When the other person is right in front of us, perhaps not: in observing their behaviour we may have inferred their inner state and unconsciously induced similar feelings in our own body. On the other hand, instances of "empathy at a distance" or "telempathy" - where there's no "normal" knowledge of the other person's state - suggest a much deeper form of link. To experimentally test the existence of telempathy, the sender undergoes a strong emotional experience while physiological parameters linked with emotions (such as electrodermal activity or skin resistance) are monitored in the receiver. Experiments are divided into short "sending" and "control" periods, which alternate, on the basis of a random schedule. In the sending periods, the sender is exposed to an intense stimulus, whereas the stimulus during the control periods is neutral or absent. If telempathy is at work, the receiver's physiological states should change during the sending-periods in a way which can be statistically studied and analysed, by comparison with the control-periods.Here's an ingenious protocol for testing telempathy, devised in the 1960s by psi researcher Douglas Dean. Before the experiment began, names which were emotionally charged for both sender and receiver were written on cards. Neutral names were marked on other cards. The receiver was hooked up to a plethysmograph, a device for measuring variations in blood-volume. In another room, a random generating system signalled the sender to look at a new card, concentrate on it for 20 seconds, and then put it aside and wait for the next signal. In 11 sessions of 15 trials each the graph showed average drops of blood-volume (indicating vaso- constriction) during the exact moments when the sender was concentrating on those names known to both subjects. When the names were neutral, blank, or known only to the sender, the receiver showed no physiological changes. A somewhat different telempathy experiment was recently conducted by Deborah Delanoy and Sunita Sah of the University of Edinburgh. First the sender wrote down several emotionally-charged personal memories. These had to be strong enough to trigger an especially positive and happy state of mind. Four other topics were also selected which elicited no emotional response or interest.
During the session, an RNG (random number generator) determined when the sender was to concentrate and which type of target ("positive" or "neutral") was to be transmitted. The receiver was situated in a room 25 meters away. For each sending-period, the receiver tried to guess whether the emotional state of the sender was positive or neutral. At the same time, their Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) was monitored (like blood-pressure, GSR is known to relate to the general degree of emotional arousal).When the results of the 32 different sender / receiver pairs were analysed, Delanoy and Sah found null results for the receivers' conscious guesses as to the states of their senders. On the other hand, their electrodermal activity was significantly higher (p=.04) during the positive sending-periods than in the neutral periods - suggesting that they unconsciously did "pick up" the feeling-state of the sender.In general, it seems that unconscious bodily reactions may be a more fruitful way for detecting psi than conscious guesses. In fact, "body psi" research suggests that, in day-to-day life, we may be receiving far more psi information than what surfaces into consciousness. The occasional spontaneous ESP experiences of which most of us are aware may be just the tip of the iceberg, a fraction of the psi information that circulates through the unconscious mind. (Source: Psi Explorer)
