Testing for Individual Differences in Anomalous Interactions with Objects (Psychometry)

Christine Simmonds-Moore,¹ David Mitchell,² Georgia Crowe,¹ Daisy Rowser-Grier,¹ & Tabatha Smith¹

¹University of West Georgia, Carrollton, Georgia, United States of America

²California Institute for Integral Studies, California, United States of America

Psychometry has been defined as “the practice of using an object from a person, such as a piece of jewelry or clothing, to obtain information about the person” (Roll, 2003, p. 201). Early studies by psychical researchers tended to explore the claims of self-proclaimed sensitives or mediums and tended to focus on case studies rather than group experiments (cf. Barrington, 2016; Hettinger, 1941, 1948; LeShan, 1967; Pagenstecher, 1924**;** Smythies, 1987).

In many cases, evidence was found in support of psychometry. As an example, LeShan’s study found that the medium Eileen Garrett was able to correctly identify which unopened box contained which objects. Garrett was also able to provide several verified facts about each of the objects and provide additional information that was not known to the researchers but was later found to be accurate (LeShan, 1967). The topic has been relatively neglected until recently. One recent study explored performance at psychometry tasks among members of the general population but found better performance in the control group (cf. Baker et al., 2017).

The current study seeks to explore how differences in tendencies to experience the Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (or ASMR) relate to performance on a psychometry task. Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) is “the experience of tingling sensations in the crown of the head, in response to a range of audio-visual triggers such as whispering, tapping, and hand movements” (Poerio et al., 2018, p. 1). ASMR has yet to be explored in relation to psi but seems to be promising as an anomaly-prone variable, given its association with traits that are associated with increased connectivity and tendencies to report exceptional experiences. These include openness to experience (Fredborg et al., 2017; Janik et al., 2017), increased scoring on transliminality, body consciousness, and unusual experiences (Roberts et al., 2020), and higher scores on empathic concern (Janik et al., 2017). In addition, some have proposed that ASMR is a (more common) form of synesthesia (Janik et al., 2017) and that ASMR tendencies are associated with enhanced prevalence rates of synesthesia (Barratt & Davis, 2015). Synesthesia has been explored by the first author in several prior studies as a variable of interest that may allow for the concrete perception of a variety of unseen stimuli (cf. Simmonds-Moore, 2022).

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Christine Simmonds-Moore is a UK native with a PhD from the University of Northampton that explored “Schizotypy as an anomaly-prone personality”. She is a Professor of Psychology at the University of West Georgia where she teaches classes on parapsychology, transpersonal psychology, and other topics pertinent to consciousness studies. She has research interests in parapsychology, exceptional experiences, psychological boundaries, paranormal beliefs and disbeliefs, mental health correlates of exceptional experiences, synesthesia, ASMR, altered states of consciousness, healing and placebo effects. She is the recipient of several Bial grants to study exceptional experiences and the author of several articles and texts on exceptional experiences.

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Program chaired by Jacob W. Glazier. Download the Abstracts at https://parapsych.org/articles/37/658/2023_abstracts_of_presented_papers.aspx

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Published on October 23, 2024