Feeling the Future Again: Retroactive Avoidance of Negative Stimuli
🛡️ Critical replication📌 Appears in:
Plain English Summary
Can people unconsciously dodge bad experiences that haven't happened yet? A European team ran seven controlled experiments where people pressed keys, then were shown unpleasant images tied to one choice. Four studies found people slightly avoided the key linked to future nastiness. Pooling nearly 3,000 participants, the effect was small but statistically solid, with Bayesian analysis (a method for weighing evidence) at nearly 300-to-1 favoring something real. This work began before the researchers even knew about Bem's famous precognition experiments, making it a genuinely independent replication of one of parapsychology's most controversial claims.
Research Notes
Independent European replication of Bem (2011) Exp 2, begun before awareness of Bem's work. Currently misplaced in 10_Skeptical_and_Critical despite reporting positive precognition results. The mixed pattern (4/7 significant) and prior-dependent Bayesian evidence are central to the Bem precognition controversy.
Seven double-blind experiments investigated whether masked negative stimuli presented 500 ms after a response could retroactively influence unconscious key-press selections, as predicted by the Orch-OR quantum-mind model. Using IAPS images and a simultaneous two-key press paradigm, four of seven studies found significant avoidance of negative future outcomes (Study 1: N=111, d=0.25; Study 2: N=201, d=0.21; Study 3: N=1222, d=0.07; Study 4 with quantum RNG: N=327, d=0.10). A meta-analysis across all seven experiments (total N≈2,970) yielded ES=0.07, z=3.79, p<.0001, with a combined Bayes factor of 293 favouring retroactive influence.
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Replication Of
Cites
- Why Psychologists Must Change the Way They Analyze Their Data: The Case of Psi — Wagenmakers, Eric-Jan (2011)
- Correcting the Past: Failures to Replicate Psi — Galak, Jeff (2012)
- Failing the Future: Three Unsuccessful Attempts to Replicate Bem's 'Retroactive Facilitation of Recall' Effect — Ritchie, Stuart J (2012)
- Predictive Physiological Anticipation Preceding Seemingly Unpredictable Stimuli: A Meta-Analysis — Mossbridge, Julia (2012)
- A Bayes Factor Meta-Analysis of Bem's ESP Claim — Rouder, Jeffrey N (2011)
- "Future Telling": A Meta-Analysis of Forced-Choice Precognition Experiments, 1935-1987 — Honorton, Charles (1989)
- Consciousness and the Double-Slit Interference Pattern: Six Experiments — Radin, Dean (2012)
- False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant — Simmons, Joseph P (2011)
- Must Psychologists Change the Way They Analyze Their Data? — Bem, Daryl J (2011)
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📋 Cite this paper
Maier, Markus A, Büchner, Vanessa L, Kuhbandner, Christof, Pflitsch, Markus, Fernández-Capo, Maria, Gámiz-Sanfeliu, Maria (2014). Feeling the Future Again: Retroactive Avoidance of Negative Stimuli. Journal of Consciousness Studies.
@article{maier_2014_no_precognition,
title = {Feeling the Future Again: Retroactive Avoidance of Negative Stimuli},
author = {Maier, Markus A and Büchner, Vanessa L and Kuhbandner, Christof and Pflitsch, Markus and Fernández-Capo, Maria and Gámiz-Sanfeliu, Maria},
year = {2014},
journal = {Journal of Consciousness Studies},
}