Table 3.

Threatening and non-threatening appraisal styles in the three experimental tasks

	Cards task	Telepath task	VASP
Non-threatening appraisals
External – normalizing	‘It is just a simple card puzzle’	‘It is just a simple number puzzle’	‘It is part of the study and involves a pre-recorded voice’
Internal – normalizing	‘It is to do with natural extrasensory perception (ESP)/psychic or paranormal abilities’
	‘There is a rational explanation involving basic attention/perception’
Threatening appraisals
External – personalizing	‘It is not the computer which guessed; there is someone involved in this’	‘It was not just about the phone; there is someone behind the scenes involved’	‘Someone was speaking to me’
External – non-personalizing	‘It works because the system is able to read people's minds’		‘There was a spirit or some kind of entity in the room’
External – intentionalizing	‘It was done on purpose to trick me, or make me look stupid’
External – generalizing	‘It is a trick that is part of a bigger conspiracy’
Internal – non-normalizing	‘This means that something is wrong with me’

VASP, Virtual acoustic space paradigm.