No-Touch Knockouts - what's the deal?

AaronAlexander

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If you haven't seen what I'm talking about or have only seen a few examples, you can see a great compilation of examples here (youtube link).

Anyone who as seen Benny Hinn knock down hundreds or even thousands of people when he "slays them in the sprit" or "annoints" them must wonder what is up. No touch knockouts are not only a Word of Faith thing, of course, and certain 'chi masters' or dim mak practitioners do the same thing. So my question to you all is, what do you think is going on? God zapping people? Chi power? Hypnosis? Waking suggestions? Demonic power? Invisible rayguns? I'm writing a paper on it right now, and I thought I'd see what the people on JREF think (I'd also appreciate ideas of what periodical would be a good place to try to publish).

Also, what are some other examples of traditions that do this and what do they call it? I've seen a few examples but didn't write them down. I see the "chi" knockouts a lot, and also the "annointing" ones, but what else? Fallback inductions in hypnosis are fairly similar.

So, thoughts, everyone?
 
carlitos said:
I think you may be looking for this?
Click to expand...

No, I'm looking for one where it's taken seriously and not about knocking down his kids, although it was an adorable video. I found that one while I was looking to make sure no one was discussing it already.

I'm posting because one of the people in the video I linked is me doing the same thing at the psych department here, and there's not a lot of literature on the topic (besides what believers assert) so I thought it'd be worthwhile to add my own two cents. We may be running some studies on it here in the fall, too.

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I think the power of suggestion explains it all, very easily.
 
Peer response.
The religious know that one responds to the touch of the preacher. Or one is a filthy rotten atheist.
For the martial arts demos, it's acting.
 
Some of it can also be explained as the body reacting to the "punch", and losing balance, even though the "punch" was pulled. My favourite was the guy pulling on the invisible rope behind the other guy's back, and kept doing it until the other guy briefly lost his balance, and then acted like he had anything to do with it.
 
TheSkepticCanuck said:
Some of it can also be explained as the body reacting to the "punch", and losing balance, even though the "punch" was pulled. My favourite was the guy pulling on the invisible rope behind the other guy's back, and kept doing it until the other guy briefly lost his balance, and then acted like he had anything to do with it.
Click to expand...

I love that part, too. That wasn't an example of anything like responding to the punch, though, and I had everything to do with it. Of course it was a trick, but that's kind of the point. Everyone can say "it's suggestion" or "it's social pressure" (two good ones among many), but there's clearly a dynamics to it beyond being a gullible believer - everyone who I zapped or dragged in that video is an atheist or agnostic, and the rope one and the eyes closed push (you can't see that her eyes are closed from the vid but it was pretty awesome) was a psych professor.

So what'd be useful is not simply stating that it's suggestion or it's peer pressure or what have you, but rather other examples and sources. Like similar phenomena cross-culture, waking suggestion (sans induction) analogs, or maybe conformity studies that show sensation reactions or what have you.
 
Paul2 said:
Here's a video (from another older thread I can't find) that demonstrates how difficult no-touch knockdowns are when your opponent is not under the power of suggestion.
Click to expand...

Ouch. That must have really hurt!
 
It might be the power of suggestion. But, sometimes, I suspect it could also be the power of mirror neurons. The former implies that the person "knows its only an act", the later could apply if someone honestly believes it was not an act.
 
There was also this thread here that covered related topics awhile back (slain in the spirit, the laying on of hands and falling down, etc). You might find some good stuff in there.

UY's video is cool, and let me add one other observation.

When playing with my own kids and rough housing, we'll do this game where I put my hands behind their legs and push them down from their chest, knocking them off balance easily. After awhile of playing it, I only need to put my hands in those positions, without even touching them, and their bodies fall down as if I had actually done the maneuver when I'm only going through the motions but never touching them. It's the expectation they subconsciously are making themselves respond to in preparation for being knocked down. That way, they won't be caught off guard and the anticipation build up helps reinforce that. IMO, that's what is happening at least. In just playing around ..... they are already prone to suggestion without any need for any religious association or any mental trick whatsoever. It's almost a natural reaction, if you will.
 
It's all peer pressure. With the fundies, it started out by putting a hand on the person's forehead and giving a pretty good push to get them to fall back. Once everyone got the idea that they're expected to fall back, it took less and less force and eventually no contact at all. Now Hinn just waves his coat around and people fall over en masse. People do it because they know it's expected of them and they don't want to look like they haven't been touched by the holy spirit.

With the martial arts guys, they don't want to insult their instructor so they play along.

Steve S.
 
Yellow Bamboooooooooo

No such thing exists. The very idea is ridonkulous.

Gotta work for a KO the old fashioned way: learn how to punch. Or Kick.
 
I spent some time speaking with Sam Singleton about this and our experiences both coming from churches with laying on of hands. What it boils down to is that even if you don't believe, you don't want to be the only person that doesn't get affected by it, so you fall/throw yourself/shake or whatever you feel like you're supposed to. Also, if you truly do believe, your body's ideomotor response will step up to make whatever muscle movements are necessary to support what you are expecting to happen.
 
I appreciate the comments so far. I especially liked the link to the other thread, TW, it was very helpful.

This paper I'm working on is an academic one for publication, putting the phenomena in context based on my research but also my experience. It'd be helpful if people could point to where they are getting their ideas so I can go there and see for myself. The problem that I see is that there's almost no literature on this other than people going "ah, it's just suggestion", and I think as skeptics you should all find to be pretty insufficient. First, how many people drop $10,000 on seeing a psychic surgeon, then suddenly realize their error when someone goes "ah, it's just a magic trick"? Second, the actual dynamics of suggestion are so poorly understood that it's like someone questioning Newton about why the planets moved in the way they did and him just going "ah, it's physics." That's not wrong, but it sure isn't a satisfying answer unless you agree with him before he opens his mouth.

I think that as skeptics we should really stop using suggestion as a way to unquestioningly dismiss things or and start thinking about dynamics of suggestion. To me it's kind of like the way that fundamentalists see something odd like hypnosis and go "oh, well that's clearly Satan", because Satan becomes a catch-all for everything that they don't understand.

As I've said, that guy in the video is me. I've done it in a university setting. Often people will tell me that the last thing that they remember is me sticking out my hand, then they wake up on the floor, or they remember feeling like they've been flooded with happiness (Or whatever. You can suggest what they will be flooded with.)

The point isn't to say that it's not social pressure, but that's not a great answer on its own. I use social pressure too, as well as a whole bag of other tricks, but people don't suddenly feel numb to pain or go into spasm or whatever just because they don't want to make you feel embarrassed. Also, it seems to me that it works on everyone, but people will justify it based on whatever they believe in. I know of one nonbeliever who said that she fell (and possibly blacked out) because I punched her, but it was clear that it was just a little push - I imagine that she had no other way to rationalize it.

Anyway, I don't mean to rant, but I think that we could up the level of discussion here a bit. Anyone can write things off by finding one contradictory theory that is consonant with what they already believe. The point of gathering ideas as to what is going on and collecting similar examples is to have a range of situations from which to draw common and reproducible aspects of the phenomenon and to discuss (in specifics) what's already out there by way of explanation. Does anyone have anything that would add to that?
 
I believe you're writing off the ideomotor effect as "power of suggestion" without looking into the research done on the effect of suggestion on involuntary muscle controls.

I think you have a point in that we can't be so quick to write things off without scientific research but at the same time, don't be so quick to write off what research has been done on people's expectations and muscle control.

I would recommend that you check out Ray Hyman's "How People are Fooled By the Ideomotor Effect" http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/ideomotor.html for a very clear look at how it works and why.

"honest, intelligent people can unconsciously engage in muscular activity that is consistent with their expectations" (Hyman 1999).

They also show that suggestions that can guide behavior can be given by subtle clues (Hyman 1977).
 
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