Feeling the Future: A Meta-Analysis of 90 Experiments on the Anomalous Anticipation of Random Future Events
📄 Original study ↗📌 Appears in:
Plain English Summary
After Bem's 2011 study ignited a firestorm, this massive follow-up asked: does the effect hold when other labs try it? Across 90 experiments from 33 labs in 14 countries with over 12,000 participants, the answer was a surprisingly firm yes. The Bayes Factor (a measure of how strongly data favor one hypothesis over another) exceeded five billion — wildly past what's considered decisive evidence. Even independent replications held up. Here's a fascinating wrinkle: experiments using fast, intuitive thinking worked significantly better than slow, deliberate ones — suggesting precognition might ride on gut instinct rather than careful reasoning. Seven of eight bias tests came back clean, arguing this isn't just cherry-picked results.
Research Notes
The definitive meta-analytic follow-up to the Bem (2011) controversy, providing the strongest cumulative statistical case for the precognition effect. Central to the Feeling the Future debate (Controversy #2). The fast/slow thinking distinction offers a theoretically motivated moderator that may explain inconsistent replication results.
Meta-analysis of 90 experiments from 33 laboratories in 14 countries (12,406 participants) testing anomalous anticipation of random future events, following up on Bem's (2011) original nine experiments. The overall effect was Hedges' g = 0.09, z = 6.33, p = 1.2 x 10^-10, with a Bayes Factor of 5.1 x 10^9 greatly exceeding the criterion for decisive evidence. Independent replications yielded g = 0.06, z = 4.16, BF = 3,853. P-curve analysis estimated the true effect size at 0.20, closely matching Bem's original d = 0.22. Fast-thinking protocols (g = 0.11) significantly outperformed slow-thinking protocols (g = 0.03, ns). Seven of eight statistical tests indicated the database is not compromised by selection bias or p-hacking.
Links
Related Papers
Meta Analyzes
- Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect — Bem, Daryl J (2011)
- Failing the Future: Three Unsuccessful Attempts to Replicate Bem's 'Retroactive Facilitation of Recall' Effect — Ritchie, Stuart J (2012)
- Correcting the Past: Failures to Replicate Psi — Galak, Jeff (2012)
- Feeling the Future Again: Retroactive Avoidance of Negative Stimuli — Maier, Markus A (2014)
- Retro-priming, priming, and double testing: psi and replication in a test–retest design — Rabeyron, Thomas (2014)
- Results from a Confirmatory Replication Study of Bem (2011): Precognitive Detection of Erotic Stimuli? — Wagenmakers, Eric-Jan (2012)
Cites
- Predictive Physiological Anticipation Preceding Seemingly Unpredictable Stimuli: A Meta-Analysis — Mossbridge, Julia (2012)
- We Should Have Seen This Coming — Schwarzkopf, D. Samuel (2014)
- Fearing the Future of Empirical Psychology: Bem's (2011) Evidence of Psi as a Case Study of Deficiencies in Modal Research Practice — LeBel, Etienne P (2011)
- Why Psychologists Must Change the Way They Analyze Their Data: The Case of Psi — Wagenmakers, Eric-Jan (2011)
- A Bayes Factor Meta-Analysis of Bem's ESP Claim — Rouder, Jeffrey N (2011)
- Too Good to Be True: Publication Bias in Two Prominent Studies from Experimental Psychology — Francis, Gregory (2012)
- An Agenda for Purely Confirmatory Research — Wagenmakers, Eric-Jan (2012)
Same Research Program
- Does Psi Exist? Replicable Evidence for an Anomalous Process of Information Transfer — Bem, Daryl J (1994)
- Bem's 'Feeling the Future' (2011) Five Years Later: Its Impact on Scientific Literature — Silva, Bruno A (2017)
- Predictive Physiological Anticipation Preceding Seemingly Unpredictable Stimuli: An Update of Mossbridge et al.'s Meta-Analysis — Duggan, Michael (2018)
Cited By
- A Call for an Open, Informed Study of All Aspects of Consciousness — Cardeña, Etzel (2014)
- Inner Experience – Direct Access to Reality: A Complementarist Ontology and Dual Aspect Monism Support a Broader Epistemology — Walach, Harald (2020)
- Precognition as a Form of Prospection: A Review of the Evidence — Mossbridge, Julia A (2018)
- Why Most Research Findings About Psi Are False: The Replicability Crisis, the Psi Paradox and the Myth of Sisyphus — Rabeyron, Thomas (2020)
- The Experimental Evidence for Parapsychological Phenomena: A Review — Cardeña, Etzel (2018)
- Searching for the Impossible: Parapsychology's Elusive Quest — Reber, Arthur S (2019)
- Anomalous Cognition: An Umbrella Review of the Meta-Analytic Evidence — Tressoldi, Patrizio (2021)
- Exceptional Experiences Reported by Scientists and Engineers — Wahbeh, Helané (2018)
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Perspectives on Precognition
📋 Cite this paper
Bem, Daryl J, Tressoldi, Patrizio E, Rabeyron, Thomas, Duggan, Michael (2015). Feeling the Future: A Meta-Analysis of 90 Experiments on the Anomalous Anticipation of Random Future Events. F1000Research. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.7177.2
@article{bem_2015_feeling,
title = {Feeling the Future: A Meta-Analysis of 90 Experiments on the Anomalous Anticipation of Random Future Events},
author = {Bem, Daryl J and Tressoldi, Patrizio E and Rabeyron, Thomas and Duggan, Michael},
year = {2015},
journal = {F1000Research},
doi = {10.12688/f1000research.7177.2},
}