Page 90 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - Febrary/March 2020 Edition

90 The All-To-Fallible Mind

Mediums, magicians Tanner and G Stanley Hall, they concluded that been unable to reconstruct Davey’s sleight of
“what was present of him, if anything, was not hand.
and the all-too- only fragmentary but incredibly stupid, Modern cognitive psychologists have
oblivious and changed”. since developed a theoretical framework for a
In the late 1880s, Eleanor Sidgwick, one surprising phenomenon called “inattentional
fallible mind of the founding members of the SPR, reached blindness”, where viewers may fail to perceive

out to Angelo Lewis, a British barrister and seemingly obvious visual events when their
magician who published prolifically on magic attention is otherwise engaged. Davey’s actions
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under the pseudonym “Professor Hoffmann”. were clearly visible, yet the sitters consistently
Sidgwick asked him to give his opinion, as an expressed the belief that the writing was
The SPR and its subsequent transatlantic
expert in conjuring, on the possibility of fraud in produced while they held the slates, and they
counterpart, the American Society for Psychical
reports of séances. In particular, she was either failed to notice or failed to remember the
Research (ASPR), boasted many prominent
interested in those points when witnesses “might placing of the slate below the table.
scientists and intellectual figures, including the
be defective or misdirected”. A famous recent example of
mathematician and writer Charles Dodgson (aka
Lewis responded that there was little inattentional blindness was reported by the US
Lewis Carroll), Sigmund Freud, Mark Twain
value in any attempt to assess written reports for psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher
and prominent early American psychologists
evidence of fraud. He argued that, when fraud Chabris, who demonstrated in 1999 that
such as Joseph Jastrow and G Stanley Hall.
was a possibility, then witnesses’ descriptions individuals watching a video of a basketball
In the US, the philosopher William
must inevitably “be taken to represent (as do all game could fail to notice a person in a gorilla
James, today revered as the founding father of
descriptions of conjuring effects by uninitiated costume crossing the court.
American psychology, became one of the
persons) not what the witnesses actually see, but Reactions to the “Mal-Observation”
leading proponents of paranormal research.
what they believe they saw, which is a very report indicate just how radical the results were
James’s book The Principles of Psychology
different matter”. perceived to be. One of those who participated
(1890) is credited with helping to establish
Recognising that post-séance reports in a Davey “séance” was Alfred Russel Wallace,
psychology as a respected scientific discipline.
were a poor way to assess the reliability of who was utterly convinced that he had witnessed
But many contemporary psychologists
testimony, two other SPR members — Hodgson genuine supernatural phenomena. After the
do not realise that James was also steadfastly
(who would go on to study the Piper case) and report was published, and Hodgson and Davey
sympathetic to psychical research. In addition to
Samuel John Davey — took it upon themselves had revealed that they had been using trickery,
establishing the psychology department at
to develop a more formal investigation. Instead Wallace wrote an angry letter to the SPR, stating
Harvard University, he also served as the
of using a self-professed “genuine” medium, that the duo were engaged in a deliberate cover-
president of the ASPR, and even declared that he
they choreographed their own fake séances. up of Davey’s genuine mediumistic talents.
had personally discovered at least one genuine
Their study was published in 1887 under Even when we do accurately perceive
spiritual medium, a Bostonian woman named
the title “The Possibilities of Mal-Observation events, our memories can easily become
Leonora Piper.
and Lapse of Memory from a Practical Point of distorted. Contemporary experts believe that
In a speech delivered to the ASPR in
View”, and it’s arguable that it highlighted recalling events can be best conceptualised as a
1896, James argued that it would take only one
mechanisms of human perception that would not reconstructive process, meaning that memories
genuine medium to legitimise the scientific
be appreciated by mainstream psychologists for can contain not only elements that were
possibility of the survival of the human soul
many decades. witnessed, but also elements drawn from the
after death. He noted that “if you wish to upset
In total, the “Mal-Observation” report imagination and from external suggestions.
the law that all crows are black, you mustn’t
collects 27 distinct accounts from 17 separate
seek to show that no crows are; it is enough if
performances. Those who reported that they had The psychologist Elizabeth Loftus coined the
you prove one single crow to be white”, and
witnessed supernatural phenomena committed term “misinformation effect” to describe
declared that Piper represented his “white
predictable and systematic errors in their exposure to false information that can change a
crow”.
statements. Their writing typically omitted witness’s recollection of events. In 1974, Loftus
Piper claimed she could enter into a
crucial elements of the séances — specifically, and her graduate student John Palmer
special trance state in which she received
elements that were instrumental for demonstrated that simple verbal suggestions
psychic messages from particular “spirit
accomplishing the conjuring tricks. could change the way observers recalled a video
guides”, including a French physician named
For example, in one of the scripted of a car accident.
“Phinuit”. Her advocates came to believe that in
segments of the séance, Davey — himself an ex- Since then, similar experiments have
some instances, when Piper entered her trance,
spiritualist turned sceptic — used a magician’s shown that exposure to false information can
the spirit guides would take control of her voice,
ruse to produce spirit writing, by surreptitiously lead healthy, mentally sound individuals to
and at other times they would take control of her
switching a blank slate for another slate that had create strong memories of entirely fictitious
hand so that they could write messages.
been written on before the sitting. He would events, such as a childhood trip to Disneyland.
When in a trance, she would refer to
begin by showing the blank slate clearly, then In 2015, a study by forensic psychologists Julia
herself as “the Machine” and sitters who wished
place the slate under the table at which he and Shaw and Stephen Porter demonstrated that
to communicate with the spirits that she
the other participants were seated, where he participants could be induced to falsely
channelled were instructed to hold her hand up
would switch it for the slate with writing. remember and even confess to fictional crimes.
to their mouths and speak into it, as if she were
And in research more closely echoing
a telephone. She would sometimes admonish
Without revealing the writing to the sitters, he the spirit of the “Mal-Observation” report, the
sitters to speak more loudly into her hand, as if
would feign disappointment that no spirits had psychologist Richard Wiseman has reported
there were a bad connection and they were
been in contact. Then he would place the pre- multiple studies demonstrating that participants
communicating over a great distance.
written slate on top of the table (writing side who view hoax stagings of paranormal
Piper was a favourite subject for
down) and ask the sitters to place their hands phenomena can be induced by verbal suggestion
psychical researchers both in the US and
upon it. After a brief time, he would ask them to to “recall” wholly fictional details.
England, conducting hundreds of sittings that
turn over the slate, revealing the writing, which
generated thousands of pages of transcripts. In
he would pretend had just appeared while the The conclusion of Mediums, magicians
some instances, she and her spirits carried on
sitters’ hands were on the slate. and the all-too-fallible mind will be in the
after the death of her investigators.
The trick was effective only because he
Following the death of the psychical April 2020 edition of The ‘X’ Chronicles
was able to switch the slates. But the
researcher Richard Hodgson, who had Newspaper.
participants’ reports consistently failed to
conducted many sittings with Piper, the medium
mention that the slate had been placed beneath HASSAN JAFFER, Internationalally
began to claim that she was speaking with the
the table. These omissions created a powerful Acclaimed Astrologer is now part of The ‘X’
voice of his spirit. However, after her claim was
illusion of impossibility for the sitters, and Zone TV Channel. For more information of
tested extensively by the psychologists Amy
anyone reading their reports alone would have Hassan visit www.astrotrends.net