Extrasensory Perception (ESP), generally we term this as "sixth sense", the sense that works beyond our five traditional senses of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. The sense that gives us the superpower to be exceptional. It would allow us to read minds, performing clairvoyance, predicting future and what not. Such an intellect power, right? but is "sixth sense" really a gospel or it's just a myth? Let's see how psychologists perceive this extraordinary concept of "Extrasensory Perception".
The first psychologist to extensively research about Extrasensory Perception (ESP) was Joseph Banks Rhine, who coined the term and conducted experiments in the 1930s and 40s at Duke University. The main focus of this experiment was on 'Telepathy' and 'Clairvoyance'. He developed a set of black and white 'Zener Cards', each bearing one of the six symbols among circle, square, wavy, line, cross, and star.
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| Zenner Cards |
One of J.B. Rhine's famous experiments with the Zenner Cards involved a participant who need to identify the symbol on a card without looking at it, often with the card facing downwards or placed in a sealed envelope. Rhine's team conducted nearly one million individual trials across 33 different experiments. Twenty- seven of these experiments produced statistically significant results, indicating a strong likelihood of ESP phenomena. One subject among them, Hubert Pearce demonstrated remarkable ESP abilities, scoring an average of 9 hits per 25 trials over 15,000 trials. This performance was significantly above expectation.
Other psychologists such as Daryl Bem, Charles Tart, Samuel Moulton, Stephen Kossly, are few of those psychologists who have contributed to the field of ESP research, often with diverse perspectives, and if we study their research, we will find out that our "Sixth Sense" is majorly formed by our brain activity, especially it had been found that the right hemisphere of our brain is mostly active during ESP experiences, our perception, past experiences, prolonged emotional trauma also plays an important role, which means that ESP is not always a natural occurrence. Still the overall study of extrasensory perception remains a controversial and complex area of research due to lack of scientific evidence, and certain methodological flaws.
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