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The Effect of Pseudo-Psychic Demonstrations As Dependent on Belief in Paranormal Phenomena and Suggestibility

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The Effect of Pseudo-Psychic Demonstrations As Dependent on Belief in Paranormal Phenomena and Suggestibility Personality and Individual Differences 36 (2004) 365–380 www.elsevier.com/locate/paid The effect of pseudo-psychic demonstrations as dependent on belief in paranormal phenomena and suggestibility Andreas Hergovich* Institute of Psychology, University of Vienna, Liebigg 5, Vienna 1010, Austria Received 1 July 2002;received in revised form 15 December 2002;accepted 4 February 2003 Abstract This paper describes two experiments which investigate the effects of pseudo-psychic demonstrations (i.e. conjuring tricks which could be misinterpreted as genuine paranormal phenomena). In the first study, a demonstration of a supposed medium was presented to 91 subjects individually, in which the playing card selected by a subject was identified ‘‘telepathically’’. It was found that hypnotic suggestibility and belief in paranormal phenomena had a large effect on how the demonstrations were assessed. Suggestible persons or believers in paranormal phenomena were more impressed by a phenomenon and were more likely to rule out the possibility of fraud than were persons who were less suggestible or believed less in paranormal phenomena. In the second study, two trick demonstrations were shown. In each case, half the subjects (n=68) were given the information that this was a magic trick, and the other half were told that this was a paranormal demonstration by a medium. The results with respect to belief in paranormal phenomena confirm the results of Study 1. Believers in paranormal phenomena, as compared with sceptics, tended to view the demonstrations as examples of paranormal phenomena, regardless of the information they had received, they tended to rule out the possibility of fraud and had a greater tendency to react with amazement. Interrogative suggestibility had no effect. # 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Conjuring tricks;Pseudo-psychic demonstrations;Belief in paranormal phenomena;Hypnotic suggest- ibility;Interrogative suggestibility 1. Introduction Conjuring tricks are to this day associated with the history of parapsychology, i.e. the endea- vour to scientifically comprehend paranormal phenomena such as extra-sensory perception or * Tel./fax: +43-1-4277-478-36. E-mail address: [email protected] (A. Hergovich). 0191-8869/03/$ - see front matter # 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0191-8869(03)00102-8 366 A. Hergovich / Personality and Individual Differences 36 (2004) 365–380 psycho-kinesis. During the age of Spiritism in the nineteeth Century virtually every medium was accused of fraud, and the majority of mediums were also caught using (usually very simple) manipulations to achieve their ‘‘inexplicable’’ phenomena. Prominent mediums such as Eusapio Palladino, Florence Cook or Henry Slade were found guilty of deception (Beloff, 1993). Although parapsychology since the beginning of the twentieth Century has concentrated more on the experimental, quantitative investigation of the paranormal (parapsychology refers to Rhine’s Revolution), there were, and still are some mediumistic tricksters who are in the public eye and have been scientifically examined. The best-known example is Uri Geller, who set off a veritable ‘‘spoon-bending hysteria’’ in the 1970s and whose effects, in the opinion of most scientists (even the parapsychologists) were accomplished by means of simple magic tricks. However, a number of parapsychologists have endorsed such ‘‘psychics’’ as having genuine psychic powers (e.g. Cox, 1993). Moreover, as a somewhat naive stance, other parapsychologists seriously wanted to investigate the paranormal powers of professional magicians (as was the case with Beloff and the mentalist Glenn Falkenstein, whose tricks can easily be studied by buying one of his marketed videos, Beloff, 1984). As Palmer (1988, p. 109) noted: ‘‘Psychic fraud (...) has been the single most important factor in damaging the reputation of parapsychology’’ (for an overview of the relationship between parapsychology and trickery see Hansen, 1990). Although since Max Dessoir (1893) or Alfred Binet (1894) psychologists have shown some interest in conjuring (e.g. Gregory, 1982;Kelley, 1980;Nardi, 1984 ) there still is some lack of a general theoretical framework for deception (Hyman, 1989;Wiseman, 1996 ). Existing attempts in the field of conjuring either try to develop the ‘‘folk psychology’’ of magicians or give valuable information on the art of conjuring, i.e. how to perform tricks to really impress the audience (excellent treatises for psychologists as well as magicians provide Lamont & Wiseman, 1999; excellent sources for magicians are, e.g. Fitzkee, 1975;Tamariz, 1988 or Ortiz, 1995 ). However, the question of why it is so fascinating (at least for some people) to see a conjurer perform, is not yet fully understood (the answer often heard, that we want to see real magic, rather begs the question than answering it). In contrast to the elaborate research on young children, magical beliefs and reactions to con- juring tricks (Phelps & Wooley, 1994;see also Vol. 12 from 1994 of the British Journal of Devel- opmental Psychology, which focuses on this theme), there are few empirical studies on the effects of conjuring tricks with adults. Singer and Benassi (1981) conducted a series of experiments in which an amateur conjurer performed various magic tricks in front of introductory psychology classes. Regardless of whether the performer was introduced as a magician or a genuine psychic, nearly three-quarters of the subjects believed strongly that the performer was psychic. Smith (1992–1993) in his study showed 40 subjects a video-taped demonstration of ostensible psychic ability (a psychic surgeon was filmed). Believers in paranormal phenomena and non-believers did not differ in their observation of the demonstration. Wiseman and Morris (1995) also showed their subjects videotapes of supposed paranormal phenomena (guessing ESP cards by means of telepathy, bending or breaking a fork by means of psychokinesis). The tapes actually showed a magician demonstrating tricks. Believers in paranormal phenomena (so-called sheep, Schmeidler & McConnell, 1958) viewed the psychokinesis demonstration as significantly more ‘‘para- normal’’ than did disbelievers (goats), while the differences for guessing ESP cards were not significant. In a study by Ru¨ beling and Wachholz (1997), the subjects (n=32) were shown a ‘‘psycho-magnetic’’ effect within the context of a demonstration of perception experiments. The A. Hergovich / Personality and Individual Differences 36 (2004) 365–380 367 experimenters collected the explanations the subjects gave for the phenomenon. Contrary to their expectations, no influence of belief in paranormal phenomena was observed in the explanations. It was shown, however, that subjects with ‘‘physical contact’’ with the experimenter during the experiment gave non-physical explanations (naming a mental phenomenon such as ‘‘my concen- tration influenced the magnet’’) significantly more often as compared to physical explanations (in addition to the explicit mention of physical principles or causes, statements such as ‘‘This is a trick’’ is assigned to this category), than did subjects ‘‘without physical contact’’. As conjuring tricks were and are the method of choice in simulating spectacular paranormal phenomena, it made sense to investigate whether there is a connection between the effects of conjuring tricks and the belief in paranormal phenomena. The starting assumption was the hypothesis that persons who believe in paranormal phenomena are more likely to be impressed by magic tricks than are sceptical persons. The current study should clarify this issue, as the studies previously undertaken have revealed inconclusive results. As reported, Singer and Benassi (1981) were the first who demonstrated the general tendency to view magicians’ feats as paranormal effects. While Smith (1992–1993) as well as Ru¨ beling and Wachholz (1997) found no differences between believers in paranormal phenomena and non-believers, in the study of Wiseman and Morris (1995) there were indications that believers in paranormal phenomena viewed their demonstrations (at least the demonstration of psycho-kinesis) as more paranormal than did sceptics. The hypothesis of a greater effect of pseudo-psychic demonstrations on believers in psi is supported by research on social cognition, where numerous studies have found an effect of interpreting or seeking information in favour of pre-existing beliefs or expectations (for an over- view s. Nickerson, 1998). As conjuring tricks can be demonstrated especially well using suggestion (whereby the demon- strator exerts an especially suggestive effect by his or her appearance alone or by making sug- gestive claims, such that believing in the trick is important for it to work), it also made sense to examine the influence of suggestibility on the effects of conjuring tricks. Basically, the term ‘‘suggestibility’’ is used for a wide range of constructs which concern them- selves with human susceptibility, such as hypnotic suggestibility, interrogative suggestibility, sen- sory suggestibility or reactions to authority (for a theoretical overview see Schumaker, 1991). The common core of these different constructs is that they all imply some sort of uncritical and non- volitional acceptance of a proposition or course of action (Gudjonsson, 1987). In our work we were interested in two operationalisations of suggestibility: hypnotic suggestibility (for the current state of research cf. Council, 2002) and interrogative suggestibility (cf.
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