Introspection as Institutional Practice: Reflections on the Attempt to Capture Conscious Experience in a Parapsychology Experiment

Abstract

Parapsychology is the scientific study of claims of anomalous communication, or anomalous cognition, and it is a predominantly experimental and laboratory-based discipline. In this article we examine transcripts of recordings from extra sensory perception (ESP) experiments as part of which participants were required to make introspective reports on their inner mental experiences. The data are recordings and transcripts of “ganzfeld” ESP experiments conducted at the Koestler Parapsychology Unit at the University of Edinburgh. Drawing from conversation analysis and discursive psychology, which seek to identify, among other things, recurrent and robust properties of describing as a social activity, we examine these reports to illuminate generic issues in the production of verbal introspective data, and make some particular remarks relevant to their role in this kind of parapsychological experiment.

Keywords:

• conversation analysis
• discursive psychology
• parapsychology
• verbal introspective data

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the Bial Foundation, Portugal, who supported the research reported in this article via a Bial Bursary for Scientific Research, and the late Professor Bob Morris and colleagues at the Koester Parapsychology Unit, University of Edinburgh, for making these data available to us.

Notes

¹Although in the experiment from which the current data were taken, the efficacy of the sender was being evaluated, and hence, unbeknownst to the receiver, some (randomised) trials did not employ a sender.