Effects of Mass Consciousness: Changes in Random Data During Global Events

A long-term, continuing experiment is designed to assess the possibility that correlations may occur in synchronized random data streams generated during major world events. The project is motivated by numerous experiments that suggest that the behavior of random systems can be altered by directed mental intention, and related experiments showing subtle changes associated with group coherence. Since 1998, the Global Consciousness Project (GCP) has maintained a global network of random number generators (RNGs), recording parallel sequences of random data at 65 sites around the world. A rigorous experiment tests the hypothesis that data from the RNG network will deviate from expectation during times of "global events," defined as transitory episodes of widespread mental and emotional reaction to major world events. An ongoing replication experiment measures correlations across the network during the designated events, and the result from over 345 formal hypothesis tests departs substantially from expectation. A composite statistic for the replication series rejects the null hypothesis by more than six standard deviations. Secondary analyses reveal evidence of a second, independent correlation, as well as temporal and spatial structure in the data associated with the events. Controls exclude conventional physical explanations or experimental error as the source of the measured deviations. The experimental design constrains interpretation of the results: they suggest that some aspect of human consciousness is involved as a source of the effects.