Exceptional Experiences - Psychic Healing

Here is the presentation for the final 'exceptional experiences' section of Anomalistic Psychology.

The specification says:
Research into exceptional experience
-Psychological research into and explanations for psychic healing, near death and out of body experiences, and psychic mediumship
Today we looked at psychic healing, in particular three studies which appear to show evidence of psychic healing working in placebo-controlled (single-blind) trials, but with reason to doubt the findings of each one.

Read more about Sicher and Targ's study here.

Here is more detail on the 'miracle study' into prayer and infertility.

I set this exam question for next Wednesday:
“Discuss what research into exceptional experience has shown us about psychic healing” – 4 + 6 marks

Prepare it for as long as you like, then spend no more than 20 minutes writing it.

Unit 3 Exam Questions, and studies to learn for gender and relationships

Here are all the Unit 3 exam questions for Biological Rhythms & Sleep, Relationships and Gender. I have adjusted the AO1 marks for the older questions (there used to be 9 per section, now there are 8) and have noted where changes to the spec mean that a question wouldn't come up any more, or would be worded differently.

Here is my list of theories and studies for relationships in case you can't track it down - I plan to update this some more, but have added one study since I printed this and gave it to you a while ago. It's an interesting update to the Clark & Hatfield and Buss evidence which questions the claims of evolutionary theories. Alexander and Fisher (2003) had men and women answer surveys about how many sexual partners they had had and how many they wanted (amongst other things). They got typical responses suggesting that men were far keener on casual sex, but then repeated the experiment with participants connected to a fake lie-detector (known as a 'bogus pipeline'). When they thought that their lies would be detected, women and men answered in much the same way! This is a very nice bit of supporting evidence for a criticism we did briefly discuss - the idea that differences between men and women which arise in surveys may be due to differences in social desirability rather than real differences in what they actually do or want to do... Read more on this article or the actual journal article.

Here is my list of theories and studies for gender. Learning these, using active revision techniques like cue cards with key words or questions on one side and details on the other, would be a very good place to focus your revision over the holiday.

Resources update

Herein is a long blog post containing links to all the resources we have used this half term.

I posted last about psychological explanations of schizophrenia. We then moved on to the biological therapies. We focused on drugs & ECT. You need to know how the drugs work and the pros and cons of using them - do look back at the criticisms of biological therapies in general from your abnormality work last year. ECT isn't used for schizophrenia nowadays but has been in the past and so you should be able to evaluate why not. The ppt is here.

We then moved on to the psychological therapies for schizophrenia. We looked at why Freud said that psychoanalysis was unsuitable (this involved some Freudian theory that should come in handy across the spec), uses of psychoanalysis nowadays, and then cognitive behavioural therapies. The ppt on psychoanalysis is here and the CBT one is here.

It is really important that you are able to evaluate both biological and psychological therapies in terms of their appropriateness (are they ethical? are they suitable?) and their effectiveness (do they work?), as this is how the spec divides up the evaluative material.

We then moved on to the research methods section of the unit 4 spec. I provided booklets to work through at your own pace for a large chunk and a copy is here. A lot is revision from AS. I have taught the trickier bits of the research methods. The ppt on reliability is here and the one on validity is here. It is important that you know the difference between internal and external reliability and validity, and also ways to improve all of these. This is more complex than work done last year on these topics. Finally we looked at probability and significance in preparation for our work on the statistical tests and the ppt is here.

Paranormal action - psychokinesis

I am ill today - here is the work.

Here is what we started yesterday:

Psychokinesis is moving objects with paranormal mental activity. If this is on the scale of objects that can be seen, e.g. moving small objects like pencils or bending spoons, it is known as 'Macro PK'. 'Micro PK' involves influencing computer circuitry, usually to cause a 'random event generator' to produce a less random string of events.

James Hydrick is an interesting character and a good example of a Micro PK psychic. Here he demonstrates his powers on American TV show 'That's Incredible!' before failing to do so when sceptical stage magician James Randi puts some 'controls' in place (there is a longer Youtube clip of this same episode if you prefer):

Far more famous is Uri Geller - famous for bending spoons and performing a range of other psychic feats. Geller was studied by a number of parapsychologists who were convinced that his powers were genuine. Randi narrates this video, giving some useful background and explaining his roll in another prime-time TV failure of psychic power:

Randi's Project Alpha is not a piece of research, but a publicity stunt aimed at exposing the flawed nature of research carried out at Washington University in St Louis (the lead researcher was Shafer). The quality of this video is horrible but it gives a good overview (again there is a longer documentary on Youtube if you are interested):

Ganzfeld research into ESP - 'paranormal cognition'

Although our results when Kona acted as a 'receiver' were unimpressive, numerous studies using the ganzfeld technique have produced 'hit rates' well above chance - apparently evidence for the existence of Extra Sensory Perception (or 'paranormal cognition').

Below are questions to make notes on for next Tuesday's lesson. Here is the sheet with the six key characters / researchers.

·    What is the ganzfeld evidence for the existence of ESP?
·         What is the counter-evidence?
·         How have positive results been explained by the sceptics?
·         How have the believers responded?
·         Does ganzfeld research deserve to be labelled 'pseudoscience'?
·         What is your conclusion?

Here is a presentation which covers the introduction to anomalistic psychology and pseudoscience. Here is one for ganzfeld and psychokinesis research (which we'll move onto next week).

On Tuesday 12th we will be doing a timed essay test on the influence of culture on romantic relationships (revise this) and hearing about your qualitative interview research.

Psychological explanations for schizophrenia

We've now finished our look at the psychological explations for schizophrenia. There are lots but we focused on the following, and you should make sure you have notes on these:

• The psychodynamic explanation
• The cognitive explanation - there are lots of these but we only looked at the attention-processing explanation. You only need one.
• Family dysfunction models - we looked at expressed emotion (EE) and double binds
• Labelling theory including a look at Rosenhan's study ('Being sane in insane places')

As the biological explanations for schizophrenia (particularly the dopamine hypothesis) are so strong, the diathesis-stress model is crucial in incorporating any psychological explanations. The adoption study by Tienari et al (1994) is a really nice study in demonstrating the mix of nature and nurture involved in 'causing' schizophrenia. This is found in the middle of this big ppt containing all the above explanations. s.

Introduction to Anomalistic Psychology

Yesterday we looked at what we mean by the following terms:

• The paranormal 
• Psi / Psychic 
• Parapsychology 
• Anomalistic psychology 
• Pseudoscience

Essentially, parapsychologists study people with psi or psychic abilities - those that are paranormal, meaning they cannot be explained with our scientific understanding of the universe / brain - with an open mind as to whether such abilities exist. Sometimes they actively seek to find evidence which shows that such abilities are real.

This kind of search for supporting evidence, rather than attempting to falsify a hypothesis, is one of the reasons that parapsychology is often accused of being a pseudoscience - a 'false science'.

Anomalistic psychologists are generally more skeptical, mainstream psychologists, who assume that psi abilities don't actually exist, but who are interested in why so many people believe in them, and in why parapsychologists often produce positive findings in their studies.

While we are covering the Anomalistic content we will also be dealing with a section of the Unit 4 research methods spec, on the scientific method and on the process of validating research through peer reviews and journals. Your homework was to make notes on five features of science, relating each one to some study or theory you have encountered in AS or A2 psychology:

• Replicability 
• Falsifiability 
• Objectivity 
• Experimental method 
• Consistent paradigm