Methods for Investigating Goal-Oriented Psi
📄 Original studyPlain English Summary
What if psychic ability is sneakily efficient? Kennedy noticed something wild in earlier research: when scientists set up redundant checks (basically asking psi to prove itself over and over in stacked trials), it didn't score higher as math would predict. Instead, psi seemed to skip the busywork and hit its target directly, like a student who aces the final but skips the homework. If psi operates by pursuing goals rather than grinding through each trial, our standard experiments might be fundamentally the wrong tool to study it. That's a big, uncomfortable idea for the whole field.
Research Notes
Foundational theoretical paper in Kennedy's research program arguing that goal-oriented psi undermines standard statistical assumptions. Directly motivates his later work on why psi is capricious (2001, 2003) and why meta-analyses may be inadequate (2013). Central to the library's methodology debates about whether experimental parapsychology can produce meaningful results.
Experimental parapsychology faces a fundamental challenge if psi is goal-oriented and operates within a hierarchy of goals ranging from individual trials to entire research programs. Drawing on Schmidt (1974), where single-event PK trials (55.93%, z=5.55) and 100-event majority-vote trials (53.16%, z=2.89) produced approximately equal scoring rates despite communication theory predicting >90% for majority votes, the paper demonstrates that psi bypasses redundant opportunities to achieve goals directly. If psi operates efficiently at higher levels of the goal hierarchy, standard experimental methods may be unable to identify optimum conditions for psi.
Related Papers
Same Research Program
- Why Is Psi So Elusive? A Review and Proposed Model — Kennedy, James E (2001)
- The Capricious, Actively Evasive, Unsustainable Nature of Psi: A Summary and Hypotheses — Kennedy, J.E (2003)
- A Proposal and Challenge for Proponents and Skeptics of Psi — Kennedy, J.E (2004)
- Can Parapsychology Move Beyond the Controversies of Retrospective Meta-Analyses? — Kennedy, J.E (2013)
- Conclusions about Paranormal Phenomena — Kennedy, J.E (2013)
Cites
Also by these authors
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Paranormal beliefs and cognitive function: A systematic review and assessment of study quality across four decades of research
📋 Cite this paper
Kennedy, J.E (1995). Methods for Investigating Goal-Oriented Psi. Journal of Parapsychology.
@article{kennedy_1995_goal_oriented,
title = {Methods for Investigating Goal-Oriented Psi},
author = {Kennedy, J.E},
year = {1995},
journal = {Journal of Parapsychology},
}