Experimenter effects and the remote facilitation of attention focusing: Two studies and the discovery of an artifact

C Watt, C Brady

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract / Description of output

Two studies explored how participants' beliefs about their experimenter's psi research track record might affect their responses on questionnaire measures of belief in psi, confidence of success at a psi task, perceived and actual success at the psi task, and evaluations of the experimenter. Participants (60 in each study) were allocated to either a positive expectancy or a negative expectancy condition. The psi task was remote facilitation of focusing of attention. The authors predicted fewer distractions on the focusing task during help Periods compared with control periods and that positive expectancy participants would have greater psi scores than negative expectancy participants. Because of a computer artifact, psi results could not be reported for Study 1. Study 2 found no indication of remote facilitation of attention focusing and no difference between psi scores in the positive compared with the negative expectancy condition. In both studies, positive expectancy participants consistently gave more positive experimenter evaluations than negative expectancy participants; this trend was statistically significant for ratings of the experimenter's ability to instill confidence in the task for both studies combined. The article describes the discovery of the artifact in Study 1 and relates this to the question of experimenter effects.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)49-71
Number of pages23
JournalEuropean Journal of Parapsychology
Volume66
Issue number1
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2002

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