Citation

Data on telepathic group communication of emotions, as evoked by slide pictures, were analysed with a view to identifying critical picture characteristics. Performance was related to 6 psychological picture scales as well as to 2 scales measuring the pictures’ tendency to evoke electrodermal (EDA) and heart-rate (HR) responses, respectively. All 8 picture scales were merged into a composite scale, reflecting negative arousal (NA). Based on this scale, a negative arousal discrimination (NAD) scale was constructed. An old data set, obtained from 845 participants, and a new one, obtained from 652 participants, were analysed, both separately and together, with relative hit rate (hit rate in relation to response tendency) as the performance measure. Significant interstudy reliability was established. Participants discriminated between 2 types of negative pictures: those with high and those with low negative arousal potential. For negative pictures, the NAD scale was significantly positively skewed, with a remarkably small p value for the total data set (p = .000001). This skewness could largely—but not fully—be accounted for in terms of a significant (p = .0003) negative correlation between the NAD scores and number of receivers. The major findings tended to be clearer in the new data set than in the old one. Various “natural” explanations of the positive results are discussed and dismissed as unlikely. A simplified experiment for future replication experiments is suggested.