Parapsychology and Cyberpsychology

Parapsychology’s relationship with cyberpsychology is currently seldom explored. The Internet has served as a powerful vehicle for parapsychological research design and execution (e.g., surveys, dissemination of research findings on web sites and social media), notwithstanding the pitfalls of online polarisation, censorship, and the continuing pseudoscience demarcation problem. Cyberpsychology provides a range of theoretical frameworks in helping to examine the mechanisms behind such interactions (e.g., networked publics—i.e., communities that are shaped or reconfigured by networked technologies). Parapsychology in turn has a track record of engaging with novel technologies in past and present research (e.g., lab-based studies and technology brought in to explore altered-states of consciousness), and in examining how technology can mediate anomalous experiences such as in survival themed spontaneous case research. Utilising Kirwan’s three main aspects of cyberpsychology (i.e., how we interact with others; how we use technology to fit our requirements; how our behaviours are affected by technological developments) this paper examines how the application of existing theoretical frameworks which serve cyberpsychologists are arguably of equal and ever-increasing importance to parapsychologists in understanding how their work is disseminated and discussed. Future online technologies may also present opportunities to explore shared interests, including exploration of self through both real and imagined environments, transpersonal or anomalous experiences, and how rapidly evolving Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies may mediate changes in perceptions of post-mortem survival through digitisation of death and the afterlife and perceived continuing bonds with the deceased (e.g., AI, virtual realities, etc.).