Paranormality: Why we see what isn't there (25 page)

His initial attempts at uncovering the hidden genius of the animal kingdom involved trying to teach the fundamentals of mathematics to a cat, a bear and a horse. Each day, von Osten would draw numbers on a blackboard and encourage his class to count by moving their paws or hooves an appropriate number of times. In what must be one of the most bizarre school reports ever written, he later described how the cat quickly lost interest in the enterprise and the bear was downright hostile. The horse, however, proved an attentive student and quickly learned how to stamp out any number written on the blackboard. Flushed by this initial success, von Osten expelled the cat and bear from his classroom, and focused solely on equine pupils.
 

Von Osten acquired a Russian trotting horse called Hans, and together the two of them embarked on another four years of daily training in the fundamentals of mathematics.
 

In 1904, the duo felt ready for their first public demonstration. A small crowd of spectators were invited into von Osten’s courtyard and asked to form a semi-circle around ‘Clever’ Hans. Von Osten, sporting a long white beard, loose-fitting smock, and floppy black hat, stood to the side of the animal while members of the audience called out mathematical problems. Each time, Clever Hans indicated his answer by stamping his hoof against the cobbles. It was an impressive performance, with Hans correctly answering problems simple addition and subtraction problems, as well as more complex sums with fractions and square roots. Encouraged by this initial success, von Osten worked with Hans to increase his repertoire. Over time he taught the horse to tell the time, choose which musical tones would improve a harmony, and even answer questions by nodding or shaking his head.
 

In 1904, psychologist Oskar Pfungst decided to investigate Clever Hans, unaware that the work would guarantee him a place in almost every psychology textbook for the next hundred years. During Pfungst’s carefully controlled studies members of the public were then asked to present Hans with pre-planned questions. To ensure a well-motivated participant, Pfungst rewarded Clever Hans with a small piece of bread, carrot or sugar each time he responded (interestingly, this same procedure still works well with most undergraduate students today). It was not all easy going. Both von Osten and Clever Hans were prone to rage, and Pfungst received several bites during the investigation, the majority of which came from the horse. Regardless, the young German researcher methodically worked his way through a series of groundbreaking tests.

In one study, a series of number cards were first oriented in such a way as to ensure that Clever Hans, von Osten and a questioner could all see the front of the cards. A question was then asked, and Clever Hans stamped his hoof to indicate which card contained the answer. Under these circumstances, Clever Hans demonstrated an impressive 98 per cent success rate. However, when Pfungst altered the orientation of the cards to ensure that only Clever Hans could see the faces of the cards his hit rate dropped to an unimpressive 6 per cent. In another test, von Osten whispered two numbers into Hans’s ear and asked him to add them up. Time and again, Hans stamped out the right response. However, when von Osten whispered one number and Pfungst another, with neither man knowing the other’s number, Hans failed to produce the correct answer.

Pfungst obtained the same pattern in test after test. Whenever von Osten or a questioner knew how Clever Hans should respond, the horse did well. When no one knew the correct response, Hans failed. Pfungst concluded that Clever Hans was not thinking for himself but rather responding to involuntary signals in the facial expressions and body language of those around him. For years von Osten had not been talking to the animals, but instead chatting to himself.
 

Researchers across the world quickly realized that the general principle uncovered by Pfungst, namely that experimenters may be unknowingly persuading participants to act in a desired way, could have major implications for their work.
 

Scientists went in search of the phenomenon – dubbed the ‘Clever Hans effect’ – and found it in several different settings. In one classic experiment rats were randomly divided into two groups, and then given to students who were told that the groups had been selectively bred for good and poor performance in navigating mazes
¹⁰²
.
 
In fact, there was no special breeding at all. The students then ran the rats through mazes and reported results in line with their expectations, with the alleged ‘bright’ rats making 51 per cent more correct responses than the alleged 'dull' rats.
 

Similarly, in research called the 'Pygmalion experiment', Harvard psychologist Robert Rosenthal administered a test to an entire year-group of children, telling their teachers that it represented a new technique for predicting intellectual 'blooming'
¹⁰³
.
 
Teachers were then led to believe that they had been given the names of the children in their class who had obtained the highest scores. In reality, Rosenthal’s test was an ordinary measure of intelligence, and the names of the alleged 'bloomers' were chosen at random. At the end of the school year, the children were given the same intelligence test, and the children randomly identified as intellectual 'bloomers' scored an average of 15 points more than the other children.
 

According to Gary Wells, of Iowa State University, this theory could even lead to police officers unwittingly biasing witnesses to choose certain suspects from line-ups, by using exactly the same type of unconscious nonverbal signal that influenced Clever Hans over a hundred years ago
¹⁰⁴
.
 

This work made researchers recognize the need to guard against the Clever Hans effect by hiding certain aspects of a study from both the participants and experimenters. ‘Blind’ methods are now the gold standard of good science. And all because of a mathematical horse.
 

Both Bishop and Clever Hans appeared to be able to read people’s thoughts. In reality, both were simply responding to the involuntary signals given out by those around them. Other mind wizards have focused more on trying to control those thoughts and so persuade people to behave in certain ways. But is it really possible to take over someone’s mind and manipulate them like a puppet? Over the years several novelists and filmmakers have suggested it is, but what is the fact behind the fiction? Can someone be hypnotized to act against their will?

The Svengali Effect

In 1894 George du Maurier published his classic novel
Trilby
. The plot features a rogue hypnotist named Svengali, who places heroine Trilby O'Ferrall into a deep trance and then exploits her for his own benefit. In addition to being the second-bestselling novel of its day (outperformed only by Bram Stoker’s
Dracula
), and giving rise to the Trilby hat, du Maurier’s novel encouraged the public to believe that some people have the power to make others act against their will. But is this really the case?
 

Around the turn of the last century several researchers tackled the issue by placing people in trance states and asking them to carry out various questionable acts, such as committing a mock murder or throwing a glass of ‘acid’ (actually water) in the face of the experimenter
¹⁰⁵
.
 
Although many of the participants did stab others with rubber daggers and soak researchers, the work was not carried out under well controlled conditions and so generated more questions than answers. In the mid- 1960s, University of Pennsylvania psychologists Martin Orne and Fredrick Evans decided to take a more rigorous look at the issue
¹⁰⁶
.
 

Orne found some highly suggestible students and tested them one at a time. Each was put into a trance and then asked to sit before an open-fronted box. A researcher placed a harmless green tree snake in the box and the participants were told that they had an irresistible urge to pick up the snake. All of them went along with the suggestion and removed the snake. Next, the experimenters put on a pair of long thick gloves and brought forth a genuinely dangerous red-bellied black snake. They explained that this was one of the most venomous snakes in the world and could kill a human with a single bite. The snake was placed into the box and all of the participants were told that they had an irresistible urge to pick it up. Amazingly, all of them tried to carry out the action, and it was only as they placed their hands into the box that they discovered the researchers had secretly slid a glass plate in front of the snake.
 

On the face of it, Orne and Evans appeared to have persuaded the hypnotized students to act against their best interests. However, a second stage of the study was cleverly designed to discover if that was really true. The experimenters found a group of six highly non-suggestible students, didn’t bother trying to put them into a trance, and instead simply asked them to pretend to be hypnotized. Surprisingly, all of them were also willing to try to pick up both the harmless snake and its highly venomous counterpart. It was clear that the results obtained in the first stage of the study were not due to hypnosis. To discover why the students were willing to risk their lives during the experiment, the researchers then asked their non-suggestible participants what they were thinking when they reached for the poisonous snake. Nearly all of them explained that they knew they were taking part in a study and so were convinced that the experimenter wouldn’t let them come to any harm. These findings suggested that it isn’t possible for researchers to properly evaluate whether people can be made to act against their will when hypnotized. University ethics committees wouldn’t allow participants to be put into a situation that was genuinely risky and, even if they did, participants may carry out a dangerous act simply because they believed that they were safe.

However, when researchers took a careful look back at older investigations into the alleged Svengali effect they discovered one demonstration that overcame this problem. Around the turn of the last century, hypnotist and researcher Jules Liegeois conducted a rather unusual demonstration during a conference held at the Salpêtriére School in Paris. Liegeois placed a young woman into a trance, handed her a rubber knife, said that it was a genuine knife, and asked her to stab someone in the audience. The woman promptly obliged. Unfortunately, Liegeois didn’t think to ask someone who wasn’t hypnotized to carry out the same test, and so incorrectly concluded that the demonstration showed that those in hypnotic trances could be made to behave in a way that was not in their best interests. However, once most of the conference-goers had left the room, a group of mischievous medical students told the still-hypnotized woman that she should remove her clothing. The woman would have realized that whereas stabbing someone with a rubber dagger was all good fun, complying with this suggestion was going to be genuinely embarrassing. She didn't strip off. In fact, she stood up and ran out of the room. Interestingly, there has only been one attempt to replicate this fascinating, but unethical, study. In the 1960s a University researcher randomly selected a young female volunteer, sat her in front of a group and suggested that she remove her clothes. The professor was horrified to discover his volunteer rapidly starting to unbutton her clothing and quickly called a halt to the demonstration. It was only later that he discovered that he happened to have chosen a professional stripper as his subject.
 

BOX

HOW TO HYPNOTIZE A CHICKEN

Ormond McGill was a talented stage hypnotist. Born in 1913, he worked under the stage name of ‘Dr Zomb’, and pioneered many of the techniques used by modern-day performers. McGill’s 1947 book,
The Encyclopedia Of Genuine Stage Hypnotism
, describes how chickens can be positioned to ensure that they become motionless and appear hypnotized. According to McGill, all you need to do is carefully catch the bird by its neck, place it on its front on a table, and rest its head horizontally. Finally, draw a two-foot long chalk line along the table, directly out from its beak. The chicken will then lay motionless on the table (see photograph).

While hypnotized, the chicken can be made to eat an onion, wear X-ray glasses, and perform a striptease. Just kidding. Actually, rather than being hypnotized, the lack of movement is due to tonic immobility, wherein the chicken is engaging in a defensive mechanism intended to put off potential predators by feigning death. To appear to awaken the animal from the deep trance, simply push the chicken’s head away from the chalk line.
 

END BOX

Despite the mass of films and books suggesting otherwise, the scientific evidence suggests that it is not possible to make people act against their will by hypnotizing them. However, work into other forms of mind control has yielded far more positive and worrying results. To find out more we have to explore the dark and murky world of cults.