nih.gov | In 1995, U.S. President Clinton, by order number 1995‐4‐17 entitled “Classified National Security Information,” declassified several research programs (among other contents) funded by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) of the United States (Puthoff, 1996). These covert programs were developed over more than 20 years at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI, now SRI International) and the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) (cf. Srinivasan, 2002). Programs addressed remote viewing (RV), that is, determined whether certain individuals, under conditions of perceptual isolation, could access information about places, buildings, photographs, etc., from a distance using putative psi rather than conventional sensory channels (Targ, 2019). The specific objective was to explore whether RV phenomena had enough consistency and stability for use in military espionage (McMoneagle, 2015; Puthoff, 1996). Due to the Cold War and ensuing political‐military tensions between the United States and the former Soviet Union, American Congress classified these programs in the interests of national security (Targ, 1996). The fact that the RV experiments were hidden or classified undermined transparency in scientific research practices. Specifically, other laboratories were not given access to information and were unable to evaluate outcomes with proper methodological or statistical rigor (see the critique by Hyman, 1996 and Nelson et al., 1996).
1.1. What is remote viewing?
RV is an experiential technique for altered‐anomalous states (see Utts, 1995, 1996, 1995, 1996, 2018) that allows two types of anomalous cognitions to be subjected to empirical scrutiny (see also Schooler et al., 2018): (a) precognition (also called anticipation of unpredictable stimuli or anomalous anticipation of information, Mossbridge et al., 2012) can be defined as the process by which a person accesses information about the future (i.e., events that have not yet happened) without using sensory or otherwise rational channels recognized by conventional scientific theory (Bem, 2011); and (b) retro‐cognition (also called anomalous information reception or clairvoyance) is defined as the process by which a person accesses content referring to the past (i.e., content that has already happened) without using the conventional channels of biology or logic per current scientific theory (Marwaha & May, 2016). The expression psi phenomena or psi is a hypothetical construct that has the same definition attributed to anomalous cognitions. However, the term anomalous cognitions is a more neutral label, as the term psi is often used by parapsychologists. All these concepts have been sharply criticized on methodological, statistical, or conceptual grounds (e.g., Escolà‐Gascón, 2022a; Houran et al., 2018; Reber & Alcock, 2020; Wagenmakers et al., 2011).
In RV, the participant is asked to visualize the information they intend to access (from the past or the future) (Roe et al., 2020). Then, the participant must mentally and nonverbally represent the distant target or targets to be guessed (May et al., 2011; Scott, 1988). The target is often a specific place, person, or fact (May, 1996; Puthoff, 1996; Targ, 1996). The targets of RV experiments (published in Nature, see Targ & Puthoff, 1974) contained specific meanings of interest to U.S. national security (e.g., the location of a secret military base) (see Utts, 1995, 1996, 1995, 1996, 2018). The present study focused on RV relative to anomalous information reception, as it is one of the most researched anomalous phenomena showing significant results (see Bem et al., 2016; Tressoldi & Storm, 2021). Unfortunately, the abbreviation for anomalous information reception (AIR) is the same as the abbreviation for the American Institutes for Research (also AIR) and we wish to prevent confusion. So, henceforth, we use the terms anomalous cognitions and RV to refer exclusively to anomalous information reception.
Since 1972, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) commissioned several research programs on remote viewing (RV) that were progressively declassified from 1995 to 2003. The main objectives of this research were to statistically replicate the original findings and address the question: What are the underlying cognitive mechanisms involved in RV? The research focused on emotional intelligence (EI) theory and intuitive information processing as possible hypothetical mechanisms.
Methods
We used a quasi‐experimental design with new statistical control techniques based on structural equation modeling, analysis of invariance, and forced‐choice experiments to accurately objectify results. We measured emotional intelligence with the Mayer—Salovey–Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test. A total of 347 participants who were nonbelievers in psychic experiences completed an RV experiment using targets based on location coordinates. A total of 287 participants reported beliefs in psychic experiences and completed another RV experiment using targets based on images of places. Moreover, we divided the total sample into further subsamples for the purpose of replicating the findings and also used different thresholds on standard deviations to test for variation in effect sizes. The hit rates on the psi‐RV task were contrasted with the estimated chance.
Results
The results of our first group analysis were nonsignificant, but the analysis applied to the second group produced significant RV‐related effects corresponding to the positive influence of EI (i.e., hits in the RV experiments were 19.5% predicted from EI) with small to moderate effect sizes (between 0. 457 and 0.853).
Conclusions
These findings have profound implications for a new hypothesis of anomalous cognitions relative to RV protocols. Emotions perceived during RV sessions may play an important role in the production of anomalous cognitions. We propose the Production‐Identification‐Comprehension (PIC) emotional model as a function of behavior that could enhance VR test success.
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