The phrase "Anomalistic Psychology" was a term first suggested by the psychologists
Leonard Zusne and Warren Jones in their book
Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking (1989) which systematically addresses phenomena of human consciousness and behaviors that may appear to violate the laws of nature when they actually do not. The Canadian psychologist
Graham Reed published a major work on the subject
The Psychology of Anomalous Experience (1972). Various psychological publications have explained in detail how reported paranormal phenomena such as
mediumship,
precognition,
out-of-body experiences and
psychics can be explained by psychological factors without recourse to the supernatural. Researchers involved with anomalistic psychology try to provide plausible non-paranormal accounts, supported by empirical evidence, of how psychological and physical factors might combine to give the impression of paranormal activity when there had been none. Apart from deception or self-deception such explanations might involve
cognitive biases, anomalous psychological states,
dissociative states, hallucinations, personality factors, developmental issues and the nature of memory. , founder of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit. The psychologist
David Marks wrote that paranormal phenomena can be explained by
magical thinking,
mental imagery,
subjective validation,
coincidence, hidden causes, and fraud.
Robert Baker wrote that many paranormal phenomena can be explained via psychological effects such as
hallucinations,
sleep paralysis and hidden memories, a phenomenon in which experiences that originally make little conscious impression are filed away in the brain to be suddenly remembered later in an altered form. In his 1980 edition of
ESP: A Scientific Evaluation,
C. E. M. Hansel noted that "after 100 years of research, not a single individual has been found who can demonstrate ESP to the satisfaction of independent investigators. For this reason alone it is unlikely that ESP exists".
Massimo Polidoro, a professor of Anomalistic Psychology at the
University of Milano Bicocca, Italy, taught the course "Scientific Method, Pseudoscience and Anomalistic Psychology". Another notable researcher is the British psychologist
Chris French who set up the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit (APRU) in the Department of Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Hauntings A psychological study (Klemperer, 1992) of
ghosts wrote that visions of ghosts may arise from
hypnagogic hallucinations ("waking dreams" which are experienced in the transitional states to and from
sleep). In an experiment (Lange and Houran, 1997) 22 subjects visited five areas of a performance
theatre and were asked to take note of the environment. Half of the subjects were informed that the locations they were in were
haunted, whilst the other half were told that the building was simply under
renovation. The subjects' perceptions in both groups were recorded to an experiential questionnaire which contained 10 subscales related to psychological and physiological perceptions. The results showed more intense perceptual experiences on nine of the ten subscales from the group that was told the building was haunted, which has indicated that
demand characteristics alone can stimulate paranormal experiences. A study (Lange and Houran, 1998) suggested that
poltergeist experiences are
delusions "resulting from the affective and cognitive dynamics of percipients' interpretation of ambiguous stimuli". Two experiments into alleged hauntings (Wiseman
et al. 2003) discovered that the data supported the "notion that people consistently report unusual experiences in ‘haunted’ areas because of environmental factors, which may differ across locations." Some of these factors included "the variance of local magnetic fields, size of location and lighting level stimuli of which witnesses may not be consciously aware".
Mediumship Research and empirical evidence from psychology for over a hundred years has revealed that where there is not fraud,
mediumship and
Spiritualistic practices can be explained by psychological factors. Trance mediumship, which is claimed by the Spiritualists to be caused by discarnate spirits speaking through the medium, has been proven in some cases to be the emergence of
alternate personalities from the medium's
subconscious mind. The medium may obtain information about their clients, called sitters, by secretly
eavesdropping on sitter's conversations or searching telephone directories, the
internet and
newspapers before the sittings. Mediums are known for employing a technique called
cold reading which involves obtaining information from the sitter's
behavior,
clothing,
posture, and
jewellery. In a series of fake
seance experiments (Wiseman
et al. 2003), an actor
suggested to
paranormal believers and disbelievers that a table was
levitating when, in fact, it remained stationary. After the seance, approximately one third of the participants incorrectly reported that the table had moved. The results showed a greater percentage of believers reporting that the table had moved. In another experiment the believers had also reported that a handbell had moved when it had remained stationary and expressed their belief that the fake seances contained genuine paranormal phenomena. The experiments strongly supported the notion that in the seance room, believers are more suggestible than disbelievers to suggestions that are consistent with their belief in paranormal phenomena. An experiment (O'Keeffe and Wiseman, 2005) involving 5 mediums found no evidence to support the notion that the mediums under controlled conditions were able to demonstrate paranormal or mediumistic ability.
Paranormal healing A study in the
British Medical Journal (Rose, 1954) investigated
spiritual healing,
therapeutic touch and
faith healing. In a hundred cases that were investigated no single case revealed that the healer's intervention alone resulted in any improvement or cure of a measurable organic disability. A trial was carried out by a group of scientists (Beutler, 1988) to see whether three treatment groups, paranormal
laying on of hands, paranormal healing at a distance and no paranormal healing to test if they might reduce
blood pressure. The data did not reveal any paranormal effects as no significant differences between the three treatment groups were found. The results concluded that the fall in blood pressure in all three of the groups was caused by the
psychosocial approach and the
placebo effect of the trial itself. One form of paranormal healing known as
psychic surgery has been discovered to be the result of
sleight of hand tricks. Psychic surgeons pretend to reach into the patient's body but the
skin is never punctured, there are no scars and the
blood is released from packets hidden in the surgeon's hands.
Psychokinesis Cognitive biases have been found in some cases of
psychokinesis. A meta-analysis by Bösch,
et al (2006) of 380 studies found that "statistical significance of the overall database provides no directive as to whether the phenomenon is genuine or not" and came to the conclusion that "publication bias appears to be the easiest and most encompassing explanation for the primary findings of the meta-analysis." According to
Richard Wiseman there are a number of ways for faking psychokinetic metal bending (PKMB) these include switching straight objects for pre-bent duplicates, the concealed application of force, and secretly inducing metallic fractures. Research has also suggested that (PKMB) effects can be created by
verbal suggestion. On this subject (Harris, 1985) wrote: In an experimental study (Wiseman and Greening, 2005) two groups of participants were shown a
videotape in which a fake psychic placed a bent
key on a table. Participants in the first group heard the fake psychic suggest that the key was continuing to bend when it had remained stationary, whilst those in the second group did not. The results revealed that participants from the first group reported significantly more movement of the key than the second group. The findings were replicated in another study. The experiments had demonstrated that "testimony for PKMB after effects can be created by verbal suggestion, and therefore the testimony from individuals who have observed allegedly genuine demonstrations of such effects should not be seen as strong evidence in support of the paranormal".
Remote viewing Research has suggested that in cases the participants of
remote viewing experiments are influenced by
subjective validation, a process through which correspondences are perceived between stimuli that are in fact associated purely randomly.
Sensory cues have also occurred in remote viewing experiments.
Telepathy Research has discovered that in some cases
telepathy can be explained by a
covariation bias. In an experiment (Schienle
et al. 1996) 22 believers and 20 skeptics were asked to judge the covariation between transmitted symbols and the corresponding feedback given by a receiver. According to the results the believers overestimated the number of successful transmissions whilst the skeptics made accurate hit judgments. The results from another telepathy experiment involving 48 undergraduate college students (Rudski, 2002) were explained by
hindsight and
confirmation biases. ==Relationship with parapsychology==