Abstract
In three experiments, Daryl Bem’s experimental method on retroactive facilitation of recall was replicated, with minor modifications, with the aim of testing robustness of Bem’s retroactive effect. In Experiment 1, the original doubleblind procedure was replaced by the single blind procedure under which the experimenter, but not participants, knew what the experimental conditions were. In the experimental condition of this experiment Bem’s results were successfully replicated, however, in the control condition, which was supposed to produce null effect, the effect was significant and a mirror image of the effect in the experimental condition. In Experiment 2, the control condition was run before the experimental condition. As in Experiment 1, the results in both conditions were symmetrical, though this time not significantly different from zero. In Experiment 3, in the experimental condition the results were reversed to those in Experiment 1. Altogether, the results marginally support robustness of Bem’s reported effect. However, the results do not support the interpretation of this effect as an effect in inverted causality. Rather, the results of this study suggest that the effect reported by Bem is a particular case of a number of possible outcomes, which occur when Bem’s method is applied. The results also suggest that these outcomes occur due to a direct effect of the observer’s mind on the RNG functioning.
Highlights
In his paper “Feeling the future: Experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect” psychologist Daryl Bem reported nine experiments on the precognition of future events that could not be accessed through any known physical processes or anticipated by any known inferential processes [1]
Experiment 8 drew on the known effect in memory, according to which repetition and practice enhances recall: the hypothesis was tested that this effect can work “backwards”, by examining whether rehearsing a set of words makes them easier to recall even though the rehearsal takes place after the recall test is given
82 The Open Psychology Journal, 2013, Volume 6 known in memory studies as “retrieval-induced forgetting”, according to which practicing items to be recalled increases the likelihood that these items will be recalled at a later time and causes forgetting of other items associated to the same cues guiding retrieval that were not practiced [3]
Summary
In his paper “Feeling the future: Experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect” psychologist Daryl Bem reported nine experiments on the precognition of future events that could not be accessed through any known physical processes or anticipated by any known inferential processes [1]. Experiment 8 drew on the known effect in memory, according to which repetition and practice enhances recall (see [2]): the hypothesis was tested that this effect can work “backwards”, by examining whether rehearsing a set of words makes them easier to recall even though the rehearsal takes place after the recall test is given. Two recent attempts to replicate Bem’s retroactive facilitation effect without changes, by exactly following Bem’s methodology, have failed to replicate this effect [4, 5] Another feature of a regular psychological effect is robustness, which implies replicability of an effect with minor changes both in the effect and in methodology. It is impossible that a daughter or a son, in his or her facial appearance, is an identical copy of one of their
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