Extrasensory perception (ESP), also commonly referred to as the sixth sense, involves reception of information not gained through the recognized physical senses Senses are the physiological capacities within organisms that provide inputs for perception. The senses and their operation, classification, and theory are overlapping topics studied by a variety of fields, most notably neuroscience, cognitive psychology , and philosophy of perception. The nervous system has a specific sensory system or organ, but sensed with the mind. The term was coined by German psychical researcher, Rudolf Tischner Rudolf Tischner was a German ophthalmologist and parapsychologist born in Hohenmölsen. After finishing his medical studies he practiced ophthalmology in Munich, and adopted by Duke University psychologist J. B. Rhine Joseph Banks Rhine (usually known as J. B. Rhine) was a botanist who later developed an interest in parapsychology and psychology. Through the parapsychology lab at Duke he also lectured on mainstream psychological topics.[citation needed] Rhine founded the parapsychology lab at Duke University, the Journal of Parapsychology, and the Foundation to denote psychic A psychic is a person who professes an ability to perceive information hidden from the normal senses through extrasensory perception (ESP), or is said by others to have such abilities. It is also used to describe theatrical performers who use techniques such as prestidigitation, cold reading, and hot reading to produce the appearance of such abilities such as telepathy Telepathy , is the transfer of information on thoughts or feelings between individuals by means other than the five senses (See Psi). The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, specifically to replace the earlier expression thought-transference. A telepath is a person and clairvoyance The term clairvoyance is used to refer to the ability to gain information about an object, person, location or physical event through means other than the known human senses, a form of extra-sensory perception. A person said to have the ability of clairvoyance is referred to as a clairvoyant ("one who sees clearly"), and their trans-temporal operation as precognition Precognition , also called future sight, refers to perception that involves the acquisition of future information that cannot be deduced from presently available and normally acquired sense-based information. The related terms, premonition (from the Latin praemonēre) and presentiment refer to information about future events that is perceived as or retrocognition Retrocognition , from the Latin retro meaning "backward, behind" and cognition meaning "knowing", describes "knowledge of a past event which could not have been learned or inferred by normal means". The term was coined by Frederic W. H. Myers. ESP is also sometimes casually referred to as a sixth sense Senses are the physiological capacities within organisms that provide inputs for perception. The senses and their operation, classification, and theory are overlapping topics studied by a variety of fields, most notably neuroscience, cognitive psychology , and philosophy of perception. The nervous system has a specific sensory system or organ,, gut instinct or hunch, which are historical English idioms. The term implies acquisition of information by means external to the basic limiting assumptions of science, such as that organisms can only receive information from the past to the present.

Parapsychology Parapsychology is a discipline that seeks to investigate the existence and causes of psychic abilities and life after death using the scientific method. Parapsychological experiments have included the use of random number generators to test for evidence of precognition and psychokinesis with both human and animal subjects and Ganzfeld experiments is the study of paranormal psychic phenomena, including ESP. Parapsychologists generally regard such tests as the ganzfeld experiment A ganzfeld experiment is a technique used in the field of parapsychology to test individuals for extrasensory perception (ESP). It uses homogeneous and unpatterned sensory stimulation to produce an effect similar to sensory deprivation. The deprivation of patterned sensory input is said to be conducive to inwardly generated impressions. The as providing compelling evidence for the existence of ESP. The scientific community The scientific community consists of the total body of scientists, its relationships and interactions. It is normally divided into "sub-communities" each working on a particular field within science. Objectivity is expected to be achieved by the scientific method. Peer review, through discussion and debate within journals and conferences, does not accept this due to the disputed evidence base, the lack of a theory which would explain ESP, and the lack of experimental techniques which can provide reliably positive results.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]}

History

J.B. Rhine

In the 1930s, at Duke University Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James Buchanan Duke established The Duke Endowment, prompting the institution to change its name in honor in North Carolina J. B. Rhine Joseph Banks Rhine (usually known as J. B. Rhine) was a botanist who later developed an interest in parapsychology and psychology. Through the parapsychology lab at Duke he also lectured on mainstream psychological topics.[citation needed] Rhine founded the parapsychology lab at Duke University, the Journal of Parapsychology, and the Foundation and his wife Louisa tried to develop psychical research into an experimental science. To avoid the connotations of hauntings This is a list of locations reportedly haunted by ghosts or other supernatural beings. Reports of haunted locations are part of ghostlore, which is a form of folklore and the seance A séance is an attempt to communicate with spirits. The word "séance" comes from the French word for "seat," "session" or "sitting," from the Old French "seoir," "to sit." In French, the word's meaning is quite general: one may, for example, speak of "une séance de cinéma" (& room, they renamed it "parapsychology Parapsychology is a discipline that seeks to investigate the existence and causes of psychic abilities and life after death using the scientific method. Parapsychological experiments have included the use of random number generators to test for evidence of precognition and psychokinesis with both human and animal subjects and Ganzfeld experiments." While Louisa Rhine concentrated on collecting accounts of spontaneous cases, J. B. Rhine worked largely in the laboratory, carefully defining terms such as ESP and psi and designing experiments to test them. A simple set of cards was developed, originally called Zener cards^[7] (after their designer)—now called ESP cards. They bear the symbols circle, square, wavy lines, cross, and star; there are five cards of each in a pack of 25.

In a telepathy experiment the "sender" looks at a series of cards while the "receiver" guesses the symbols. To try to observe clairvoyance, the pack of cards is hidden from everyone while the receiver guesses. To try to observe precognition, the order of the cards is determined after the guesses are made.

In all such experiments the order of the cards must be random so that hits are not obtained through systematic biases or prior knowledge. At first the cards were shuffled by hand, then by machine. Later, random number tables were used and, nowadays, computers. An advantage of ESP cards is that statistics can easily be applied to determine whether the number of hits obtained is higher than would be expected by chance. Rhine used ordinary people as subjects and claimed that, on average, they did significantly better than chance expectation. Later he used dice to test for psychokinesis and also claimed results that were better than chance.

In 1940, Rhine, J.G. Pratt, and others at Duke authored a review of all card-guessing experiments conducted internationally since 1882. Titled Extra-Sensory Perception After Sixty Years, it has become recognised as the first meta-analysis In statistics, a meta-analysis combines the results of several studies that address a set of related research hypotheses. In its simplest form, this is normally by identification of a common measure of "effect size", for which a weighted average might be the output of a meta-analyses. Here the weighting might be related to sample sizes in science.^[8] It included details of replications of Rhine's studies. Through these years, 50 studies were published, of which 33 were contributed by investigators other than Rhine and the Duke University group; 61% of these independent studies reported significant results suggestive of ESP.^[9] Among these were psychologists at Colorado University and Hunter College, New York, who completed the studies with the largest number of trials and the highest levels of significance.^[10][11] Replication failures encouraged Rhine to further research into the conditions necessary to experimentally produce the effect. He maintained, however, that it was not replicability, or even a fundamental theory of ESP that would evolve research, but only a greater interest in unconscious mental processes and a more complete understanding of human personality.^[12]

Early British research

One of the first statistical studies of ESP, using card-guessing, was conducted by Ina Jephson, in the 1920s. She reported mixed findings across two studies. More successful experiments were conducted with procedures other than card-guessing. G.N.M. Tyrrell used automated target-selection and data-recording in guessing the location of a future point of light. Whateley Carington experimented on the paranormal cognition of drawings of randomly selected words, using participants from across the globe. J. Hettinger studied the ability to retrieve information associated with token objects.^[13]

Less successful was University of London mathematician Samuel Soal Samuel Soal is mostly, today, remembered as the most prominent researcher in academic parapsychology to have been charged with fraudulent production of data. This concerns a series of studies in card-guessing that he conducted during the London Blitz in his attempted replications of the card-guessing studies. However, following a hypothesis suggested by Carington on the basis of his own findings, Soal re-analysed his data for evidence of what Carington termed displacement. Soal discovered, to his surprise, that three of his former participants, Randolph Tucker Pendleton IV, Amanda Bailey and Rachel Brown, evidenced displacement: i.e., their responses significantly corresponded to targets for trials one removed from which they were assigned. Soal sought to confirm this finding by testing these participants in new experiments. Conducted during the war years, into the 1950s, under tightly controlled conditions, they produced highly significant results suggestive of precognitive telepathy Telepathy , is the transfer of information on thoughts or feelings between individuals by means other than the five senses (See Psi). The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, specifically to replace the earlier expression thought-transference. A telepath is a person. The findings were convincing for many other scientists and philosophers regarding telepathy and the claims of Rhine, but were also prominently critiqued as fraudulent, until, following Soal's death in 1975, support for them was largely abandoned. (For references and further information, see Samuel Soal Samuel Soal is mostly, today, remembered as the most prominent researcher in academic parapsychology to have been charged with fraudulent production of data. This concerns a series of studies in card-guessing that he conducted during the London Blitz.)

Sequence, position and psychological effects

Rhine and other parapsychologists found that some subjects, or some conditions, produced significant below-chance scoring (psi-missing); or that scores declined during testing (the "decline effect").^[14][15] Some such "internal effects" in ESP scores have also appeared to be idiosyncratic to particular participants or research methods. Most notable is the focusing effect identified in the decade-long research with Pavel Stepanek.

Personality measures have also been tested. People who believe in psi Psi is a term from parapsychology derived from the Greek, ψ psi, 23rd letter of the Greek alphabet; from the Greek ψυχή psyche, "mind, soul" ("sheep") tend to score above chance, while those who do not believe in psi ("goats") show null results or psi-missing. This has become known as the "sheep-goat effect".^[16]

Prediction of decline and other position effects has proved challenging, although they have been often identified in data gathered for the purpose of observing other effects.^[17] Personality and attitudinal effects have shown greater predictability, with meta-analysis In statistics, a meta-analysis combines the results of several studies that address a set of related research hypotheses. In its simplest form, this is normally by identification of a common measure of "effect size", for which a weighted average might be the output of a meta-analyses. Here the weighting might be related to sample sizes of parapsychological databases showing the sheep-goat effect, and other traits, to have significant and reliable effects over the accumulated data.^[18][19]

Cognitive and humanistic research

In the 1960s, in line with the development of cognitive psychology Cognitive psychology is a discipline within psychology that investigates the internal mental processes of thought such as visual processing, memory, thinking, learning, feeling, problem solving, and language and humanistic psychology Humanistic psychology is a school of psychology that emerged in the 1950s in reaction to both behaviorism and psychoanalysis. It is explicitly concerned with the human dimension of psychology and the human context for the development of psychological theory, parapsychologists became increasingly interested in the cognitive components of ESP, the subjective experience involved in making ESP responses, and the role of ESP in psychological life. Memory, for instance, was offered as a better model of psi than perception. This called for experimental procedures that were not limited to Rhine's favoured forced-choice methodology. Free-response measures, such as used by Carington in the 1930s, were developed with attempts to raise the sensitivity of participants to their cognitions. These procedures included relaxation, meditation, REM-sleep, and the Ganzfeld (a mild sensory deprivation procedure). These studies have proved to be even more successful than Rhine's forced-choice paradigm, with meta-analyses evidencing reliable effects, and many confirmatory replication studies.^[20][21] Methodological hypotheses have still been raised to explain the results, while others have sought to advance theoretical development in parapsychology on their bases. Moving research out of the laboratory and into naturalistic settings, and taking advantage of naturally occurring conditions, has been a related development.

Parapsychological investigation of ESP

The study of psi phenomena such as ESP is called parapsychology Parapsychology is a discipline that seeks to investigate the existence and causes of psychic abilities and life after death using the scientific method. Parapsychological experiments have included the use of random number generators to test for evidence of precognition and psychokinesis with both human and animal subjects and Ganzfeld experiments. The consensus of the Parapsychological Association The Parapsychological Association was formed in 1957 as a professional society for parapsychologists following an initiative by Joseph B. Rhine. Its purpose has been "to advance parapsychology as a science, to disseminate knowledge of the field, and to integrate the findings with those of other branches of science." It holds annual is that certain types of psychic phenomena such as psychokinesis The term psychokinesis , also referred to as telekinesis (Greek τῆλε + κίνησις, literally "distant-movement") with respect to strictly describing movement of matter, sometimes abbreviated PK and TK respectively, is a term coined by publisher Henry Holt to refer to the direct influence of mind on a physical system that cannot, telepathy Telepathy , is the transfer of information on thoughts or feelings between individuals by means other than the five senses (See Psi). The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, specifically to replace the earlier expression thought-transference. A telepath is a person, and astral projection Astral projection is an interpretation of any form of out-of-body experience (OOBE) that assumes the existence of an "astral body" separate from the physical body and capable of travelling outside it. Astral projection or travel denotes the astral body leaving the physical body to travel in the astral plane are well established.^[5][22][23]

A great deal of reported extrasensory perception is said to occur spontaneously in conditions which are not scientifically controlled. Such experiences have often been reported to be much stronger and more obvious than those observed in laboratory experiments. These reports, rather than laboratory evidence, have historically been the basis for the widespread belief in the authenticity of these phenomena. However, it has proven extremely difficult (perhaps impossible) to replicate such extraordinary experiences under controlled scientific conditions.^[5]

Those who believe that ESP may exist point to numerous studies that appear to offer evidence of the phenomenon's existence: the work of J. B. Rhine Joseph Banks Rhine (usually known as J. B. Rhine) was a botanist who later developed an interest in parapsychology and psychology. Through the parapsychology lab at Duke he also lectured on mainstream psychological topics.[citation needed] Rhine founded the parapsychology lab at Duke University, the Journal of Parapsychology, and the Foundation, Russell Targ Russell Targ is an American physicist and author, an ESP researcher, and pioneer in the earliest development of the laser, Harold E. Puthoff Harold E. Puthoff is an American physicist who, earlier in his career was involved in research on paranormal topics. In 1967, Puthoff earned a Ph.D. from Stanford University.[citation needed] Puthoff is well known within gravitational physics circles[attribution needed] for his papers on polarizable vacuum (PV) and stochastic electrodynamics and physicists at SRI International SRI International, founded as Stanford Research Institute, is one of the world's largest contract research institutes. Based in the United States, the trustees of Stanford University established it in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic development in the region. It was later incorporated as an independent non-profit organization in the 1970s, and many others, are often cited in arguments that ESP exists.

The main current debate concerning ESP surrounds whether or not statistically compelling laboratory evidence for it has already been accumulated.^[5][24] The most compelling and repeatable results are all small to moderate statistical Statistics is the formal science of making effective use of numerical data relating to groups of individuals or experiments. It deals with all aspects of this, including not only the collection, analysis and interpretation of such data, but also the planning of the collection of data, in terms of the design of surveys and experiments results. Some dispute the positive interpretation of results obtained in scientific studies of ESP, because they are difficult to reproduce reliably, and are small effects. Parapsychologists have argued that the data from numerous studies show that certain individuals have consistently produced remarkable results while the remainder have constituted a highly significant trend that cannot be dismissed even if the effect is small.^[25]

Extrasensory perception and hypnosis

There is a common belief^{[citation needed]} that a hypnotized person is able to demonstrate ESP. Carl Sargent Carl L. Sargent is a British author of several roleplaying game-based products and novels, a psychology major at the University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is the second oldest university in England and the fourth oldest in Europe. In post-nominals the university's name is abbreviated as Cantab, a shortened form of Cantabrigiensis (an adjective derived from Cantabrigia, the Latinised form of Cambridge), heard about the early claims of a hypnosis Hypnosis is a mental state or imaginative role-enactment (non-state theory) usually induced by a procedure known as a hypnotic induction, which is commonly composed of a long series of preliminary instructions and suggestions. Hypnotic suggestions may be delivered by a hypnotist in the presence of the subject, or may be self-administered (" – ESP link and designed an experiment to test whether they had merit. He recruited 40 fellow college students, none of whom identified themselves as having ESP, and then divided them into a group that would be hypnotized before being tested with a pack of 25 Zener cards Zener cards are cards used to conduct experiments for extra-sensory perception , most often clairvoyance. Perceptual psychologist Karl Zener designed the cards in the early 1930s for experiments conducted with his colleague, parapsychologist J. B. Rhine, and a control group that would be tested with the same Zener cards. The control subjects averaged a score of 5 out of 25 right, exactly what chance would indicate. The subjects who were hypnotized did more than twice as well, averaging a score of 11.9 out of 25 right. Sargent's own interpretation of the experiment is that ESP is associated with a relaxed state of mind and a freer, more atavistic level of consciousness.^{[dubious – discuss][citation needed]}

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