Experimenter differences in cognitive correlates of paranormal belief and in PSI

C Watt, R Wiseman

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract / Description of output

It has been claimed that experimenter effects may account for inconsistent findings in the study of cognitive correlates of paranormal belief and in psi research. The present study investigates these 2 strands by having 2 experimenters each administer to 30 participants a paranormal belief questionnaire, 2 tests of cognitive ability (a syllogistic reasoning task and Raven's Progressive Matrices), and an ESP task. For all 60 participants, a significant negative correlation was found between paranormal belief and syllogisms performance. This correlation was attributable to just I of the experimenters, and the experimenteres' belief-cognitive ability correlations significantly differed, thus demonstrating an experimenter effect for this measure. Additional post hoe analyses were conducted to clarify the mechanism underlying the belief-cognitive ability con-elation. There was no evidence of an experimenter effect for the ESP task.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)371-385
Number of pages15
JournalEuropean Journal of Parapsychology
Volume66
Issue number4
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2002

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • CRITICAL THINKING
  • EXTRASENSORY PERCEPTION
  • PERSONALITY MODERATORS
  • SCALE

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