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You may already know this, but psychic powers might really exist. Research suggests that far from being a trick of employed by fairground fortune tellers, many of us are blessed with ability to see in the future. Influencing events before they happen is also within our remit, the study by a respected psychologist found.
The publication of the results in a leading social science journal will make waves in the staid world of science, where terms like clairvoyance, telepathy and ESP are dirty words. They will also spark a million conversations about the significance of everyday occurrences, such as knowing who is at the end of the phone before picking it up.
Daryl Bem, a physicist and part-time magician turned psychologist, set out to investigate psi, or parapsychology to you and me. In one experiment, students were shown a list of words to memorise before being asked to recall words form it. They were then given some of the words to type.
Spookily, they were better at remembering the words they would later be asked to type, this week's New Scientist reports.
In another study, the students were shown a picture of a tempting-looking basket of fruit or a menacing pit bull terrier and timed while they rated the image as pleasant or unpleasant. After making their choice, they were shown a word such as luscious or friendly.
Amazingly, the choice of word seemed to affect their reaction time, despite it being flashed up after they'd rated the picture.
In a third experiment, the students were shown an image of two curtains on a computer screen and told one concealed an erotic image. The students chose the right curtain slightly more often than could be explained away by chance.
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