Abstract
Objectives:
The aim of the study was to evaluate whether two different locations in the same room as tested by dowsers (“geopathic stress zone” [GSZ] versus “more neutral zone” [NZ]) would show significant short-term effects on work performance and well-being. It was also tested whether a device reported to “neutralize” GSZ would influence results obtained with the specific setup used in this study.
Design:
This was a blinded, randomized, short-term laboratory experiment using a within-subject design.
Setting:
The study was conducted in the laboratory of the Research Institute for Frontier Questions of Medicine and Biotechnology at Salzburg Federal Hospital.
Subjects:
The subjects were 26 persons, aged 20–57.
Interventions:
Participants had to accomplish reaction tasks during three different conditions: GSZ, NZ, and GSZ with a device reported to “neutralize” GSZ. These conditions were counterbalanced into six different sequences and randomized to the subjects. At the end of each condition, a standardized well-being questionnaire had to be completed.
Main outcome measures:
Dependent variables were reactive stress tolerance (reaction time, timely right answers, right answers, false answers, left out) and well-being (described by six adjectives).
Main results:
No location-dependent effects on performance during reactive stress tolerance test were seen. For well-being, analysis of variance revealed a trend (p = 0.07) and showed significantly poorer well-being during the GSZ condition compared to NZ (p = 0.01).
Conclusions:
This study shows that well-being can be location dependent and that this might be caused by a so-called GSZ. However, in our short-term experiment, factors of work performance tested remained unaffected.
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