What is Paranormal Phenomena and Parapsychology?

Question

What is Paranormal Phenomena and Parapsychology?

Answer 1

Paranormal phenomena are events experienced by people that defy explanation based on how we understand the way the world works.

Examples would include rains of fish, frogs, bread, blood and even stranger objects, levitation, teleportation, bigfoot, UFOs, ghosts, spontaneous human combustion and lots of other wierd and wonderful things.

You have two choices. You can decide that these things can't happen, so they don't, and its all down to imagination or trickery, or you can decide that we just don't really know how the world works so we have to keep an open mind.

Parapsychology is the attempt to prove, understand and control abilities that certain people appear to possess. The most common subjects are telepathy (mind reading), telekenesis (altering or affecting objects by thought), clairvoyance( seeing people or events that are distant in time or space, or ghosts). Prophecy, healing, knowing the future, the list goes on. Parapsychology tries to apply scientific rules and theories to these. However,despite the best efforts of governments, universities, scientists and many others, no concrete proofs have yet been found. In fact one definition of the paranormal could be unprovability.

I'm going with Shakespeare on this one. " There are more things in Heaven and Earth.........than are deamed of in your philosophy."

Answer 2

Roger gave an excellent if long answer. Let me add that the Parapsychological Association

http://www.parapsych.org has been an affiliate of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science since 1969. So, the largest, and perhaps most prestigious, science organization in the US regards parapsychology as a legitimate science.

Michael John Weaver, M.S.

Answer 3

Paranormal are things, events or phenomena that are imagined by fantasy-prone people.  Parapsychology is a science that didn't really pan out.

Answer 4

paranormal phenomena is phenomena that cannot be explained buy present scientific means. para psychology is the psychological study of para normal phenomena. it can encopass studies that try to show we have paranormal abilities esp or studies which look at how we perceive results as proving esp.   In other words there are scientists who wnat to prove this phenomena exist and others who want to show it doesnt.  they would consider the study of parapsychology a pseudo science.

Answer 5

Its like the study of the paranormal which means ghosts and hauntings and stuff like that

Answer 6

paranormal phenomena is about haunted places & para psychology is about abnormal behaviour beyond physical explanation

Answer 7

Parapsychology (from the Greek: παρά para, "alongside" + psychology) is the study of paranormal psychological phenomena, such as extra-sensory perception, psychokinesis, and survival of consciousness after death. Parapsychologists call these processes psi, a term non-suggestive of what causes the phenomena or experiences.[1]

Parapsychologists study a number of ostensible paranormal phenomena, including but not limited to:

    * Telepathy: Transfer of information on thoughts or feelings between individuals by means other than the five classical senses.

    * Precognition: Perception of information about future places or events before they occur.

    * Clairvoyance: Obtaining information about places or events at remote locations, by means unknown to current science.

    * Psychokinesis: The ability of the mind to influence matter, time, space, or energy by means unknown to current science.

    * Reincarnation: The rebirth of a soul or other non-physical aspect of human consciousness in a new physical body after death.

    * Hauntings: Phenomena often attributed to ghosts and encountered in places a deceased individual is thought to have frequented, or in association with the person's former belongings.

The definitions for the terms above may not reflect their mainstream usage, nor the opinions of all parapsychologists and their critics. Many critics, for example, feel that parapsychologists are engaged in the study of phenomena that disappear under stringent experimental conditions and are thus normal processes.

According to the Parapsychological Association, parapsychologists do not study all paranormal phenomena, nor are they concerned with astrology, UFOs, Bigfoot, paganism, vampires, alchemy, or witchcraft.[2]

Methodology

Parapsychologists employ a variety of approaches during the study of apparent paranormal phenomena. These methods include qualitative approaches used in traditional psychology, but also quantitative empirical methodologies. Their more controversial studies involve the use of meta-analyses in examining the statistical evidence for psi.[14]

[edit] Experimental research

[edit] Ganzfeld

Participant of a Ganzfeld experiment which proponents say may show evidence of telepathy.

Participant of a Ganzfeld experiment which proponents say may show evidence of telepathy.

    Main article: Ganzfeld experiment

The ganzfeld (German for "whole field") is a technique used to test individuals for telepathy. The technique was developed to quickly quiet mental "noise" by providing a mild, unpatterned sensory field to mask the visual and auditory environment. Isolating the visual sense is usually achieved by creating a soft red glow which is diffused through half ping-pong balls attached to the recipient's eyes. The auditory sense is usually blocked by playing white noise, static, or similar sounds to the recipient. The subject is also seated in a reclined comfortable position to minimize the sense of touch.

In the typical ganzfeld experiment, a "sender" and "receiver" are isolated, the receiver is put into the ganzfeld state, and the sender is shown a video clip or still picture and asked to mentally send that image to the receiver. The receiver, while in the ganzfeld, is asked to continuously speak aloud all mental processes, including images, thoughts, feelings. At the end of the sending period, typically about 20 to 40 minutes in length, the receiver is taken out of the ganzfeld and shown four images or videos, one of which is the true target and three are non-target decoys. The receiver attempts to select the true target, using perceptions experienced during the ganzfeld state as clues to what the mentally "sent" image might have been. The results of scores of such experiments, and over 3,000 individual sessions conducted by about two dozen investigators world-wide, have been interpreted by parapsychologists such as Charles Honorton as indicating that the target image is selected on average about 32% of the time.[16] By chance alone, receivers should be able to select the correct target 25% of the time. Because the results are said to be statistically significant, they have sparked debates within mainstream academic psychology journals over how to properly interpret the data.[17]

[edit] Remote viewing

    Main article: Remote viewing

Remote viewing experiments test the ability to gather information on a remote target consisting of an object, place, or person, etc., that is hidden from the physical perception of the viewer and typically separated from the viewer at some distance. In one type of remote viewing experiment, a pool of several hundred photographs are created. One of these is randomly selected by a third party to be the target. It is then set aside in a remote location. The remote viewer attempts to sketch or otherwise describe that remote target photo. This procedure is repeated for a number of different targets. Many ways of analytically evaluating the results of this sort of experiment have been developed. One common method is to take the group of seven target photos and responses, randomly shuffle the targets and responses, and then ask independent judges to rank order or match the correct targets with the participant's actual responses. This method assumes that if there were an anomalous transfer of information, the responses should correspond more closely to the correct targets than to the mismatched targets.[18]

Several hundred such trials have been conducted by investigators over the past 25 years, including by the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory (PEAR) and by scientists at SRI International and Science Applications International Corp., under contract by the U.S. government. The cumulative data was interpreted by Professor of Aerospace Science Robert G. Jahn and psychologist Brenda Dunne at PEAR as indicating that information about remote photos, actual scenes, and events can be perceived beyond chance expectation.[18]

Paranormal is an umbrella term used to describe a wide variety of reported anomalous phenomena. According to the Journal of Parapsychology, the term paranormal describes "any phenomenon that in one or more respects exceeds the limits of what is deemed physically possible according to current scientific assumptions."[1] For this reason, the scientific community often avoids research on the paranormal, believing that it may not conform to the standards required by the scientific method.

Paranormal describes subjects studied under parapsychology, which deals with psychic phenomena like telepathy, extra-sensory perception, psychokinesis, and post-mortem survival studies like reincarnation, ghosts, and hauntings. However, as a broader category, the paranormal sometimes describes subjects outside the scope of parapsychology, including anomalous aspects of UFOs, some creatures that fall under the scope of cryptozoology, purported phenomena surrounding the Bermuda Triangle, and many other non-psychical subjects.[2]

Answer 8

A paranormal phenomena by definition is "any phenomenon that in one or more respects exceeds the limits of what is deemed physically possible according to current scientific assumptions." Basically it's a occurrence that is unable to be explained by science. Examples of this are psychic phenomenas such as telekinesis and ESP, or anything that deals with life after death such as ghosts and reincarnation, or creatures that belongs to cryptozoology such as the Nessie (the Lochness Monster) or Big Foot.

And with Parapsychology, it is basically the study/research/ of paranormal phenomena. Is considered to be a fringe science because it is not accepted by mainstream science mainly due to the fact that it doesn't conform to the standards required by the scientific method.