Predictive Physiological Anticipation Preceding Seemingly Unpredictable Stimuli: A Meta-Analysis
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Plain English Summary
Here's a wild one: this landmark meta-analysis pooled 26 studies from seven labs over three decades to ask whether your body somehow knows what's coming before it happens. Across skin conductance, heart rate, brain scans, and pupil dilation, they found a small but statistically rock-solid effect -- people's bodies start reacting to upcoming emotional events before those events are randomly selected. Perhaps most eyebrow-raising: higher-quality studies produced bigger effects, the opposite of what you'd expect if sloppy methods were driving results. This paper became a lightning rod, prompting a pointed critique from Schwarzkopf and a rebuttal from the original authors. The conclusion? Something real seems to be happening, but nobody can explain how.
Actual Paper Abstract
This meta-analysis of 26 reports published between 1978 and 2010 tests an unusual hypothesis: for stimuli of two or more types that are presented in an order designed to be unpredictable and that produce different post-stimulus physiological activity, the direction of pre-stimulus physiological activity reflects the direction of post-stimulus physiological activity, resulting in an unexplained anticipatory effect. The reports we examined used one of two paradigms: (1) randomly ordered presentations of arousing vs. neutral stimuli, or (2) guessing tasks with feedback (correct vs. incorrect). Dependent variables included: electrodermal activity, heart rate, blood volume, pupil dilation, electroencephalographic activity, and blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) activity. To avoid including data hand-picked from multiple different analyses, no post hoc experiments were considered. The results reveal a significant overall effect with a small effect size [fixed effect: overall ES = 0.21, 95% CI = 0.15–0.27, z = 6.9, p < 2.7 × 10−12; random effects: overall (weighted) ES = 0.21, 95% CI = 0.13–0.29, z = 5.3, p < 5.7 × 10−8]. Higher quality experiments produced a quantitatively larger effect size and a greater level of significance than lower quality studies. The number of contrary unpublished reports that would be necessary to reduce the level of significance to chance (p > 0.05) was conservatively calculated to be 87 reports. We explore alternative explanations and examine the potential linkage between this unexplained anticipatory activity and other results demonstrating meaningful pre-stimulus activity preceding behaviorally relevant events. We conclude that to further examine this currently unexplained anticipatory activity, multiple replications arising from different laboratories using the same methods are necessary. The cause of this anticipatory activity, which undoubtedly lies within the realm of natural physical processes (as opposed to supernatural or paranormal ones), remains to be determined.
Research Notes
The foundational meta-analysis of presentiment/PAA research, directly cited by both sides of Controversy #3. Its finding that study quality correlates positively (not negatively) with effect size is unusual and frequently invoked in the broader psi methodology debate. Spawned the Schwarzkopf (2014) critique and the Mossbridge et al. (2014) rebuttal.
A meta-analysis of 26 prospective reports (1978–2010) from seven laboratories tested whether pre-stimulus physiological activity predicts the direction of post-stimulus responses to unpredictable stimuli. Using arousing-vs.-neutral and guessing-with-feedback paradigms across electrodermal, heart rate, blood volume, pupil dilation, EEG, and fMRI measures, the analysis found a small but highly significant overall effect (ES = 0.21, 95% CI = 0.15–0.27, z = 6.9, p < 2.7 × 10⁻¹²). Higher-quality studies produced quantitatively larger effects. Trim-and-fill analysis estimated four missing negative studies; Orwin's fail-safe N was 87. The authors conclude the effect is real but its mechanism remains unknown.
Links
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- Let Your Eyes Predict: Prediction Accuracy of Pupillary Responses to Random Alerting and Neutral Sounds — Tressoldi, Patrizio E (2011)
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- Let Your Eyes Predict: Prediction Accuracy of Pupillary Responses to Random Alerting and Neutral Sounds — Tressoldi, Patrizio E (2011)
- Quantum Aspects of the Brain-Mind Relationship: A Hypothesis with Supporting Evidence — Kauffman, Stuart A (2023)
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- Bem's 'Feeling the Future' (2011) Five Years Later: Its Impact on Scientific Literature — Silva, Bruno A (2017)
- Inner Experience – Direct Access to Reality: A Complementarist Ontology and Dual Aspect Monism Support a Broader Epistemology — Walach, Harald (2020)
- Why Most Research Findings About Psi Are False: The Replicability Crisis, the Psi Paradox and the Myth of Sisyphus — Rabeyron, Thomas (2020)
- Must Psychologists Change the Way They Analyze Their Data? — Bem, Daryl J (2011)
- The Experimental Evidence for Parapsychological Phenomena: A Review — Cardeña, Etzel (2018)
- Parapsychological Phenomena as Examples of Generalized Nonlocal Correlations—A Theoretical Framework — Walach, Harald (2014)
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- Anomalous Cognition: An Umbrella Review of the Meta-Analytic Evidence — Tressoldi, Patrizio (2021)
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📋 Cite this paper
Mossbridge, Julia, Tressoldi, Patrizio, Utts, Jessica (2012). Predictive Physiological Anticipation Preceding Seemingly Unpredictable Stimuli: A Meta-Analysis. Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00390
@article{mossbridge_2012_predictive,
title = {Predictive Physiological Anticipation Preceding Seemingly Unpredictable Stimuli: A Meta-Analysis},
author = {Mossbridge, Julia and Tressoldi, Patrizio and Utts, Jessica},
year = {2012},
journal = {Frontiers in Psychology},
doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00390},
}