Attempt to Replicate Bem's Precognitive Avoidance Task And Detect Relationships With Trait Anxiety

Abstract

Previous research suggests anxious individuals demonstrate hypervigilance for threatening stimuli. Recent controversial studies suggested people's bodies (presentiment) and brain (precognition, Bem, 2011; Bem et al., 2015) can 'predict' biologically salient events, such as threatening stimuli, milliseconds to seconds before they occur. If true, this suggests a possible mechanism for hypervigilance towards threatening stimuli in anxious individuals. We sought to replicate Bem's precognitive avoidance experiment in an independent cohort of adolescents (n = 144), tested whether performance ability is associated with state or trait anxiety, and examined sex-differences in these variables. We hypothesized that trait anxiety would correlate positively with precognitive avoidance performance. We were unable to replicate the 2011 Bem findings in our sample (precognitive avoidance hit rate = 48.95%, p = 0.825), and neither trait nor state anxiety was correlated with precognitive avoidance. We did not detect a sex difference in precognitive avoidance (females > males: t = 1.36, p = 0.175, two sample t-test). We found higher levels of trait anxiety in females in line with previous research. Contrary to our hypotheses, we failed to detect evidence for precognitive avoidance in our sample, possibly because our study was underpowered. Implications are discussed with respect to related literature.