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32 Tricks Psychics Bullsh*t People With

Tricks Psychics Bullsh*t to know ahead of time That study was based on a theory that
people have evolved to see patterns where none
People With That Psychics working with an audience, or even a exist. Imagine walking in the woods at night,
Everyone Should Know large group of people, have it pretty easy. A said study researcher Michiel van Elk, a
simple trick they often use is to pick the subject psychologist at the University of Amsterdam.
of their reading ahead of time, spotting someone You hear a rustle in the trees. Do you keep
Continued from Page 31 they know they want to focus on. Then, they going, or run away? If you keep going, you
have plenty of time to look for clues that will might be attacked. If you run away, no harm is
5. Watch for subtle reactions that help them get a sense of who they're dealing done.
with. If possible, they also can try to get "It's better to be safe than sorry," Van Elk
reveal major details
someone else in the audience to have a told Live Science.
conversation with this person beforehand, Evolutionary theorists suggest that this
There's a reason that psychics often talk slowly, tendency to attribute events to an entity with
gathering as much info as possible.
and it isn't merely because the cell signal agency might explain beliefs in ghosts, angels,
between here and the afterlife is kind of spotty. demons — and even God. To test the idea, Van
If you're planning on giving a psychic
Whenever they make statements, they're
demonstration while hanging out, spot your Elk went to a psychic street fair and asked
waiting to see how a client will respond. Even
subject long before you bring your "skills" up. psychic believers to watch computer animations
when someone isn't speaking—although a lot of
Hell, these days, you could probably get their of moving points of light. Some of the points
a psychic's act depends on the person revealing
name, then check their social media accounts on were arranged to look like the joints of an
information like, "No, he wasn't my uncle, I
your phone to gather a bunch of info. Psychics invisible stick figure walking; other dots moved
think you're talking about my cousin"—the
are often just really good Googlers. at random. The participants were asked to
simple shifts in body language, facial determine whether the dots were moving
Or stalkers. []
expression, and plenty of other subtle cues, will randomly or whether a deliberate agent (a
help the psychic know if they're on the right walking person) was behind the motion. In some
track. You can do the same. If you say Science of the cases, additional dancing dots were added in, to
something during a reading that makes sense to Paranormal: Can You obscure the random or deliberate dots, making
someone, they might nod or smile. Being the the task trickier.
subject of a psychic reading is like listening to a Trust Your Own Mind? Both paranormal believers and
joke. You're waiting for the person to say nonbelievers were good at telling the difference
something specific, and when they do, you're from movement with agency and random
Continued from Page 28
going to react. That's the whole point. The movement when the distinction was clear. But in
psychic just needs to watch out for those more ambiguous cases, people with greater
reactions. Some of these experiences certainly mimic the paranormal beliefs were more likely to jump to
In one of the most popular TED Talks feeling of a haunting; others, not so much (5 an explanation involving agency than the
ever, entertainer Keith Barry successfully percent of the participants reported becoming nonbelievers were.
guesses the name of a woman's ex with her sexually aroused, for example). But when the "Even when there were only randomly
barely saying a word. Barry doesn't reveal much researchers analyzed the data, they realized it moving dots, the psychic believers would say
of his secrets, but unlike others who use these didn't matter which experimental condition the they saw a human figure moving in the dots,"
tricks, he doesn't try to tell his audience that he participants were in. It made no difference if the Van Elk said.
has actual powers. He just lets them know that electromagnetic fields were on or off, or if the The study suggests that falling prey to
they're telling him more with their reactions infrasound was booming, French told Live the illusion of agency could explain belief in the
than they could possibly realize. Science. However, they did find that the paranormal; a draft in an old house or the creak
Or he's an actual wizard who doesn't participants' individual levels of suggestibility of wood settling could easily be misconstrued as
want to be discovered. Seriously, watch that influenced the results. a ghost. It's not clear, however, whether this
video. The last time our minds were that blown "The most parsimonious explanation is illusory agency bias is genetic or learned, Van
we promised ourselves never to buy brownies just if you say to suggestible people, 'Go in here, Elk said.
from the frisbee club bake sale again. and you may have some weird experiences,' "This is still one of the key challenges of
some of them do," French said.
the field: to see if it is possible to come up with
6. Looking for minor clues that reveal As French's work suggests, the real a good study to tease these two explanations
cause of hauntings may simply be the human
important info apart. What is the nature part of the story, and
brain. In one study, published in 1996 in the
what is the nurture part of the story?" he said.
journal Perceptual and Motor Skills, two
People are always sharing information about
participants asked to keep a diary about
themselves, even when they aren't saying a Your lying eyes
"poltergeist-like" activity in their home for a
word. For example, a wedding ring shows that
month suddenly started seeing evidence of
you're in a committed relationship, have the life Indeed, it's tough to even know how much to
potential poltergeists all over the place. In a
experiences of someone who has been married, trust people's own reports of their experiments.
follow-up paper in the same journal, the study
and are chronically stressed. Sitting in the front In a follow-up, Van Elk wasn't able to replicate
researchers hypothesized that haunting events
row during an audience reading, or leaning in his 2013 study. He suspects the reason might be
happen because people misperceive slightly
close, can mean that you're eager to believe the ambiguous events as paranormal and then that his original psychic-believer participants
psychic. Someone sporting an Ed Hardy shirt is might be more eager to please than other groups
become primed to look out for even more weird
subtly announcing that they still live with their of people. In other words, they might not be
stuff.
parents. hallucinating a person in the moving dots on a
Basic personality traits could make
Psychics train themselves to spot these perceptual level. Instead, they could be
people particularly likely to attribute a bump in
clues and use them in their reading of a subject. interpreting information overly generously in
the night to a ghost or ghoul. A survey released
You can learn a lot about a person simply by order to meet what they think are the
recently by Chapman University in California
paying closer attention to clothing, behavior, experimenter's expectations. It's not that they're
found that the more generally fearful a person,
speech patterns, etc. Psychics just know how to lying, Van Elk said; rather, their interpretation
the more likely he or she is to believe in the
do it better than most. Practice it yourself. Pay paranormal. Another study, published online in feels as real to them as an actual perception. It's
attention to the clothing of the people around just that the mistake arises at a different level of
the journal Consciousness and Cognition in
you, and the way they carry themselves. You'll brain processing.
August 2013, found that paranormal believers
start to notice what this says about them,
are more likely to believe in the illusion of
because it's often really obvious. (Continued 0n Page 33)
agency, or that there was a deliberate entity
behind an event.
7. Just learning everything they need