Parapsychology has been unfairly sidelined, claims a new review of the field

By Alex Fradera A number of notable figures from psychology’s past held an interest in parapsychology or psi (the study of mental phenomena that defy current scientific understanding), including William James, Alexander Luria, Binet, Freud, and Fechner. But today the field is cordoned off; and when it encroaches into mainstream publications, as with the “Feeling the Future” experiments conducted by Daryl Bem in 2012, furore typically follows. To sceptics, the fact that these experiments produced positive results is ipso facto proof that psychology’s methods must be broken. However, it’s only logical to take this view if you have already ruled out the existence of psychic phenomena and, at least among the US public, the majority haven’t. Even in the chronically suspicious British culture, one quarter of people have consulted a psychic. I too am personally quite open to the existence of such phenomena, so I’ve been eager for an accessible overview of the field of parapsychology as it currently stands. This is what parapsychology researcher Etzel Cardeña, Director of the Centre for Research on Consciousness and Anomalous Psychology at Lund University, attempts to provide in his new review in American Psychologist.  One of the main areas that Cardeña focuses on is “anomalous cognition”, which involves coming to know something without using the normal senses. Cardeña cites a pair of meta-analyses combining previous data that involved a forced-choice pr...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Parapsychology Source Type: blogs