Citation

Remarkable correspondences between ganzfeld mentation and target content have been reported since the start of ganzfeld experiments in parapsychology. These correspondences may be due either to some form of anomalous information transfer (e.g., telepathy) or to a cognitive illusion on the part of the perceiver. This paper presents 4 studies conducted in order to investigate which of these two possibilities is the more probable. In Study 1, an external judge in a ganzfeld experiment selected 20 short segments that showed most remarkable correspondences between ganzfeld mentation and film clip content while being blind to whether the chosen film clip had been used as a target or as a decoy. Only 6 of the segments showed correspondences between the mentation and the target, which is close to chance expectation level. In Study 2, 11 students rated the 6 correspondences that were "hits" as being equally as impressive as the 14 that were "misses." In Studies 3 and 4, the possibility that the 14 correspondences that were "misses" could have been due to a form of "displacement clairvoyance" was shown to be very unlikely. It was concluded that it is possible to obtain what at least some people consider to be very remarkable correspondences between mentation and film content by chance alone.