
unspecified) degree or form: movement, complexity, novelty, incongruity, contrast,
colour, brightness and Intensity; and, 2. these attention-determining target
characteristics must be present at moderate levels - too much and our subjects will
be overwhelmed, too little and they will be bored.
SOME LIMITATIONS OF THIS PAPER
Although this paper may seem to have rambled over a wide range of subjects, it has
mainly been restricted to a consideration of targets' physical features, and has not
examined in any depth the idea that "the target" is in part defined by the experimental
participant's own personal reactions to and interactions with it. Taylor & Fiske (1978)
considered some ways in which the salience of a stimulus may be influenced by
factors independent of the actual physical stimulus characteristics, and the following
table summarizes their findings.
Table 2 (after Taylor & Fiske, 1978)
Determinants of Selective Attention
Properties of Stimuli
Brightness
Contrast
Movement
Novelty
Properties. of Situation
Environmental Cues
Instructional Set
Properties of Perceiver
Temporary Need States
Enduring Individual Differences In Traits, Reinforcement Schedules, Schemas
As Table 2 suggests, properties of a situation and properties of the perceiver may
influence what aspects of an individual's environment, or a free-response target,
appear as salient to any Individual. For instance, if a person is hungry then food will
become especially salient to that individual. An Individual's cognitive schemata will
play some part in determining the direction of his or her attention (Stotland & Canon,
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1972). If a person has a phobia of spiders, then a picture of a spider will be very
salient to that person, while it may have no impact on another person who has a
phobia about water. If we as researchers instruct our experimental participants to
attend to one aspect of their environment, then that feature will become salient to
them. So, we see that there are many influences on what makes target
characteristics grab attention, and it is unwise to restrict our view to physical target
characteristics alone. Nevertheless, these conclusions about the salience of physical
target characteristics remain valid so long as it is appreciated that they do not give
the whole picture.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
The present paper considered theoretical ideas of what might be expected to make a
successful free-response GESP target.
1. Popular literature on the training of psychic powers suggested that
emotional impact and human interest content made good'targets. A survey of
patterns seen in spontaneous cases seemed to support these observations:
the bulk of the information transmitted concerned negative events related to
humans, though reporting bias accounted for some of this pattern. While
parapsychologists could not physically harm their subjects, it was suggested
that the emotional impact seen in spontaneous cases could be incorporated
into target material for experimental research, as observations from
spontaneous cases suggested that such targets might be expected to have
more success in an experimental setting than trivial or impersonal targets.
2. Varied theoretical suggestions by parapsychologists on what might make a
good target suggested that meaningful, emotional and potent targets could be
expected to be successful in GESP research. Studies of characteristics of
good targets in conventional psychophysiology suggested that targets in
parapsychology should stand out from their background. This might be
achieved by having the target event occur suddenly, be discrete in time and be
"important" to the percipient.
Several parallels were noted between subliminal and psi perception. From
perceptual defence and vigilance effects seen in subliminal perception it was
suggested that, paradoxically, while some parapsychological subjects might be
expected to psi-miss with negative emotional targets, others might psi-hit with
such targets. It was suggested that the Repression-Sensitization Scale,
diagnostic of an individual's tendency to be defensive or vigilant, might be
useful to parapsychologists wishing to pursue these ideas.
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p i o areas of psychological research relevant to the target question were
described. Firstly, from environmental psychology it was suggested that
greater attention should be given to the subject's emotional response to the
target stimuli, and that, from the connection between arousal and
approach-avoidance, the use of negative emotive stimuli could on the whole be
more likely to arouse our experimental participants and attract their attention
than neutral or bland stimuli. Secondly, research on attention found that
attention was attracted by stimuli which were relatively intense, bright,
contrasting, colourful, novel, complex and incongruous - though only at
moderate levels. Similarly, social psychology, using more complex and
realistic settings than attention research, found that bright, moving, contrasting
and novel stimuli attracted attention.
4. Some of the limitations of this paper were noted: there was a narrow focus
on physical target characteristics without considering inevitable influences of
properties of the perceiver and the environment on what aspects of the target
stimuli would appear salient to any individual. Nevertheless, the findings
presented here were valid in their relevance to considerations of the target
question given that this paper does not present a comprehensive and
exhaustive overview of the subject of targets In parapsychological research.
We have seen that there is some consistency In the suggestions of popular "psychic
training" literature, spontaneous cases, and parapsychologists' theoretical ideas on
the likely characteristics of successful GESP targets. These findings appear to
suggest that our targets should be psychologically salient and physically salient:
1. targets in parapsychological research should be meaningful, have emotional
impact and human Interest - this may make them salient in the minds of our
.experimental participants; 2. targets should also be physically salient by standing
out from their backgrounds - properties such as movement, novelty, complexity,
incongruity, brightness and contrast tend to make stimuli physically salient.
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