Hi there, I’m a student at a local college and I’m studying Psychology with a minor in Philosophy. I’m currently conducting research for a paper that seeks to understand the societal function of psychics and soothsayers and why people are so eager to pay for their “services”.
What I would like to know is if anyone knows any good free sites or way to advertise myself as a psychic? I need to research how often people agree with whatever they are told and whether gullibility and desperation is the issue at work.
My suggestion would be that a better approach would be to find some self-proclaimed psychics, tell them about your research, and ask them if you can interview some of their clients.
This raises an interesting question. If a person who is not a psychic advertises as one, is it false advertising? If so, isn’t a person who *is *a psychic and advertises as one also false advertising? Or is it the case that a person advertising as a psychic is a psychic by definition and therefore it can never be false advertising? Or is it always false advertising because there’s really no such thing as a psychic?
Excuse me, I have to go now. My phone’s going to ring.
CookingWithGas To me, this is the difference between a kook and a quack. A kook genuinely believes that the snake oil they sell is helpful. They generally see themselves as performing a vital and helpful service for a fee, not unlike doctors. A quack is a conscious fraud.
I have a friend who believes she has psychic powers. She did briefly work for a psychic hotline. She quit because ‘They were all about getting money instead of helping people.’
Because psychic powers do not exist, to the best of our knowledge. If I truly believed I could shoot beams of fire out of my eyeballs and advertised such, wouldn’t that be false advertising?
Could psychic readings be seen as a form of psychoanalysis? ISTM that people go to each for similar reasons. A person has an issue and goes to a psychologist who helps the patient work through the issue or issues by finding out the underlying cause and offering solutions, right? Doesn’t a psychic do the same thing, only using props and without professional training?
Have you discussed your research plans with your professor? There are ethical guidelines for conducting studies than involve deceiving the participants. Before you proceed you might want to make sure that your protocols are acceptable.
I think you might make that argument, although the legitimate professionals would probably bristle at the idea. Most of the systems for psychic readings are designed to have results which are nebulous, yet SOUND significant, with the result they they will often seem to “fit” for the client. The psychic often has a certain grasp of empirical psychology. They know how to establish empathy with their client, promote acceptance of the method in the client’s mind, and shade the random results in such a way as to seem significant. In doing this, they might actually HELP the client, simply by causing them to consider their problems in a new light, or talking it over with the psychic, even if the methodology is entirely bogus.
There’s a bit of overlap between psychoanalysis and psychic reading, but you wander into very hazy territory by comparing the two. For that matter, it probably helps a lot of people to sit down with someone who’s understanding (and seems so) and talk out their troubles.
“Psychics”, however, are promoting an illusion, feed false information to their clients, and have not been shown to provide benefits that would justify their fees.
There are people who badly want to believe in snake oil, and in effect are wandering around with cash sticking out of their pockets, begging someone to take it off their hands. Psychics arguably do this with less damage to the mark than many other purveyors of quackery.
