An Automated Test for Telepathy in Connection with Emails
📄 Original study ↗📌 Appears in:
Plain English Summary
Ever get a weird feeling you know exactly who just emailed you before you even look? This study put that hunch to the test with a fully automated online system. Participants signed up through Rupert Sheldrake's website, each providing three contacts. The system randomly picked one contact, asked them to send an email, and then asked the participant to guess who sent it -- all before delivering the message. Across 419 trials with participants aged 12 to 66, people guessed right 41.8% of the time, meaningfully above the 33.3% chance rate. Interestingly, people who didn't finish all their assigned trials actually scored higher (48.3%) than those who completed them (38.4%). The timing of responses revealed a curious pattern: quick guesses (under 3 minutes) hit well above chance, medium delays dropped to chance levels, and very long delays bounced back up again. The 20-29 age group were the star performers, nailing it 52.9% of the time. But here's the big takeaway and why this study really matters as a comparison point: the effect size was notably smaller than previous supervised experiments where sender and guesser were focused at the same time. The researchers believe this is because the automated system introduced unavoidable delays -- the sender and guesser weren't mentally connected in the same moment. That simultaneous focus between people appears to be a key ingredient. So while the study showed automated email telepathy testing is doable, it also revealed that something important may get lost when you remove the real-time human connection from the equation.
Research Notes
This paper is part of Sheldrake's systematic program to develop automated, scalable telepathy testing methods, and it establishes an important methodological point: simultaneous focus between sender and receiver appears crucial to achieving higher effect sizes. It serves as a comparison baseline (d = 0.2) against the supervised videotaped telephone and email tests (d = 0.5 each), providing evidence that the experimental format itself, not just selection effects, influences outcomes.
This study investigated whether people can sense telepathically who is about to send them an email before they receive it, using a fully automated online testing procedure. Participants aged 12 to 66 registered via Rupert Sheldrake's website, providing the names and email addresses of three contacts. The automated system selected a contact at random, asked that contact to send an email message to the subject through the system, and then asked the subject to guess the sender's name before delivering the message. Tests consisted of 6 or 9 trials. In a total of 419 trials, there were 175 hits (41.8%), significantly above the 33.3% chance level (p = .0001; Cohen's d = 0.2). Complete tests (37 tests, 276 trials) showed a hit rate of 38.4% (p = .03), while incomplete tests showed 48.3% hits (p = .0001), with incomplete tests scoring significantly higher than complete tests (p = .05). Analysis of response delays revealed hit rates of 42.2% for delays under 3 minutes (p = .01), dropping to chance (32.1%) for 3-10 minute delays, then rising to 45.6% for delays over 10 minutes. Male subjects (265 trials) scored 43.4% and female subjects (154 trials) scored 39.0%, with no significant sex difference. The highest hit rates by age group were in the 20-29 year cohort (52.9% from 102 trials). The effect size (d = 0.2) was notably smaller than in previous supervised telephone telepathy experiments (d = 0.5) and simultaneous email telepathy tests (d = 0.5), consistent with the authors' prior hypothesis. The study authors attribute the lower effect size to two factors: subjects were not pre-selected for apparent telepathic sensitivity, and crucially, the automated system introduced unavoidable delays between sending and guessing, meaning subjects were not guessing simultaneously while the sender was focusing on them. The study demonstrates the feasibility of automated email telepathy testing while also revealing its limitations compared to real-time supervised protocols.
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📋 Cite this paper
Sheldrake, Rupert, Avraamides, Leonidas (2009). An Automated Test for Telepathy in Connection with Emails. Journal of Scientific Exploration.
@article{sheldrake_2009_automated_email,
title = {An Automated Test for Telepathy in Connection with Emails},
author = {Sheldrake, Rupert and Avraamides, Leonidas},
year = {2009},
journal = {Journal of Scientific Exploration},
}