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Plain English Summary
Ever get a feeling you know who's calling before you pick up? Sheldrake and Smart tested that hunch with 271 videotaped trials. Four participants guessed which of four possible callers was ringing — luck alone would score 25%. The actual hit rate: a jaw-dropping 45%, with odds against chance at one in a trillion. Familiar callers pushed accuracy to 61%, while strangers dropped it right back to chance. Participants who felt confident were right 82% of the time. Controls were progressively tightened across four methods, yet hit rates held steady.
Abstract
The authors tested whether participants (N = 4) could tell who was calling before answering the telephone. In each trial, participants had 4 potential callers, one of whom was selected at random by the experimenter. Participants were filmed on time-coded videotape throughout the experimental period. When the telephone began ringing, the participants said to the camera whom they thought the caller was and, in many cases, also how confident they felt in their guesses. The callers were usually several miles away, and in some cases thousands of miles away. By guessing at random, there was a 25% chance of success. In a total of 271 trials, there were 122 (45%) correct guesses (p = 10-12). The 95% confidence limits of this success rate were from 39% to 51%. In most trials, some of the callers were familiar to the participants and others were unfamiliar. With familiar callers there was a success rate of 61% (n = 100; p = 10-13). With unfamiliar callers the success rate of 20% was not significantly different from chance. When they said they were confident about their guesses, participants were indeed more successful than when they were not confident.
Related Papers
Cites
Cited By
- Mental Connection at Distance: Useful for Solving Difficult Tasks? — Tressoldi, Patrizio E. (2011)
- A Rapid Online Telepathy Test — Sheldrake, Rupert. (2009)
- An Automated Online Telepathy Test — Sheldrake, Rupert. (2007)
- Who's Calling? Evaluating the Accuracy of Guessing Who Is on the Phone — Wahbeh, Helané. (2024)
- A Comparison of Four New Automated Telephone Telepathy Tests — Sheldrake, Rupert. (2024)
Extended By
- A Filmed Experiment on Telephone Telepathy with the Nolan Sisters — Sheldrake, Rupert. (2004)
- Testing for Telepathy in Connection with E-mails — Sheldrake, Rupert. (2005)
- Telepathy in Connection with Telephone Calls, Text Messages and Emails — Sheldrake, Rupert. (2014)
- Automated Tests for Telephone Telepathy Using Mobile Phones — Sheldrake, Rupert (2015)
- Sensing the Sending of SMS Messages: An Automated Test — Sheldrake, Rupert. (2009)
- Who's Calling at this Hour? Local Sidereal Time and Telephone Telepathy — Lobach, Eva. (2004)
Replicated By
- Do You Know Who Is Calling? Experiments on Anomalous Cognition in Phone Call Receivers — Schmidt, Stefan. (2009)
- Who's Calling at this Hour? Local Sidereal Time and Telephone Telepathy — Lobach, Eva. (2004)
- A Filmed Experiment on Telephone Telepathy with the Nolan Sisters — Sheldrake, Rupert. (2004)
Companion
- Experimental Tests for Telephone Telepathy — Sheldrake, Rupert. (2003)
- Testing a Language-Using Parrot for Telepathy — Sheldrake, Rupert. (2003)
- A Filmed Experiment on Telephone Telepathy with the Nolan Sisters — Sheldrake, Rupert. (2004)
- Testing for Telepathy in Connection with E-mails — Sheldrake, Rupert. (2005)
- An Automated Test for Telepathy in Connection with Emails — Sheldrake, Rupert. (2009)
- Testing a Return-Anticipating Dog, Kane — Sheldrake, Rupert. (2000)
Same Research Program
- Telepathic Telephone Calls: Two Surveys — Sheldrake, Rupert. (2000)
- The Anticipation of Telephone Calls: A Survey in California — Brown, David Jay. (2001)
- An Automated Test for Telepathy in Connection with Emails — Sheldrake, Rupert. (2009)
- Testing for Telepathy in Connection with E-mails — Sheldrake, Rupert. (2005)
- The Sense of Being Stared At, Part 1: Is It Real or Illusory? — Sheldrake, Rupert. (2005)
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📋 Cite this paper
Sheldrake, Rupert., Smart, Pamela. (2003). Videotaped Experiments on Telephone Telepathy. Journal of Parapsychology.
@article{sheldrake_2003_videotaped,
title = {Videotaped Experiments on Telephone Telepathy},
author = {Sheldrake, Rupert. and Smart, Pamela.},
year = {2003},
journal = {Journal of Parapsychology},
}