Performance Anxiety and Psi

I think I put this in the right sub-forum, but feel free to move it if I didn't.

Is it possible that something akin to performance anxiety decreases psi effects when being tested in a controlled lab setting? If something like the amount of belief a person has can increase/decrease results, known as the Sheep-Goat Effect, couldn't nervousness/doubt lessen psi? This is something I noticed frequently when I practiced witchcraft. When I would do a spell or a ritual, if I was anxious/nervous/doubtful, the spell or ritual would simply not work. Has this been studied before?

I think I put this in the right sub-forum, but feel free to move it if I didn't.

Is it possible that something akin to performance anxiety decreases psi effects when being tested in a controlled lab setting? If something like the amount of belief a person has can increase/decrease results, known as the Sheep-Goat Effect, couldn't nervousness/doubt lessen psi? This is something I noticed frequently when I practiced witchcraft. When I would do a spell or a ritual, if I was anxious/nervous/doubtful, the spell or ritual would simply not work. Has this been studied before?

Apart from a large unconscious element to psi functioning, psychology plays an enormous role. So yes, performance anxiety would tend to inhibit psi functioning. In a groundbreaking paper titled The Pattern of ESP, Robert Thouless described a number of interesting effects associated with forced-choice lab experiments of the type pioneered by Rhine and colleagues from the 1930s to the 1960s. While I don't recall references in the article to performance anxiety, it does however cover a variety of inhibitory effects. I've copied and pasted an excerpt describing two of them that you might find interesting:

There were two other inhibitory effects noted in the early experiments at the Duke Laboratory which may be called the 'witness effect' and the 'change effect'. Both have been so fully confirmed by the common experience of later experimenters that it is not necessary to enquire whether the original experiments by means of which they were first detected were sufficiently safeguarded.

The witness effect was first reported in the case of the percipient Pearce (p. 76). The results of the introduction of visitors on 9 occasions in 1932 and 1933 are shown. These ranged from William McDougall, Professor of Psychology at Duke University, to Wallace Lee, a magician. In each case, Pearce showed positive scoring before the visitor was introduced, a drop of score, sometimes to chance level, after the visitor came in, with a later recovery to a satisfactory level of scoring. A typical example is his reaction to a visit by McDougall on 2 February 1933. In 350 guesses before the visit he had scored 132 hits (38%, i.e. 18% over mean chance expectation of 20%). During the first 125 guesses in the presence of McDougall, the scoring dropped to 33 (6% over m.c.e.). The next 250 guesses, however, still with McDougall present, showed 105 hits (a rise to 22% over m.c.e.).

What this observation suggests is that the introduction of a new person to the experimental session is likely to lead to a reduction or total disappearance of positive scoring, but that this is not a permanent effect since the percipient may become adapted to the presence of a new witness after a period of time. I know of no later systematic research on this effect, but it is constantly the experience of parapsychological experimenters that an observer who comes to look on has the disappointing experience of seeing no success. It may, therefore, be regarded as a finding that has had sufficient confirmation by common experience if not by systematic research. These early experiments also suggest that if the disappointed observer stays quietly looking on until the percipient has become adapted to his presence, the inhibition set up by his coming is likely to disappear and any former level of success to reappear in his presence. It is a common opinion amongst experimenters that such inhibition is particularly likely to occur if the observer is hostile to the experiment or to the percipient. There seems to be no certainty as to whether this hostility must be overtly expressed to be effective, or whether a concealed hostility also inhibits the phenomena. There seems to be no systematic research on these problems, but they are of both theoretical and practical interest.

Another inhibitory effect first reported by Rhine (1934) was that resulting from a change of experimental procedure. This may be called the 'change' effect. It was reported (p. 77) that any change in the experimental methods adopted with the percipient Pearce were likely to cause a drop in scoring rate unless the changes had been suggested by himself. Again the drop was temporary; after a period of low scoring, the subject recovered the ability to score under the new conditions. For example, the agent started looking at the target card after experiments carried out entirely under 'clairvoyance' conditions. In the first 175 guesses under this changed condition, Pearce scored 42 hits (a success rate of only 4% over m.c.e.). In the next 175 guesses when he had got used to the new condition, the success rate went up to 34% over m.c.e. (95 hits). In six other changes of task, a similar drop in scoring rate followed by recovery was recorded.

This reaction to experimental change has also been confirmed by later experimenters with other changes of task. Tyrrell, for example, in experiments in which the percipient (Miss Johnson) indicated which of five boxes would be lit up on opening, introduced a new mechanism (Tyrrell, 1935). Miss Johnson had been succeeding with an earlier and simpler type of machine, but her scores dropped to chance level when she started with the new one. But after a period during which she had only chance results with this new machine, she seemed to become adapted to it and scored 373 hits in 1,271 trials, an excess of 118.8 (or 9%) over mean chance expectation. This excess is highly significant.

She was, however, still unable to score above chance level when a commutator was introduced into the circuit to make the choice of targets independent of the experimenter. In 500 trials under this condition, she scored 101 hits which is almost exactly mean chance expectation. Even when Tyrrell mixed up batches of experiments with the commutator in action with others in which it was not, Miss Johnson scored in those experiments in which the commutator was not in circuit but failed in those in which it was. A less persevering experimenter than Mr Tyrrell might well have concluded that the random choice of targets by the commutator eliminated the possibility of successful scoring, and might have inferred that the experimenter's choice of the target was essential to the percipient's right guessing.

This inference would, however, have been wrong since, after a holiday in September 1935, Miss Johnson became adapted to the experiment with commutator, and in 4,200 trials under this condition, she scored 178 hits over mean chance expectation (Tyrrell, 1936). This is highly significant (P < 10-10) and corresponds to a success rate of 4.2 per cent, which is somewhat less than that recorded in the simpler conditions of experimenting but is sufficiently striking.