| Reference code: | PT/FB/BL-2016-188.02 |
| Location: | BF-GMS
|
Title:
| Ability of alleged mediums to assess mortality from facial photographs
|
| Publication year: | 2018
|
Abstract/Results:
| ABSTRACT
Studies of characteristics of the human face indicate that it contains a wealth of information about health status. Most studies involve objective measurement of facial features as correlated with historical health information. But some individuals (labeled psychics or mediums) also claim to be adept at intuitively gauging mortality based solely upon a quick glance at a person’s photograph. To test this claim, we invited 12 such individuals to see if they could tell if a person was presently alive or dead based solely on a brief examination of his or her photograph. All photos used in the experiment were transformed into a uniform gray scale and counterbalanced across eight categories: gender, age, gaze direction, glasses, head position, smile, hair color, and image resolution. Participants examined 404 photographs displayed on a computer monitor, one at a time, with each shown for a maximum of 8 seconds. Half of the individuals in the photos were deceased, and half were alive at the time the experiment was conducted. Participants were asked to indicate if they thought the person in a photo was living or deceased by pressing an appropriate button. Overall mean accuracy on this task was 53.6%, where 50% was expected by chance (p = 0.005, two-tail), and statistically significant accuracy was independently obtained in 5 of the 12 participants. We also collected 32-channel electrocortical recordings and observed a robust difference in the early event-related potential at 100 ms post-stimulus onset between images of deceased individuals who were correctly vs. incorrectly classified. Then, to see if machine learning techniques could classify the photographs as good as or better than humans, both random forest and logistic regression machine learning approaches were used. Both classifiers failed to achieve accuracy above chance level. These results suggest that some individuals can intuitively assess mortality based on some as-yet-unknown features of the face. In this report, we also outline a
follow up experiment where we asked participants to classify the cause of death from photos of now-deceased individuals. Preliminary results on this experiment will be presented at the Parapsychological Convention.
|
| Accessibility: | Document exists in file
|
Language:
| eng
|
Related objects:
| BL-2012-234.06
|
| Author: | Delorme, A.
|
Secondary author(s):
| Canard, C., Wahbeh, H., Radin, D.
|
Document type:
| Conference abstract-d
|
Number of reproductions:
| 3
|
Reference:
| Delorme, A., Canard, C., Wahbeh, H., & Radin, D. (2018). Ability of alleged mediums to assess mortality from facial photographs. Abstracts of Presented Papers of the 61st Annual Convention of the Parapsychological Association (p. 13). Petaluma, USA: Parapsychological Association
|
| Indexed document: | No
|
| Keywords: | Mediumship / Intuition / Visual categorization / Face
|
Ability of alleged mediums to assess mortality from facial photographs |