Margaret L Anderson (1920–86) belongs to the generation that tried to bring controlled experimentation into educational settings, asking whether psi might be shaped by ordinary human relationships. Her work with children, classrooms and teacher-pupil attitudes reflects a period when parapsychology expected laboratory questions to illuminate everyday life.
- Anderson went to the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University in 1954 to investigate whether psi might play a direct role in education.
- The Anderson-White school experiments suggested that children’s ESP scores varied with the emotional tone of the teacher-pupil relationship.
- Anderson later served the Parapsychological Association as treasurer and president, and shared the 1961 McDougall Award with RA McConnell.
Life and Career
Margaret L Anderson was born in Mt Vernon, Illinois, on 1 February 1920. After graduating from the University of Illinois in 1940, she became a teacher and high school principal. Anderson was the first woman to fill this role in Illinois. Just one short year after beginning her tenure as a school principal, in 1943 she joined the American Red Cross and served in France and Germany during World War II. After the war, she returned to teaching.1White (1987), 111.
Anderson’s curiosity about classroom-influenced psi led her to join the research team at the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University, where she was a research associate from 1955 to 1959. Upon leaving Duke, Anderson worked alongside fellow parapsychological researcher RA McConnell at the University of Pittsburgh. She obtained a PhD from the University of Pittsburgh in 1962 and taught in the Graduate Education Program there until her death in February 1986.2Pleasants (1964); White (1987), 111.
Parapsychology
It was Anderson’s experience in teaching that led her to formulate questions surrounding the intersection of classroom expectations, teacher-student dynamics, and the ability to exhibit parapsychological phenomena. In an obituary published by her co-researcher Rhea White in the Journal of Parapsychology, White tells us that ‘It was her experiences in the classroom that led her to spend roughly a decade in the field of parapsychology in an effort to establish empirically what she had intuitively perceived in the classroom: that “more is caught than taught”.’3White (1987), 111.
Anderson became interested in the possibility that ‘psi may play a direct role in the educational process as mediated by the teacher-pupil relationship’.4White (1987), 111. To investigate this, she worked at the Parapsychology Laboratory with White in what became known as the ‘Anderson-White’ school experiments. The pair discovered that the extent of ESP displayed was affected by the positive or negative emotional relationship with the teacher administering the test.5White (1987), 114. However, other researchers failed to confirm the effect.6Anderson (1962), 283.
White mused that Anderson may have influenced the test results with her own innate qualities via the parapsychological experimenter effect, whereby it is the psi of experimenters rather than their study participants that is responsible for an effect. In a passage that illustrates both this and Anderson’s own personality, White tells us that,
I will always lament the fact that during the years that Marg was at the Laboratory, and at a time when there was much talk about the importance of the experimenter-subject relationship, her unusual abilities as an experimenter were themselves never made the prime focus of an experiment. For, just as she was a gifted teacher, Margaret Anderson was a supremely gifted psi experimenter. People who had never scored significantly did so when Marg served as experimenter.7White (1987), 114.
In 1961, Anderson was the joint winner with RA McConnell of the prestigious McDougall Award for their ESP research, which was published in the Journal of Psychology the same year.8Anderson & McConnell (1961).
Anderson was a member of the Parapsychological Association, serving as its treasurer and as president in 1962. In her presidential address, delivered on 6 September 1962, she mused about the connection between creativity and psi, pointing out that the same conditions that are conducive to fostering creativity may also be the same conditions that foster psi ability. Addressing the audience, she laid forth the foundation of this connection by saying,
Openness, seeking to experience life to the hilt, is one of the most striking characteristics of the creative person, again suggesting that creativity is an aspect of self-realization. Most parapsychologists agree that openness to that which transcends the immediate world of the senses is a favorable condition for the functioning of psi.9Anderson (1962), 283.
Selected Articles
Teacher-pupil attitudes and clairvoyance test results (1956, with R. White). Journal of Parapsychology 20, 141-57.
Clairvoyance and teacher-pupil attitudes in fifth and sixth grades (1957). Journal of Parapsychology 21, 1-12.
A further investigation of teacher-pupil attitudes and clairvoyance tests results (1957, with R. White). Journal of Parapsychology 21/2, 81-97.
The relationship between changes in student attitude and ESP scoring (1958, with R. White). Journal of Parapsychology 23, 149-77.
A survey of work on ESP and teacher-pupil attitudes (1958, with R. White). Journal of Parapsychology 22/4, 246-68.
A precognition experiment comparing time intervals of a few days and one year (1959). Journal of Parapsychology 23, 81-89.
A two-year programme of tests for clairvoyance and precognition with a class of public school pupils (1959, with E. Gregory). Journal of Parapsychology 23, 149-77.
Fantasy testing for ESP in a fourth and fifth grade class (1961, with R.A. McConnell). Journal of Psychology 52, 491-503.
The use of fantasy in testing for extrasensory perception (1966). Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 60, 150.
Melvyn Willin and Courtney M Block
Works Cited
Anderson, M.L. (1962). The relations of psi to creativity. Journal of Parapsychology 26/4, 277-92.
Anderson, M.L., & McConnell, R.A. (1961). Fantasy testing for ESP in a fourth and fifth grade class. Journal of Psychology 52, 491-503.
Anderson, M.L., & White, R. (1957). A further investigation of teacher-pupil attitudes and clairvoyance tests results. Journal of Parapsychology 21/2, 81-97.
Osis, K. (1987). A tribute to Margaret L. Anderson 1920–1985 [sic]. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 81, 257-60.
Pleasants, H. (1964). Anderson, Margaret. In Biographical Dictionary of Parapsychology with Directory and Glossary 1964–1966, 4-5. New York: Helix Press.
Rhine, J.B. (1977). History of experimental studies in Handbook of Parapsychology, ed. by B.B. Wolman. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company.
White, R. (1987). Tribute to an experimenter: Margaret L. Anderson. Journal of Parapsychology 51/2, 111-16.