By J.E. Kennedy and H. Kanthamani

Information on the effects of psi experiences also may provide insights into motivational factors that are widely presumed by parapsychologists to guide or underlie psi phenomena.  Although motivational factors are thought to be pivotal for psi phenomena (Broughton, 1988; Stanford, 1974a, 1974b; Weiner and Geller, 1984), very little research has been aimed at investigating the overall effects of paranormal experiences.  This type of research may provide one of the best windows to the motivations underlying the phenomena. Information on the effects of psi phenomena for people who volunteer for parapsychological research may be of particular interest to experimental researchers.

The purposes of the present study were (a) to develop questionnaires to evaluate the effects of paranormal and mystical/spiritual experiences on people's lives, and (b) to collect initial data with the questionnaires.

Questionnaires

The development of the two primary questionnaires for this study was influenced by several factors, including published work, our previous experience with people reporting anomalous experiences, our preliminary explorations with various questionnaire strategies, and our personal anomalous experiences.  One overriding goal of questionnaire development was to have short questionnaires that could be used in a wide variety of situations.  The final questionnairesentitled the Index of Changes Resulting From Experiences and the Checklist of Effects of Experiences,  are given in appendixes A and B respectively.  These two questionnaires were administered along with the two-page Life Experiences Questionnaire,1 which is described in other reports (Kennedy, Kanthamani, & Palmer, in press; Kennedy & Kanthamani, inpess).  The Life Experiences Questionnaire contains measures related to current health status including well-being, meaning in life, and self-reported health.  Results for the Life Experiences Questionnaire are reported separately (Kennedy & Kanthamani, in press).  

These questionnaires focus on paranormal and transcendent experiences.  Paranormal experiences were described as including psychic and out-of-body experiences, healing miracles, communication with the dead, apparitions, etc. This broad subject matter was selected because our initial explorations found that people described a wide variety of anomalous experiences as affecting their lives and sometimes reported interactions among different types of experiences.  Transcendent experiences included profound mystical or spiritual experiences, which were characterized in the Life Experiences Questionnaire as an "overwhelming feeling of peace and unity with the entire creation, or profound inner sense of divine presence."  For this project, we were more interested in the effects of the experience than a precise categorization of the type of experience.  In this report, we use the term anomalous when referring to both types of experiences.

In addition to the two questionnaires on the effects of the experiences, the respondents were asked how many times they had each type (paranormal or transcendent) of experience and to describe briefly their most important experience.  Some experiences may have both paranormal and transcendent features and were counted in both categories.  Respondents were also asked their age at the time of the experience and were given the option of not sharing the details of the experience for personal reasons.  Each author independently classified the experience descriptions as paranormal, transcendent, or both, and the discrepancies were resolved.  If a respondent described separate paranormal and transcendent experiences, the classification "both" was used.  Because we were primarily interested in the effects of the experiences, we accepted the respondents' interpretation of their experiences and did not exclude experiences that appeared to us to be doubtful or of poor quality.

This questionnaire asks the respondents whether their paranormal or transcendent experiences resulted in an increase, decrease, or no change for each of 21 feelings or characteristics.  The development of this index began by selecting key items from Ring's (1984) work with near-death experiences.  We added other items that more directly related to well-being and also added some negative items to make the items more balanced.  After a few  preliminary respondents commented that they had difficulty with the questionnaire because change should be measured relative to a baseline value, we added a response column asking to what extent the respondent had the feeling or characteristic prior to his or her anomalous experience(s).  A final question asked whether the indicated changes were due primarily to one experience or to a combination of experiences.  After initial use, three items were  replaced by other items and minor wording changes were made for a few other items.  The varying sample sizes in the results reflect the items that were added later.

The questionnaires were administered to a convenience sample of people who were likely candidates to have had anomalous experiences.  The great majority were actively interested in parapsychology and were typical of people who volunteer for parapsychological research.  For the purposes of this initial study, we were interested in people with anomalous experiences, not a random sample from the general population.  Only people who reported one or more paranormal or transcendent experiences were included in the analysis.  The 120 respondents with experiences were:  7 drop-in visitors to the Institute for Parapsychology, 9 people who contacted the Institute by mail or phone, 9 participants in the 1994 summer study program at the Institute, 3 staff members of the Institute, 3 members of the Association for Research and Enlightenment (Edgar Cayce group) who attended a talk on parapsychology, 13 college students from the mail survey that was described previously (Kennedy, Kanthamani, & Palmer, in press), and 76 respondents to questionnaires mailed to 1200 names on a mailing list of people who had ordered books or other products related to paranormal phenomena.  These constitute all the responses we have obtained to date for these questionnaires.

The study sample represents people who are interested in paranormal phenomena and are motivated to participate in research.  The findings from this group may not be typical of other groups.

The majority of respondents reported multiple paranormal and transcendent experiences.  As shown in Table 1, 52% reported more than 10 paranormal experiences and about 27% reported more than 10 transcendent experiences.  The higher percentage of paranormal experiences may reflect the fact that respondents were recruited based on interest in parapsychology and the paranormal.  Approximately 96% of the respondents reported at least one paranormal experience, and 83% reported at least one transcendent experience.  The obvious trend in Table 1 indicating that multiple paranormal experiences were associated with multiple transcendent experiences reflects a correlation coefficient of .52 between the number of each experience.

The effects of the experiences were generally due to a combination of experiences.  On the Index of Changes, 86% of the respondents indicated that the changes were due primarily to more than one anomalous experience (excluding 17 respondents who did not answer this question).  Likewise, on the Checklist of Effects, 71% of the respondents indicated that one or more of the effects checked was due to more than one anomalous experience.

Respondents with a larger number of experiences reported more effects from their experiences.  The number of items checked on the Checklist of Effects of Experiences (excluding



Table 1. Number of Paranormal and Transcendent Experiences


Number of Transcendent Experiences
None One 2 - 5 6 - 10 > 10 Totala
Number of None     0     4     1     0     0    5
Paranormal 1     2     0     2     0     0    4
Expereinces 2 - 5    10     8    10     1     3   34
6 - 10     4     3     3     3     1   14
> 10     3     2    17     9    27   61
Totala    20    17    34    13    31
a The figures for the totals include missing values for the other variable and therefore are sometimes greater than the sum of the rows and columns.  There were 118 cases without missing responses for the number of paranormal experiences and 115 cases for number of transcendent experiences.

the last two items) correlated (r=.51) with the number of paranormal experiences and (r=.49) with the number of transcendent experiences.  The percentage of items marked as either increasing or decreasing on the Index of Changes Resulting From Experiences correlated (r=.36) with the number of transcendent experiences, but was not suggestively associated with the number of paranormal experiences (r=.14).  This latter result suggests that many of the feelings and characteristics on the Index of Changes may be more influenced by transcendent than paranormal experiences.

The experience descriptions were classified as 55% paranormal, 13% transcendent, 19% both, and 5% as cases that appeared to be neither paranormal nor transcendent.  About 8% of the respondents chose not to describe their most important anomalous experience.