The article “How come TV psychics seem so convincing?” failed to mention confirmation bias as an operational method … just simply telling people what they want to hear … more on this later, first some observations …
This was a documentary some time ago and I can’t remember the title or even the program … it was on PBS so it has to be true … some researchers set up a single-blind test with 30 volunteers … the volunteers each wrote down their birthday and the researchers spent a bit of time working up their horoscopes … they returned them to the subjects and then had the subjects rate how correct the horoscopes were, without showing it to their neighbors … most said “perfect” and the rest said “nearly perfect” … then the researchers had each subject pass their horoscope back and the one in back bring theirs forward … yup … each horoscope was exactly the same … the subjects wanted to believe and so they volunteered for the test … confirmation bias …
The documentary also showed a outlier … a young fella in college would do palm readings on the side for extra money at fairs and gatherings … one day he was just pissed at the world and decided to just read the complete opposite on the palm of the next customer … she was wearing conservative clothing, so he read that she was an alcoholic party slut … she wore a wedding ring, he read she slept with a different man every other night … and so on … at the end she was dumbfounded, and he was scared, he thought he screwed up bad until he heard her whisper “How did you know?” … she jumped up and fled …
Anyway, back to confirmation bias … any profession prophet knows that just getting one of ten predictions right makes the people forget the nine times you were dead wrong … I do this all the time at casino blackjack … hitting a 19 because the flip card is a 2 … just do that once and the people will believe … pretty funny …
… or be like Beloved, our favorite White Prophet, and make your prophecies so obscure and nebulous that you can always say that’s exactly what you meant afterward …
Yes, I’ve seen a few demonstrations of confirmation bias conducted on TV and they have all been very convincing. The audiences always seem suitably impressed but I’d lay odds that many of them return after a while to their former state of total gullibility, especially when, as on one of the shows, they’d been led to believe they would be seeing a genuine psychic and it was ony revealed during the show that the guy was someone like Randi.
Unfortunately most people want to believe in this stuff and will continue to do so even in the face of overwhelming evidence of trickery. We mock the Middle Ages for their absurd beliefs yet the truth is we have advanced not at all from those times as regards the number of people willing to believe the most ridiculous things. In fact we have added much to the fooleries of the past with aliens joining the menagerie of angels, demons, etc.
Taking longer than we thought? Sometimes I think we’ll never get there.
Do any psychics actually believe they are psychics or are they all out and out frauds?
Of course I realize that they are all frauds, but maybe some convince themselves they really do have the gift. It strikes me that some people are natural (or naturally talented) cold readers and perhaps some of them don’t realize what they’re doing. If the audience are willing dupes, maybe the performer is as well.
watchwolf49, the astrology test you describe was a favorite demonstration of magician James Randi.
The “young fella in college” you describe giving psychic readings, then reversing what he said and finding them still accepted, is most attributed to Ray Hyman, a psychology professor emeritus in Eugene, Oregon.
You’re welcome. I tried to find a Ray Hyman video about his college experiences, but I couldn’t zero in on just that story. I suspect you will find it in more than one of his online interviews and lectures.
Hyman is also an accomplished magician, although it takes a supporting role to his psychology professorship.
IIRC, both Randi and Hyman don’t take a firm position about psychics RE “do they think they have genuine powers or not?” There may be “psychics” on both sides of that question; some self-deluded, some 100% charlatan.
I recall a personal conversation with the proprietor of a magic shop in Los Angeles long ago. I was looking for an obscure book by “Uriah Fuller”, a magician’s pseudonym, sort of a “how to” book. We got into a discussion of psychic abilities. I thought that someone in his profession – someone who sells tricks and sees them all the time – would be the last person to be fooled, but he told me that some psychics really did have supernatural powers.
Or maybe he was just trying to fool me. I found the Fuller book elsewhere, and there are no genuine psychic powers in it at all. As Randi says, if you are doing the trick using supernatural powers, you’re doing it the hard way.
Aww, this reference made my heart go pitty pat. Thank you!
The way I know that it’s all quackery is essentially what some forgotten standup comic said once: If the psychic hotline was real, they’d be calling ME! Similarly when I drove past a psychic’s home/office (they invariably hang a shingle in their front yards), if they had something to tell me, they’d come running out of the house as I passed by.
I’m appalled at the high number of fellow pet lovers/animal volunteers who believe in “animal communicators”. These are people who claim to be able to talk to animals. That in itself, is not outrageous. But they always go one step further and claim to be able to talk to dead animals. I had one once tell me that she asked a dead dog if he knew the whereabouts of a lost (but alive) dog. I challenged one once who was “trying” to help us locate that lost dog. She kept describing vague locations where we could find him: near the McDonalds (there were two in town), near a blue house, etc. When we still couldn’t find him, I asked if she could actually come here to help because surely proximity would strengthen her powers and she could find him instantly for us? No reply. Ever again. LOL!
