About Extra-Sensory Perception (ESP)

Extra-Sensory Perception, abbreviated ESP, is a category of Psionics involving the practice of gaining information or knowledge about an event, object, or situation though means not involving touch, hearing, sight, smell, or taste.  It can be divided into many psychic perceptual categories, such as telepathy, empathy, clairvoyance, remote viewing, or token-object reading(the new term for psychometry).  Within scientific circles, extra-sensory perception(ESP) is often referred to using the term “anomalous cognition”.

What Extra-Sensory Perception (ESP) is Not

Realistic extra-sensory perception(ESP) for a beginner is not having a perception of another person’s thoughts using hearing.  Realistic extra-sensory perception(ESP) for a beginner is also not any of the following: having 100% accuracy with guessing another person’s thoughts or feelings, remote viewing every aspect of someone’s room, having perfect results with clairvoyance every time, or having 100% accurate results with token-object reading(psychometry).

Realistic extra-sensory perception(ESP) DOES involve having results in telepathy, clairvoyance, remote viewing, token-object reading, or empathy that is statistically significant.  Statistically significant results can be defined as those that deviate from chance in a way where a person or researcher is 95% confident that the results are not due to chance.

Skepticism

Currently, many researchers’ feelings regarding extra-sensory perception(ESP) are mildly skeptic.  Out of all psychic abilities mentioned on this site(not counting our mind-body section), researchers are probably the least skeptical over scientific evidence involving extra-sensory perception(ESP).  ESP experiments are probably the most widely administered within the field of parapsychology(the scientific study of abilities such as psychokinesis and ESP).  A common argument against extra-sensory perception(ESP) involves extra-sensory perception(ESP) being hard to test for.  This is indeed true, as effects that seem like they are ESP-related, may in fact come from outside sources.

Relevant Research

There are many positive research articles that support the existence of extra-sensory perception(ESP).  One study was done on the success of hypnotism on the effects of statistically significant psi outcomes.  It was concluded by Carl Sargent that while subjects scored chance results on extra-sensory perception(ESP) alone, when a test for ESP was coupled with individuals who were hypnotized, they picked the correct card an average of 11.9 out of 29 times(this is statistically significant).  Another famous positive study regarding the existence of extra-sensory perception(ESP) was done, which is commonly referred to as the Ganzfeld experiment.  This experiment involves induced sensory deprivation(never try inducing sensory deprivation on your own), and reported a 32.1% hit rate(this is also statistically significant, with a probability of 1 in 45,000), versus a chance hit rate of 25%(1-2).  This experiment is said to provide convincing evidence for the existence of extra-sensory perception(ESP).

Citation:

1. Dean I. Radin, Simon & Schuster (2006). Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality. Paraview Pocket Books. ISBN 978-1416516774.

2. Honorton, Berger, Varvoglis, Quant, Derr, Schechter, Ferrari (1990). “Psi Communication in the Ganzfeld”. Journal of Parapsychology .