Abstract

Investigated how participants' beliefs about their experimenter's psi research track record affect their responses on questionnaire measures of belief in psi, confidence of success at a psi task, perceived and actual success at a psi task, and evaluations of the experimenter. In Exp 1, 60 undergraduate students (aged 17-35 yrs) underwent either positive or negative priming toward obtaining results prior to completing a psi task of remote facilitation of focusing of attention. Ss also completed questionnaires regarding psi beliefs, personality factors, and expectancy effects. Exp 2 involved 60 participants (aged 17-52 yrs) and replicated Exp 1. Results show that there was no indication of remote facilitation of attention focusing nor difference between psi scores in the positive compared with the negative expectancy condition. In both Exps, positive expectancy Ss gave more positive experimenter evaluations than did negative expectancy Ss. This trend was statistically significant for ratings of the experimenter's ability to instill confidence in the task for both Exps.