BOOK REVIEWS

D. REVENSTORF: Pcr,siin/ich/wit. Eine krifischr Ei~jiiihruny. Gerhard Rottger. Munchen (1982). iv + 320 pp.

Books on personality are relatively rare in Germany. and this is therefore an interesting new venture. On the whole the book is well-written. closely argued. and could be recommended to teachers looking for an introductory text and willing to supply much additional information. There are, however. a number of criticisms which reduce its value. Too much room is given to non-experimental and speculative approaches. like those of Freud and Jung; in this day and age these are of purely historical interest. Information is not always correct; thus the description of criterion analysis (p, 204) is quite wrong. Sometimes the discussion is difficult to follow, as in the case of the different models of intelligence. What is said about the theories of Vernon and Thurstone is too short to be intelligible. or in fact incorrect, It is meaningless to say of Thurstone’s system that it is a model depending on multiple correlated factors, without adding that these correlations produce a second-order factor of general intelligence. This is the kind of information that will have to be supplied by the teacher. The bibliography lists many German publications probably not familiar to English-speaking authors. but occasionally there is a tendency to rely more on German references than would strictly be compatible with a proper review of the literature. This of course is just the obverse side of the usual tendency for English-speaking authors not to refer to German studies! Altogether a good and interesting text which will no doubt be considerably improved in its second edition.

H. J. EYS~NC I(

HANS J. EYSENCK and CARL L. SARGENT: Expluirting f/w Unrxpluined: MJ%crie.s of’ rhr Ptrrcrnorrntrl. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. London (1982). 192 pp. f9.95.

According to the Preface. over 75”, of the general population believe in extrasensory perception while only some IO’,, of the sctentitic community believe in it as an established fact. Why this discrepancy when an informed opinion depends on an evaluation of factual evidence, a task for which scientists should be eminently suited’? Further. why should some scientists and not others be convinced of the existence of paranormal phenomena. if both groups are basing their opinion on the same evidence‘? Perhaps it is because not all scientists are familiar with the basic evidence, a state of affairs that the present book should help to correct. We are presented with a lavishly illustrated and clear review of the evidence for and against paranormal psychology. This ranges from anecdotal. but carefully documented. accounts of spontaneously-occurring paranormal events (including poltergeists and faith-healing) to rtgorously-con- trolled experimental studies. There are also accounts of investigations into people wtth exceptional paranormal abilities, such as Pave1 Stepanek, who is listed in the Guinnrss Book ofRrcord.s as the world’s most psychtc person,

The conclusion to emerge time and again from the research is that ‘something’ is happening which cannot be explained in terms of known scientific laws. When experiments, such as on card guessing, repeatedly produce results which are statistically significant well beyond the one in a thousand level, chance is hardly tenable as a reasonable explanation. Fraud on the part of the experimenters is always possible, but this becomes tncreasingly unlikely as more and more researchers become involved in the field. Machines have been constructed. such as those pioneered by Helmut Schmidt, which together with computer scoring reduce the likelihood of human interference to a minimum. And yet still certain people, and often these are volunteers without prior knowledge of any special talent, conststcntly produce results beyond chance level.

Perhaps the most convjincing evidence to emerge concerns the ‘lawtulness‘ ot the phenomena. 1 wo examples may suhice. Sargent’s own work has been mainly concerned with identtfying the conditions most favourable to tasks in which ‘receivers’ attempt to guess at a picture being ‘transmitted’ to them by someone in another building. Subjects arc progressively relaxed and their performance is shown to improve as their state of relaxation dccpcns. Moreover, presumably because they are freer from ‘distracting‘ thoughts. extraverts tend to perform better than introverts. This personality difference has been obtained in IX different studies with the reverse result-introv!erts scoring better than extraverts-occurring only once. The odds of this difference occurring by chance alone are estimated at 10.000 million to one.

A second example comes from the work of Joseph Rhine at Duke University. After showing that certain people can apparently influence the roll of dice, it was suggested on the grounds that boredom might act as a distracting influence that the ability should deteriorate during the course of a testing session. Rc-analysis of all his tests. by dividing the sessions into four quarters. confirmed this suggestion for I8 of the 20 experiments that had been conducted. The probability of this result (known as the ‘quarter decline’) is calculated to be 100 million to one against chance. Will scientists be convinced by evidence of this nature’? The history of science suggests that even hard evidence ohcrcd by others is not always enough. Perhaps it is only by conducting experiments themselves that the 90”,, of disbelieving scientists would be prepared to consider modifying their opinion!

DA\,,) NIAS

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