Anomalistic Psychology - Intro and Psychokinesis research

Over the last four lessons we have introduced our Anomalistic Psychology topic and looked at research into PK - psychokinesis or 'psychic action' - moving or manipulating objects with will / mind power alone.

Here is the presentation from the introductory lesson.

You should have definitions of the following:

• Anomalous experience
• Paranormal
• Parapsychology
• Pseudoscience
• Anomalistic psychology
• ESP
• Ganzfeld
• Telekinesis
• Psychic
• Psychic mediumship
• Psychic healing
• Near death / out of body experience

The first section of the specification is as follows:

The study of anomalous experience

• Pseudoscience and the scientific status of parapsychology
• Methodological issues related to the study of paranormal cognition (ESP, including Ganzfeld) and paranormal action (psychokinesis)

We began this by looking at what makes science 'science' - in particular replicability, falsifiability, objectivity, experimental method and a consistent paradigm - you should be able to explain these with examples. Parapsychology is a pseudoscience (false science) because it fails on one or more of these, but then so does a lot of the rest of psychology! This makes these ideas helpful for evaluating other topics.

Here is a long presentation on pseudoscience, and here is a short one on science.

Macro PK research by parapsychologists has involved attempts to prove that spoon-bending and other similar 'powers' are real. The key issue here is one of falsifiability - if researchers are looking for evidence to confirm that an effect is real, rather than trying to falsify the claim, then it is easy for them to be taken in.

Micro PK involves influencing RNGs (random number generators), 'electronic coin flippers' and other electronic devices that produce random data. Research in this is more respectable, with some research apparently showing very significant results, albeit for very small effects.

Here is a presentation on PK.

You need notes on Walter Levy Jr. research with aparently psychokinetic rats (this is a good example of scientific fraud - deliberate cheating by a researcher) as well as the PK section of your textbook. Learn these for a test next Thursday (9th February).