Paranormal can be defined as pertaining to an occurrence or perception beyond or lacking scientific explanation. Ranging from mythical creatures to the existence of ghosts to fortune telling, the average person’ experience with the paranormal is very mysterious and often filled with doubt. Because paranormal activity by definition cannot be explained by scientific reasoning, researchers in these phenomena have sought to address this doubt by attempting to provide concrete evidence for their existence.
The term psi refers to any abnormal energy or information transfer that cannot be explained through biological or physical mechanisms. Examples of psi include psychokinesis, telepathy, and extra sensory perception or precognition (Bem & Honorton, Does Psi Exist? Replicable Evidence for an Anomalous Process of Information Transfer, 1994). Parapsychologists such as Joseph Rhine of Duke University conducted early experiments on extra sensory perception. Rhine began by asking participants to guess the identities of cards from a standard shuffled deck. After confronting issues with sample size and participant bias with a standard set of cards, Karl Zener, a colleague of Joseph Rhine, developed the Zener Cards, a deck of 25 cards with five different and unambiguous designs or symbols. Participants who correctly guessed more cards than could be explained by chance would provide evidence that some other force was at work (Editors of Time Life Books, 1988). Overall, Rhine and Zener’s work paved the way for future studies of extra sensory perception, especially in the development of computer generated random events and recall tasks.
(Taylor, 2001).
One of the more recent studies done on extra sensory perception was conducted by Daryl B...
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... insight into the mechanisms of precognition and allow us to design further studies to concretely prove its existence.
Works Cited
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Brugger, P., & Taylor, K. I. (2003). Extrasensory Perception or Effect of Subjective Probability? Journal of Consciousness Studies , 10 (6-7), 221-246.
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Taylor, E. (2001). Retroactive intentional influence: A new science based on a new psychology? Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicin , 34.
Merleau-Ponty distinguishes three aspects of the psychological process; basic sensations, perception, and the associations of memory (Merleau-Ponty, 1994). Basic sensations receive raw information from the world and transduce them for our perceptual processes. Perception unifies the infinite amount of information about our environment, from our environment, into a meaningful structure. Perception is interpretive, but its presentation of the world is as distal and objective. There are three central features of perception for Merleau-Ponty. First, perception is synthesized independently by the body and not by the mind (consciousness).
Schacter, D. L., Gilbert, D. T., & Wegner, D. M. (2010). Psychology. (2nd ed., p. 600). New York: Worth Pub.
Paranormal activity is manifestation that lies outside of the normal experience which can’t be proven to be real. Most people have become interested in the haunted houses and stones due to the lack of support that they are getting from the community of science. The lack of support from the community will be hard to get because most people do not believe in this. According to the unknown, “paranormal activities and sightings usually fall into categories: spirituals entities, crytids, which are organisms whose existence is told by legends and myths.” Most people think that paranormal deal with just ghost and their hauntings but it is much more than that. Paranormal phenomena are not accepted by the scientists because they feel the evidence should be required. According to Psychic Readings, "ESP stands for extra sensory perception. While clairvoyance, or seeing clearly is primarily an optional phenomenon." A clairvoyant psychic is someone who shares a vision of unseen in telling about their health or future. "Clairvoyants are people who specialize in supernatural skills," states Psychics Reading. People like this have a magical ability to see into the past, present, and future. ESP is normally addresses as the sixth sense. "The term 'ESP' was used often in 1870 by Sir Richard Burton." Psychical research does not support that everyone is born with this capability. It is said there are people who have experienced at least one ESP in their lifetime. However to Schmeidler, another theory claims that ESP is a super sense which evolves in the nervous system. From David’s perspective, “hundreds of years ago to possess the gift of clairvoyance, one was considered a witch - as unknown knowledge was 'feared' (the emotion which keeps us trappe...
Passer, M., Smith, R., Holt, N., Bremner, A., Sutherland, E., & Vliek, M. (2009). Psychology; Science of Mind and Behaviour. (European Edition). New York.
between living organisms and their external environment that seem that seemed to transcend the known physical laws of nature (The Rhine, 2013). According to (Nichols, 2011) parapsychology was studied over 100 years and in that time amassed thousands of cases studies and formal experiments in order to better understand these non-ordinary realms. In the study of paranormal activity, they have been studying them in lavatories. When studying parapsychology, people try to get an understanding and hope to get their questions answered about the phenomena aspects of these subjects. Scientist who study paranormal activities are trying to discover why these events occur. Parapsychology came about in the 1930s. When in a paranormal situation it is weird and scary and sometimes unbelievable.
Bernstein, D.A., Penner, L.A., Clarke-Stewart, A., & Roy E.J. (2008). Psychology (8th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
Renner, T., Feldman, R., Majors, M., Morrissey, J., & Mae, L. (2011). States of Consciousness. Psychsmart (pp. 99-107). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Wood, S. Wood, E. Boyd, D. (2014). Mastering the World of Psychology. A. Chow(Ed.). Jersey, NJ: Text.
Extra sensory perception(ESP) has always been a interesting topic in the field of psychology In this particular study the general interest of study is focused primarily on ESP. Variables used for this study are always invalid due to many of reasons. For example, Hansel and Gardner claimed that a couple of the early card guessing experiments inclined towards procedures that allowed for cheating in ways of waiting for a cue to perform the action. Non random populations are also assigned by automated survey experiments which makes the results insignificant. Inconsistencies overwhelm psychological studies; the way in which data have been collected and analyzed is not systematically efficient what so ever. For example, both Leuba and Greenwood brought up the potential dangers of `optional stopping', wherein researchers are able to stop an experiment when the study outcome conforms to a desired result. So experimenting until you get what you want, not worrying about other population responses. The particular study is being conducted to overcome the obstacles of prior and testing by creating a totally automated experiment and by having each participant only contribute a very small number of trials. Hypothesis of the present study are that the mean score of ESP participants would be slightly raised along with believer scores, and many more outliers in the positive spectrum will occur.
Consciousness is a difficult term to grasp; so much so, that many scientists will not even attempt to define the term, much less search for it’s evidence. Most however, do agree that consciousness must include certain aspects; specifically cognition, self-awareness, memory, and abstract thought.
Subliminal or unconscious perception refers to the idea that stimuli presented below the threshold for conscious awareness can influence an individual's thoughts, feelings, or actions (2). The possibility that an individual can acquire and act on input without being aware of doing so has implications for the study of consciousness and the larger set of processes which characterize the I-function. It is generally assumed that that conscious perception of a stimulus is necessary in order to act on that stimulus, and this conscious decision to act is one of several processes which characterize the I-function.
Weiner, I. Healy, A. Freedheim, D. Proctor,R.W., Schinka,J.A. (2003) Handbook of Psychology: Experimental psychology,18, pp 500
Libet, B. "Unconscious Cerebral Initiative and the Role of Conscious Will in Voluntary Action." Behavioral and Brain Sciences 8 (1985): 529-66. Print.
With each of our senses (sight, smell, touch, taste, and hear), information is transmitted to the brain. Psychologists find it problematic to explain the processes in which the physical energy that is received by the sense organs can form the foundation of perceptual experience. Perception is not a direct mirroring of stimulus, but a compound messy pattern dependent on the simultaneous activity of neurons. Sensory inputs are somehow converted into perceptions of laptops, music, flowers, food, and cars; into sights, sounds, smells, taste ...
Wilson, R. A. (1990). Quantum Psychology: How Brain Software Programs You & Your World. Tempe: New Falcon.