Abstract

Discusses ways in which testimony based solely on personal experience, memory, or supernatural experience can become distorted. Often, expectations influence people's auditory and visual perceptions, and the processes of memory are at least as complex as those of perception. Accounts of events that are given after increasingly long intervals reveal progressive reorganization of material into simpler, more plausible versions that better fit the individual's expectations and understanding. Hallucinations are perceptions that bear no resemblance to the real surroundings, being self-generated from stored mental images. Testimony to paranormal events is affected by an additional complication: the need to believe in the supernatural. It has been found that such believers often prefer paranormal explanations of unusual events over prosaic, disillusioning explanations. This is the case with certain stories concerning the sinister properties of the Bermuda Triangle and accounts of ghostly appearances. The scientific community has also been embarrassed by fraud, much of it deliberate. In the case of typical ESP experiments, however, there is a greater danger of a researcher cheating on results than perpetrating deliberate fraud. The inability of parapsychologists to replicate results and their dependence on anecdotal, spontaneous, and personal experiences of Ss gives critics cause to reserve judgment on these phenomena. (40 ref)