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Volume 11: Number 2: Article 4
Unconscious Perception of Future Emotions: An Experiment in Presentiment
Dean I. Radin, Consciousness Research Laboratory, Harry Reid Center
for Environmental Studies, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV
Is consciousness limited to perception of the sensory present and memory
of the past, or does it also have access to future information? In an
experiment designed to explore this question, a computer was used to
randomly select and present target photos from a pool of digitized photographs.
Some targets labeled "calm" included landscapes and cheerful people;
other targets labeled "extreme" included violent and erotic topics.
Heart rate, blood volume, and electrodermal activity were recorded before,
during and after presentation of the target photo to see whether the
body would unconsciously respond differentially to the two types of
future targets. Extreme targets were expected to produce classical orienting
responses after the targets were displayed, and a "presentiment" (future
feeling) effect was predicted to produce orienting pre-sponses before
the pictures were displayed. Calm targets were expected to cause no
unusual responses before or after the target was displayed. Four experiments,
involving 31 participants who viewed a total of 1,060 target photos,
showed the expected orienting response after the target photo was displayed.
In accordance with a presentiment hypothesis, there was a clear orienting
pre-sponse that peaked with a four standard error difference in physiological
measures between extreme and calm targets one second before the target
photo was displayed.
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