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Distant Mental Interaction with Living Systems
A Critical Assessment and Re-Testing

Principal Investigator: S. Schmidt, PhD.

Affiliations: University Hospital Freiburg, Department of Environmental Medicine and Hospital Epidemiology

Background: In a summary meta-analysis of research called Direct Mental Interaction with Living Systems (DMILS), a highly significant effect of medium size from a set of 19 studies was found (ES(r) = .25, p = .0000007). This finding indicates that two physically isolated persons may interact without using conventional means of communication, i.e. one person seems to be able to mentally “influence” the physiological arousal of another person (the measurement used was electrodermal activity).

Objective of the study: The aim of this project was to assess this claim with different and more rigorous research strategies. This included a more careful meta-analysis and two experiments using more stringent control methods than in the past.

Method and Results: A preliminary analysis showed that prior DMILS studies using electrodermal activity had methodological shortcomings. A pilot study demonstrated medium sized (d=.4) effects in a 26 session testing. A second experiment with 96 subjects demonstrated more modest effects, essentially not replicating the initial results. A meta-analysis of all EDA-DMILS studies demonstrates a small effect size averaging (d=.11) over a set of forty (40) experiments with 1055 sessions.

Relationship with SIIB Mission and Focus on Healing: Distant healing is predicated on the capacity for direct mental interaction between biological systems. EDA testing has been the measure of choice for such tests, because it can be subjected to meta-analysis in order to determine overall effect averaged over many experiments. In addition, a greater variety of control situations can be tested allowing us examine how the consciousness of one person can “influence” the nervous systems of another person.