Abstract

Reviews the parapsychology and social psychology literature to highlight the similarities between these 2 fields. Both psi phenomena and the experimenter expectancy effect (R. Rosenthal and L. Jacobsen, 1968) share a number of common features: Both phenomena go almost entirely without definition; evidence is essentially statistical in nature; both appear to be generalizable over a broad range of experimental tasks; the significance of results appears to vary inversely with the tightness of experimental controls; both show difficulties with replication; data in both cases show a decline effect (i.e., the effects are greater for early than later responses); and the pattern of negative and positive results regarding psi, which tends to be found by sceptics and believers, respectively, accords perfectly with the data of the Rosenthal effect. Despite their similarity, the 2 phenomena have been treated as radically different and have radically different reputations. The possibility that psi and the Rosenthal effect may be a single phenomenon is explored. (27 ref)