Abstract

Notes that it has been claimed that experimenter effects may account for inconsistent findings in the study of cognitive correlates of paranormal belief and in psi research. The present study investigated these 2 strands by having 2 experimenters each administer to 30 participants a paranormal belief questionnaire, 2 tests of cognitive ability (a syllogistic reasoning task and Raven's Progressive Matrices), and an extrasensory perception (ESP) task. For all 60 participants (mean age 24.9 yrs), a significant negative correlation was found between paranormal belief and syllogisms performance. This correlation was attributable to just 1 of the experimenters, and the experimenters' belief-cognitive ability correlations significantly differed, thus demonstrating an experimenter effect for this measure. Additional post hoc analyses were conducted to clarify the mechanism underlying the belief-cognitive ability correlation. There was no evidence of an experimenter effect for the ESP task.