A study of non-intentional psi in a reciprocal helping task: Testing PMIR

We tested a theoretical model and attempted a conceptual replication of a previous study suggesting that people may nonintentionally use psi to help others avoid unpleasant outcomes and instead experience pleasant outcomes. The model predicted: overall helping, measured by performance on a nonintentional psi task; more helping between friends than between strangers; less helping when it was costly to do so; a negative correlation between neuroticism and helping; and a positive correlation between openness and helping. Forty friend pairs and forty stranger pairs participated. Each participant did a nonintentional psi task, performance on which could help the other. There was a nonsignificant tendency towards helping on the nonintentional psi task t(79) = 1.117. The effect of the relationship between participant pairs was nonsignificantly contrary to the predicted direction, F(1, 76) = 0.355, and there was no significant effect for cost of helping, F(1, 76) = 0.003. There was a weak correlation in the predicted direction between neuroticism and helping, r, (79) = -.183, and no correlation was found between openness and helping, r, (79) = -.006. Exploratory analysis compared nonintentional psi and perceived luckiness.