The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) lab has explored various venues using their FieldREG protocol. Their equipment included a portable REG and software with data tracking and graphical analysis. A researcher would take the device to a scheduled event usually with a defined agenda so that the event could be broken down into sections for analysis, known as sessions. In this section, we are going to discuss one such experiment conducted by the lab: the 10th Annual Conference on Humor and Creativity in April 1995.

Why a comedic venue? Why not religious, business, etc? The PEAR lab ran FieldREG experiments in all types of group environments. To read about all the venues and results, please read the PEAR publication “FieldREG Anomalies in Group Situations.” According to the publication, there was an “informal hypothesis” that humor may generate a “coherent group consciousness.” Again, interpretation is still very speculative, but anecdotal reports from these experiments suggest certain venue characteristics that might have the greatest results of deviation from change. Those traits are: “high degrees of attention, intellectual cohesiveness, shared emotion, or other coherent qualities.”

It is also important to run the FieldREG equipment during times of “rest” or “control”, i.e. when the participants are not engaged in the particular event being measured; for example, overnight or between sessions. That way, researchers can compare the FieldREG “active” data against that of the “control” sessions.

Approximately 1,000 participants attended the humor conference, which was broken down into 5 keynote presentations and a number of smaller breakout type sessions. Each day, the researcher ran the FieldREG equipment in the background and jotted down notes as to when there was a keynote, how the crowd reacted (e.g. standing ovations), and any other comments he or she felt were notable. It is important to note that PEAR lab researchers were not the only individuals who did these types of experiments.