We sometimes seem to experience the exact sensations which someone
else, emotionally close to us, is experiencing at that very moment. Is this
"empathic" experience a form of psi? When the other person is right in front of
us, perhaps not: in observing their behavior we may have inferred their inner state and
unconsciously induced similar feelings in our own body. On the other hand, instances of
"empathy at a distance" or "telempathy" - where there's no
"normal" knowledge of the other person's state - suggest a much deeper form of
link.
To experimentally test the existence of telempathy, the sender undergoes a strong
emotional experience while physiological parameters linked with emotions (such as
electrodermal activity or skin resistance) are monitored in the receiver. Experiments are
divided into short "sending" and "control" periods, which alternate,
on the basis of a random schedule. In the sending periods, the sender is exposed to an
intense stimulus, whereas the stimulus during the control periods is neutral or absent. If
telempathy is at work, the receiver's physiological states should change during the
sending-periods in a way which can be statistically studied and analyzed, by comparison
with the control-periods. |
