Personality and Electrocortical Correlates of Extreme Belief regarding Esp

Forty participants from an introductory Psychology course were recruited based upon their self-reported beliefs in ESP (High, Medium, Low). Participants answered a packet of self report questionnaires, then underwent electroencephalographic (EEG) recording during eyes open and eyes closed resting baseline. Participants then completed "traditional" and "novelty enhanced" formats, of a multimodal biofield detection battery and a computerized forced-choice precognition task. Results showed no evidence of precognition for any belief level group, or either task format. Biofield detection accuracy was significantly above chance expectation for 2 of the 6 modalities tested, and correlated with self reported "energy sensitivity". Belief in ESP was found to be psychologically related to higher levels of belief in other "spiritual experiences", lower levels of cynicism and rigidity, and increased sense of coherence. EEG findings indicated that strong belief and strong skepticism of ESP were associated with increased frontal asymmetry scores, and that moderate degrees of belief were associated with negative frontal asymmetry scores during eyes open baseline recording. Suggestions for future research are provided.