Connectedness between participants in an experiment on distant intention - Brief Article

ABSTRACT: Connectedness between participants or between participants and experimenter might be an important moderator variable for psi effects. This can be concluded from theoretical considerations as well as from empirical results. Connectedness or bondedness could be defined by an outer status as being married, maintaining a friendship, or having a family relationship. But obviously only limited conclusions toward the bondedness of 2 people can be drawn by these criteria. A literature research revealed that there is no existing instrument operationalizing connectedness or related concepts that can be applied to different kinds of relationships.

Therefore, the authors decided to construct and validate an applicable instrument by empirical means. The authors asked 18 people what the German equivalent to connectedness or bondedness ("Verbundenheit") meant to them and constructed a 60-item questionnaire from their responses. The instrument was filled in by a sample of 73 participants for validation. Nine items were excluded, and principal-component analysis on the remaining items yielded a 4-factor solution. Items loading on several factors were discarded to obtain a short form. The final questionnaire, consisting of 27 items, proves to have sufficient psychometric properties with an internal consistency of [alpha] = .93 and also a clear structure of 4 factors.

The questionnaire was given to the participants of an experiment on direct mental interaction with living systems (DMILS) with electrodermal activity as dependent variable (EDA DMILS). Participants came in pairs to the lab and were separated in 2 shielded cabins. EDA was recorded from 1 participant while the other intentionally tried to change the other person s arousal. Forty-eight sessions meeting minimum criteria for electrodermal responses were included in the analysis. EDA parameters and methods of data analysis were chosen according to a preceding pilot study. One phasic (number of skin conductance responses exceeding a threshold amplitude of .015 [micro]S; NS.SCR) and one tonic parameter (skin conductance level; SCL) were derived from the EDA signal. Each session consisted of 10 activate and 10 calm epochs lasting 1 mm each. The data of activate and calm epochs were summed and compared by a t test for dependent data.

No significant difference between the 2 experimental conditions was found. The results were as follows: for NS.SCR, t(47) = -0.40, p = .35, one-tailed; and for SCL, t(46) = -0.46, p = .32, one-tailed. The relevant effect sizes were -.07 and -.06, respectively. Because of the failure of the study to produce a DMILS effect, the hypothesis on the relationship between psi communication in the DMILS setting and reported deep inner feeling of connectedness could not be tested.

The failure to replicate the successful findings of the preceding pilot study is discussed, and several interpretations are compared on the basis of available empirical findings.

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