Veronica Rainone

Designing an ESP Study using Zener cards

Introduction. 1a) The hypothesis being addressed is that those who possess psychic powers can be detected using Zener cards. Dr. Venkman hypothesizes that those with psychic powers will be able to correctly predict what card is selected by a tester more than a non psychic person. 1b) The evidence presented against Dr. Venkmans hypothesis comes from Thomas who stated that all procedurally based experiments conducted have failed to produce proof of ESP. ESP is not something that can be outlined by the rules of nature, which basically means that any conventional test to assess ESP related powers would not work because ESP defies conventional laws. Zener cards rely on the person being able to read the mind of the tester to tell what card it is, however there is no part of the brain that can transmit information or open itself up to outside probing, making it impossible for the person to actually read someones mind. The Rhine experiments were the first to use the Zener cards as an experimental tool and he reportedly used them to prove some people possessed ESP however researchers were unable to replicate his results due to the fact that they were poorly designed, and flawed causing cheating to occur. Harris outlines the case in favor of Dr. Venkmans hypothesis. His argument cites the Ganzfeld experiment where the experiment using the Zener cards was conducted however the participant underwent sensory deprivation. Within this experiment, there were a majority of poor results however a few participants were extremely accurate to the point of undeniably possessing ESP related powers. The flaw in these experiments is that the results arent reproducible, because the pool of participants will differ in the amount of actual psychics, and there is no real way to account for this prior to the experiment.

Method. 2a(i) The participants will be people ranging from ages twenty to forty, this is so age can be a controlled variable. They will be a random amount of men and women. However the participants will come from two target populations. The first will be people who claim to have no psychic ability, while the other group will consist of those who claim to possess ESP related abilities. The populations cannot be sampled randomly because a majority of each groups results will probably reveal no trace of psychic powers. The participants whose results show psychic powers might be in the results that are not sampled. 2a(ii) Two hundred people will be in each group. In order to recruit actual psychics, and nonpsychics for each group, the participants will have to undergo preliminary tests, using the Zener cards where they would have to score over a certain amount correct, or under a certain amount in order to be participants in their respective groups. 2a(iii) The extraneous variable that would be controlled in selecting participants would be age; all participants regardless of group would be between the ages of twenty and forty. Random assignment would not be used to assign each participant to a group because they would have to claim to either be a psychic or not be a psychic, and they would have to score over or under a particular number of cards in preliminary testing in order to be assigned to a group. 2b) The materials and equipment that would be required for this experiment are multiple decks of Zener cards; in total at least a thousand cards with there being no particular amount of any certain card. These cards would be the tool used to test the participants. I would also use sensory deprivation equipment which would cover the participants eyes, and ears which they would wear while undergoing testing. 2c) I plan to control for guessing by testing each participant with a thousand Zener cards at a time, and having each participant evaluated with them ten times. This way they will be tested with ten thousand cards, making the margin of error given to guessing

very slim, if not nonexistent. I will control for experimenter knowledge by making the deck of one thousand cards be completely random for each participant and unknown to the experimenter conducting the test until the experiment is in progress. Card tricks will be controlled by having the participant be blindfolded, and deprived of his hearing so that they cant observe the cards and no tricks can be performed. While this will also help to control for poor shuffling, a way to eliminate this variable completely will be to have a new deck of a thousand cards during each testing session. Two more variables that need to be controlled are the appearance of the cards (from the back); which will be controlled through the participant being blindfolded, and therefore unable to see the cards, and familiarity between the experimenter, and the participant which will be controlled by having a new experimenter conduct each test session with a participant. 2d) The independent variable within this experiment is the Zener cards. The dependent variable is the percent of cards accurately selected by each participant. The controlled variables are the psychic, and nonpsychic participants, the ages of participants, amount of cards, and the number of tests conducted. Results 3a) I would perform the statistical test on the experiment by calculating the amount of Zener cards a participant got correct during all ten sessions, and averaging it for the entire group, and finding the difference between the two groups. 3b) The variation within the groups would be calculated by using standard deviation. Once each groups overall standard deviation is calculated, it will be easy to deduce the variation within the groups. 3c) Statistical Significance is a statistical statement of the overall likelihood that a determined result happened according to chance. In order for my data to be statistically significant, the difference between the psychic and nonpsychic groups have to be two times as large as the variations within the groups.

Conclusions 4a) Dr. Venkman would be incorrect in concluding that both psychics and nonpsychics identify Zener cards better that expected by chance. According to his results, the psychic group correctly figured close to twenty percent of identifications, while the nonpsychic control group correctly guessed almost thirty five percent of identifications. In a normal deck of Zener cards, chance dictates that five out of twenty five cards will be correctly guessed, or twenty percent. The psychic group got just under twenty percent of identifications correct, making them fall into the percentage dictated by chance, however the control group performed better than expected by chance. 4b) It is possible that the participants in the control group have better accuracy than those in the psychic group because they are purely guessing rather than attempting to read the testers mind, the lack of expectations and pressure might enable them to guess freer, and therefore be more accurate in their predictions. 4c) The most appropriate conclusions that can be drawn from these results is that there is no clear evidence of ESP based on this experiment. No proof of clairvoyance can be found from these results, however this does not disprove the existence of clairvoyance. 4d) To improve this study, I would recommend that the amount of participants be widened, as well as have them undergo more tests. The more participants that are assessed, along with the more tests conducted will help to give more accurate results regarding the proof of ESP.