Abstract

Reports the 4th study in a series investigating experimenter effects with a remote facilitation of attention focusing psi task. The "helpee" focuses attention on a candle and presses a button whenever he/she feels distracted. Simultaneously, the remote "helper" follows a randomized counterbalanced schedule of "help" and "control" periods. It was predicted that the helpee would have fewer distractions during the help periods compared with the control periods. Nine psi believers and 5 disbelievers were trained to conduct a psi session and then conducted 36 psi trials in total. It was predicted that participants tested by believer experimenters would show greater remote facilitation of focusing than those tested by disbelievers. Questionnaires measured participants' paranormal belief, expected/perceived success at the psi task, experimenter ratings, and experimenters' personality/cognitive ability. There were significantly fewer help presses than control presses, indicating an effect of remote facilitation on the focusing task. Participants tested by believer experimenters had higher scores on the psi task than those tested by disbeliever experimenters, indicating an experimenter effect. There were no differences between participants or experimenters on the questionnaire measures.