Experimenter Effects And The Remote Detection Of Staring: A Replication

The authors would like to thank the Society for Psychical Research, the Institute of Noetic Sciences, the Perrott Warrick Fund, and the University of Hertfordshire for funding the research described in this paper. We are also grateful to Dean Radin for writing the computer programs used to randomly assign the order of stare and nonstare periods, and to collate participants' total EDA scores. In addition, we would like to thank Jerry Solfvin for supplying and setting up the Pro Comp system, and Adrienne Smueker for her invaluable help in recruiting and scheduling participants.

ABSTRACT: Both authors recently ran experiments to discover whether people can psychically detect when another person is staring at them. R. W. is a skeptic regarding claims of parapsychology and M. S. is a psi proponent. R. W.'s studies obtained chance results while M. S.'s study obtained statistical significance. The authors then carried out a joint study to help determine why their experiments had obtained different results. M. S. and R. W. acted as separate experimenters for two different sets of trials. These trials were carried out at the same time, in the same location, used the same equipment, drew participants from the same pool, and employed the same procedures. The data from M. S.'s participants were statistically significant while the data from R. W.'s participants were not. This paper describes an attempted replication of this initial joint study. Participants were hooked up to a computer that recorded their electrodermal activity (EDA). A videocamera was placed in front of the participant and it fed an image of them to a monitor located in a separate room. Each experimental session consisted of thirty-two thirty-second periods. Half of these periods were randomly allocated to a "stare" condition and half to a "nonstare" condition. During the stare condition, the experimenter looked at the monitor and attempted to remotely influence the participant's EDA. During the nonstare condition, the experimenter looked away from the monitor. The EDA of R. W.'s participants was not significantly different between the two conditions. In contrast, the EDA of M. S.'s participants was significantly lower during the stare than nonstare periods. The paper discusses competing interpretations of these results and possible future research in this area.

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