COMPUTER PROBLEMS: ARE SOME PEOPLE JINXED?

To examine the basis of the commonly held notion that some people are jinxed, i.e., have more problems than others when using computers, second-year undergraduates in psychology, 80 women and 31 men, participated as par of 3 research methods course withour special credit for participating. Ages were recorded in c~tccc311t.s: 42 were 0-19 years, 54 were 20-29 years, 10 were 30-39 years, 4 were 40-19 years, 3nJ 1 j0-59 years. Participants pedormed a clairvoyance test presented over the Internet. They were then 'jinxed' by being prevented from submitting their responses to the clairvoyance test. The amount of jinx \\.as operationalized as the number of times participants were required to resubmit their responses before being inforn~ed their data had been successfully recorded. The time (in mdliseconds) at which the participant made the first attempt to submit responses was divided by 10. The remainder from the division provided the amount of jinx (ranging from 0 to 9). Relationships For eight participant variables with amount of jinx were then examined. The primary variable 'self-rated amount of jinx' (measured by self-rated frequency of problems with computers), along with confidence in selecting the target in the clairvoyance task, belief in telepathy, and how relaxed the parucipants felt, were each measured using a single-item 5-point scale. Other variables were age, sex, synesthesia, and tolerance of a~nbiguit~. Synesthesia was measured using the seven Agree-Disagree questions From the synesthesia subscale oE the MPQ Absorption Scale (Tellegen, 1992). Tolerance of amb~~~~~ty was also measured using seven Agree-Disagree questions from the philosophy subsecr~o~i of the Measurement of Ambiguity Tolerance-50 (Norton, 1975).