| Abstract/Results: | RESULTS:
Certain REG studies suggest that the simultaneous focus of many individuals on an emotionally charged event can provoke anomalous effects in Random Event Generators, even though the individuals are unaware of the REG. This would seem to point to a collective, unintentional form of psychokinesis (PK), affecting objects in an indiscriminate, fieldlike manner.
The cited studies, however, are open to alternative explanations. The current study sought to assess fieldlike PK by more closely tying ostensible PK effects to the mental state of a group of individuals. It was hypothesized that the outputs of a REG, hidden in a movie theatre, would reflect the emotional “ups and downs” induced by the film upon spectators. This “onsite” REG was sampled continuously during showtimes, over the course of many film séances while an “off-site” REG collected control data. Control data were also collected from both REGs during “offshow” hours. Data were collected for 5 films, with 15 - 25 seances per film.
It was predicted that significant results would be obtained for the Onsite / Showtime condition, in the form of:
1.a correlation between REG data sets collected across seances of a given film
2. a mean- or variance- shift in REG data, specifically for film sequences judged to be “intense”
Results: Only 3 of the film datasets could be used. Neither of the two predictions were confirmed. A secondary analysis, exploring REG outputs as a function of the number of spectators per film séance, also yielded nonsignificant results.
The null outcomes of this study suggest that
1. unintentional, fieldlike PK does not exist, or,
2. the conditions needed to induce fieldlike effects were not present, or
3. the study’s statistical power was insufficient to detect trends in the data.
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