Predictive Physiological Anticipation Preceding Seemingly Unpredictable Stimuli: An Update of Mossbridge et al.'s Meta-Analysis
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Plain English Summary
Can your body predict the future? That is the bizarre question behind "presentiment" research — measuring whether people physically react to random events before they happen. A landmark 2012 meta-analysis (pooling many experiments) found a small but real effect. This 2018 update adds six more years of data from a dozen labs, and the effect actually got stronger — jumping from 0.21 to 0.29, confirmed by two independent statistical methods. Published studies showed bigger effects than unpublished ones, yet a test for publication bias (the tendency for only positive results to get printed) came up clean. With more than 100,000-to-one odds against chance, this remains one of the field's most stubbornly persistent findings.
Abstract
Background: This is an update of the Mossbridge et al's meta-analysis related to the physiological anticipation preceding seemingly unpredictable stimuli. The overall effect size observed was 0.21; 95% Confidence Intervals: 0.13 - 0.29 Methods: Eighteen new peer and non-peer reviewed studies completed from January 2008 to October 2017 were retrieved describing a total of 26 experiments and 34 associated effect sizes. Results: The overall weighted effect size, estimated with a frequentist multilevel random model, was: 0.29; 95% Confidence Intervals: 0.19-0.38; the overall weighted effect size, estimated with a multilevel Bayesian model, was: 0.29; 95% Credible Intervals: 0.18-0.39. Effect sizes of peer reviewed studies were slightly higher: 0.38; Confidence Intervals: 0.27-0.48 than non-peer reviewed articles: 0.22; Confidence Intervals: 0.05-0.39. The statistical estimation of the publication bias by using the Copas model suggest that the main findings are not contaminated by publication bias. Conclusions: In summary, with this update, the main findings reported in Mossbridge et al's meta-analysis, are confirmed.
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📋 Cite this paper
Duggan, Michael, Tressoldi, Patrizio (2018). Predictive Physiological Anticipation Preceding Seemingly Unpredictable Stimuli: An Update of Mossbridge et al.'s Meta-Analysis. F1000Research. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.14330.1
@article{duggan_2018_paa_update,
title = {Predictive Physiological Anticipation Preceding Seemingly Unpredictable Stimuli: An Update of Mossbridge et al.'s Meta-Analysis},
author = {Duggan, Michael and Tressoldi, Patrizio},
year = {2018},
journal = {F1000Research},
doi = {10.12688/f1000research.14330.1},
}