What Psychology is not!

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Parapsychology

"Most sciences try to explain observable phenomena. Parapsychologists try to observe unexplainable phenomena.”

Parapsychology

It seeks to investigate the existence and causes of psychic abilities, near-death experiences, and life after death using the scientific method.

The study of certain reported but unsubstantiated events that have no presently known explanation.

ESP: Extrasensory Perception

ESP is the most testable and well known area of parapsychology

Often referred to as the “6th sense.”

3 main types of ESP - Telepathy - Clairvoyance - Precognition

A telepath would be a person with the paranormal ability to read others' thoughts and mental contents.

Telepathy

It may involve one person sending thoughts to another or perceiving another's thoughts without using any of the five recognized senses.

Term was coined by F. W. Myers in 1882.

Popularized by fictional novels and movies.

Clairvoyance

French for “clear seeing”

The ability to “see” information about people, objects, or locations without using any of the five senses.

Includes crystal gazing and tea leaf reading.

Knowledge of a future event or circumstance not obtained by inference or deduction, but by paranormal means.

Precognition is what most people mean when using the term “psychic.”

Precognition

Dream interpretation

Many people believe dreams predict the future

Ex. Joseph in the Old Testament

The Bible refers to precognitive dreams. There are about 15 in the old testament - most of which helped change the course of history, and there is the one mentioned earlier in this book of the Pharaoh who dreamed of 7 fat and 7 thin cattle. Joseph decoded it as referring to seven years of abundance followed by 7 years of famine - warning of future events.

'I had a recurring dream every night for a week. In the

dream my mother, who was dead in reality, paid a visit and

told me. 'You will not see Doug and Joy again. They will not

be here long'. Doug and Joy were my brother and his wife.

The dream was very disquieting and I wanted to warn my

brother but my husband told me not to be so 'silly'. Two

days after the last dream I bought the local paper and on

the front page were my brother and Joy. They had been

killed flying to Spain. I had no idea they had gone on

holiday.'

Testing ESP

“Because a good magician can do something shouldn't make you right away jump to the conclusion that it's a real phenomenon.” - Richard Feynman

Bem and Honorton’s Ganzfeld Studies

Ganzfeld experiments (ganzfeld is German for "whole field") have been around in some form since the 1930s. The studies that drew the most recent attention were done by Daryl Bem, a Cornell University psychologist, and Charles Honorton, a University of Edinburgh parapsychologist. Ganzfeld experiments involve covering a subject's eyes (generally with halves of ping-pong balls), bathing them in a red floodlight, and feeding white noise through headphones into their ears. This supposedly makes the subjects unable to receive sensory information. Then another person in a room shielded from the first subject tries to mentally send a specific picture. The first subject reports whatever imagery comes to mind and then tries to identify which of a group of pictures the second person was trying to send via ESP. The idea here is that ESP is such a weak force, it is normally drowned out by our other senses. So with all other sensory input suppressed, the subject should be able to better use ESP. Bem and Honorton used meta-analysis to combine the results of several studies, and found a hit rate of about 35%--enough above the expected chance rate of 25% to be significant, if true.

What the Skeptics Say

After thousands of experiments, a reproducible ESP phenomenon has never been discovered, or has anyone produced any individual who can convincingly demonstrate psychic ability.

A National Research Council investigation of ESP concluded that "the best available evidence does not support the contention that these phenomena exist.”

“the best scientific evidence does not justify that ESP -that is, gathering information about objects or thoughts without the intervention of known sensory mechanisms- exists.”

Parapsychologist also study:

Psychokinesis : Also called PK; direct mental interaction with physical objects, animate or inanimate.

Bio-PK : Direct mental interactions with living systems.

NDE : Near death experience; an experience reported by those who were revived from nearly dying. Often refers to a core experience that includes feelings of peace, OBE, seeing lights and other phenomena.

OBE : Out-of-body experience; the experience of feeling separated from the body, often accompanied by visual perceptions as though from above the body.

Reincarnation: The belief that we live successive lives, with primarily evidence coming from the apparent recollections of previous lives by very small children.

Haunting : Recurrent phenomena reported to occur in particular locations that include apparitions, sounds, movement of objects, and other effects.

Poltergeist: Large-scale PK phenomena often attributed to spirits, but which are now thought to be due to a living person, frequently an adolescent.