INTRODUCTION
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As I gazed deep into the eyes of Jaytee,
several thoughts passed through my mind. Was this cute little terrier
really psychic? If not, how had he managed to make headlines around the
world? And if he could predict the future, did he already know if our
experiment would be a success? At that precise moment, Jaytee gave a small
cough, leaned forward and vomited on my shoes.
My quality time with Jaytee took place about a decade ago. I was in my
early thirties and conducting an experiment to discover whether this supposedly
psychic terrier really could predict when his owners would return home.
By then I had already spent over ten years investigating a variety of
alleged paranormal phenomena, spending sleepless nights in supposedly
haunted houses, testing mediums and psychics, and carrying out laboratory
experiments into telepathy.
This fascination with the impossible started when I was eight years old
and I saw my first magic trick. My grandfather had me mark my initials
on a coin, made the coin disappear, and then revealed that it had been
magically transported into a sealed box. A few weeks later he explained
the secret to the supposed miracle and I was hooked. For the next few
years I found out everything I could about the dark arts of magic and
deception. I searched second-hand bookshops for obscure works on sleight
of hand, joined a local magic club, and performed for friends and family.
By my teens I had a couple of hundred shows under my belt and had become
one of the youngest members of the prestigious Magic Circle.
In order to successfully deceive an audience, magicians have to understand
how you think and behave. More specifically, they need to know how to
make you misperceive what is happening inches from your nose, prevent
you from thinking about certain solutions to tricks, and persuade you
to misremember what has happened right in front of your eyes. After fooling
people on a twice-nightly basis for several years I became fascinated
with these aspects of human behaviour, and eventually decided to enrol
for a psychology degree at University College London.
Like most magicians, I was deeply sceptical about the existence of paranormal
phenomena, and had confined them to a mental file-drawer labelled ‘not
true, but fun to talk about at parties’. Then, when I was just coming
to the end of the first year of my psychology degree, a chance event changed
everything. One day I happened to turn on the television in my student
digs and caught the end of a programme about science and the supernatural.
A
young psychologist named Sue Blackmore popped up on the screen and explained
that she was also fascinated by things that allegedly go bump in the night.
Then she said something that had a huge impact on my career. Instead of
examining whether such phenomena were genuine, she explained that she
thought it more worthwhile to investigate why people experienced these
strange sensations. Why did mothers think that they were in telepathic
communication with their children? Why did people believe that they had
seen a ghost? Why were some people so certain that their destiny was written
in the stars? Suddenly, the penny dropped. Before then I hadn’t seriously
considered carrying out any research into paranormal phenomena. After
all, why would I waste my time looking at the possible reality of things
that probably didn’t exist? However, Sue’s comments made me realize that
such work could be worthwhile if I were to move away from the existence
of the phenomena themselves and instead focus on the deep and fascinating
psychology that lay behind people’s beliefs and experiences.
As I delved deeper I discovered that Sue was not the only researcher to
have adopted this approach to the paranormal. In fact, throughout history
a handful of researchers have dedicated their lives to discovering what
supposedly paranormal phenomena tell us about our behaviour, beliefs and
brain. Daring to take a walk on the weird side, these pioneering mavericks
have carried out some of the strangest research ever conducted, including
removing the head of the world’s top thought-reader, infiltrating several
cults, attempting to weigh the souls of the dying, and testing a talking
mongoose. Just as the mysterious Wizard of Oz turned out to be a man behind
a curtain pushing buttons and pulling levers, so their work has yielded
surprising and important insights into the psychology of everyday life
and the human psyche.
My investigation into the allegedly psychic terrier Jaytee is a good example
of the approach.
Before
becoming the highly successful self-help guru that he is today, Paul McKenna
hosted a television series about the paranormal. I was invited to be one
of the resident scientists on the show, offering my opinion on a whole
range of remarkable performances, experiments and events. It was a mixed
bag.
One week a man appeared to generate sparks from his fingertips, while
another time Paul invited millions of viewers to psychically influence
the national lottery by concentrating on seven specific numbers during
the draw (three of the numbers came up).
One episode involved an especially interesting film about a terrier called
Jaytee. According to the film, Jaytee had the uncanny ability to predict
when his owner, Pam, was returning home. Pam lived with her parents and
they had noticed Jaytee seemed to reliably signal their daughter’s homecoming
by sitting in the window. A national newspaper had published an article
on Jaytee’s amazing ability and an Austrian television company had conducted
an initial experiment with him. The test was shown on Paul McKenna’s programme
and involved one film crew following Pam as she walked around her local
town centre while a second crew continuously filmed Jaytee in her parents’
house. When Pam decided to return home Jaytee went to the window and remained
there until his owner arrived. Pam, Jaytee and I were all on the show
and chatted about the film. I said that I thought it was very curious,
and Pam kindly invited me to conduct a more formal examination of her
apparently psychic dog.
A few months later my research assistant, Matthew Smith, and I found ourselves
driving to Ramsbottom in Northeast England to test Jaytee. We all met
and everything seemed to be going well. Pam was very friendly, Matthew
and I liked Jaytee, and Jaytee seemed to like us.
During the first test Matthew and Pam drove to a public house about 8
miles away and, once there, used a random number generator to select a
time to head back – 9 p.m. Meanwhile, I continuously filmed Jaytee’s favourite
window so that we would have a complete record of his behaviour there.
When Pam and Mat returned from the bar we rewound the film and eagerly
observed Jaytee’s behaviour. Interestingly, the terrier was at the window
at the allotted time. So far, so good. However, when we looked at the
remainder of the film, Jaytee’s apparent skills started to unravel. It
turned out that he was something of a fan of the window, visiting it 13
times during the experiment. During a second trial the following day,
Jaytee visited the window 12 times. It seemed his time in the window was
not the clear-cut signal that the clip from Austrian television suggested.
Pam explained that the summer was perhaps the wrong time for the experiment
because of the many distractions, including the local bitch being on heat
and the coming of the fishmonger.
In December we returned to Ramsbottom and conducted another two trials.
In the first session Jaytee made four separate trips to the window and
one of them was about ten minutes before Matthew and Pam set off home.
Close, but no cigar. On the final trial Jaytee made eight trips to the
window. One of them was just as Matthew and Pam started their return trip,
but he only spent a few seconds there before running into the garden and
vomiting on my shoes.
All in all, not exactly overwhelming evidence for animal magic. However,
the interesting question is not whether animals really have psychic gifts,
but rather, why might people come to believe that they have a psychic
bond with their pet? The answer tells us a great deal about one of the
most fundamental ways in which we think about the world.
In
1967, psychologist husband and wife team, Loren and Jean Chapman, from
the University of Wisconsin, conducted a now classic experiment. The study
involved a form of psychiatric assessment that was popular in the 1960s
called the ‘Draw A Person Test’. According to clinicians at the time,
it was possible to detect all sorts of possible problems, such as paranoia,
repressed sexuality and depression from an individual’s drawing of a typical
person. The Chapmans, however, were not so sure that the test stood up
to scrutiny. After all, many of the alleged relationships, such as paranoid
people making drawings with large eyes, seemed to fit surprisingly well
with the stereotypes that the public carry around in their heads, and
so the Chapmans wondered whether the alleged patterns were actually in
the minds of the clinicians. To test their idea, a group of students were
presented with drawings of people made by psychiatric patients, along
with a brief description of their symptoms, such as ‘He is suspicious’,
‘He is worried about not being manly enough’, ‘He is worried about sexual
impotence’. After looking through the pairings of pictures and words,
the volunteers were asked whether they had noticed any patterns in the
data. Interestingly, the volunteers reported the same types of patterns
that professionals had been using for years. They thought, for example,
that paranoid people draw atypical eyes, those with issues surrounding
their manliness produced broad-shouldered figures and that small sexual
organs were indicative of impotence-related matters.
There was just one small problem. The Chapmans had randomly paired up
the drawing and symptoms, so there were no real patterns in the data.
The volunteers had seen the invisible. The Chapmans’ work completely discredited
the ‘Draw A Person Test’ and, more importantly, revealed an important
insight into the human psyche. Our beliefs do not sit passively in our
brains waiting to be confirmed or contradicted by incoming information.
Instead, they play a key role in shaping how we see the world. This is
especially true when faced with coincidences. We are remarkably good at
paying attention to events that coincide, especially when they support
our beliefs. In the Chapmans’ experiment, volunteers already believed
that paranoid people would produce drawings with large eyes, and so noticed
instances when a paranoid person’s drawing actually had large eyes and
played down the images from paranoid individuals that had perfectly normal
eyes.
The same principle applies to matters of the paranormal. We all like to
think that we have untapped psychic potential and get excited when we
think of a friend, the telephone rings, and they're on the other end of
the line. In doing so, we are forgetting all the occasions when we thought
about that friend, the telephone rang, and it was a double-glazing salesman.
Or all the times you weren’t thinking about the friend and they unexpectedly
telephoned. Similarly, if we have a dream that reflects the following
day’s events, we are quick to claim the gift of prophesy, but in doing
so we are ignoring all of the times when our dreams didn’t come true.
It is the same with animal magic. If we believe that owners have a psychic
bond with their pets, we pay attention to when an animal seems to predict
their owner’s homecoming, and forget when the animal made a prediction
but was wrong, or failed to foresee a return.
Perhaps more importantly, the same mechanism also leads us astray with
health. In the mid-1990s researchers Donald Redelmeier and Amos Tversky
decided to investigate the possible link between arthritic pain and the
weather. For thousands of years people have convinced themselves that
their arthritis flares up with certain changes in temperature, barometric
pressure, and humidity. To find out if this was really the case, Redelmeier
and Tversky had a group of rheumatoid arthritis sufferers rate their pain
levels twice a month for over a year. The research team then obtained
detailed information about the local temperature, barometric pressure
and humidity over the same time period. All of the patients were convinced
that there was a relationship between the weather and their pain. However,
the data showed that their condition was completely unrelated to the weather
patterns. Once again, they had focused on the times when high levels of
pain were associated with especially odd weather patterns, forgotten about
the times when this was not the case, and erroneously concluded that the
two were related.
Similarly, we might hear about someone who was miraculously healed after
praying, forget about those who were healed without prayer or prayed but
were not healed, and incorrectly conclude that prayer works. Or we might
read about someone who was cured of cancer after eating lots of oranges,
forget those who were cured without oranges or consumed oranges but weren’t
cured, and end up believing that oranges help cure cancer.
The effect can even play a role in promoting racism, with people seeing
images of those from ethnic minorities engaged in acts of violence, forgetting
about the individuals from minorities who are law-abiding citizens and
the violent people from non-minority backgrounds, and concluding that
those from minorities are especially likely to commit crime.
My research into Jaytee started off with an investigation into a supposedly
psychic dog and ended up revealing a great deal about one of the most
fundamental ways in which we misperceive the world. This illustrates why
I find supernatural science so fascinating. Each journey takes you on
a voyage into the unknown where you have no idea who you are going to
meet or what you are going to find.
We are about to embark on an expedition deep into this hitherto hidden
world of supernatural science. In a series of fantastical tales, we will
meet a colourful cast of characters, go backstage with expert illusionists,
observe charismatic cult leaders in action, and attend mindboggling séances.
Each adventure will reveal unique and surprising insights into the hidden
psychology behind your everyday life, including, for example, how you
have evolved to be afraid of things that go bump in the night, how your
unconscious is far more powerful than previously imagined, and how your
mind can be controlled by others. The journey is going to be far more
than a passive sightseeing trip. Along the way you will be urged to roll
up your sleeves and take part in several experiments. Each of these tests
offers an opportunity to explore the more mysterious side of your psyche,
encouraging you, for example, to measure your powers of intuition, assess
how suggestible you are, and discover if you are a natural-born liar.
It is almost time to depart. Prepare to enter a world where anything appears
possible and yet nothing is ever quite what it seems. A world where the
truth really is stranger than fiction. A world that I have had the pleasure
of calling home for the past twenty years.
Hurry now, there’s a storm brewing, and we are about to begin our journey
into a world far more wonderful than Oz . . .
Notes
My experiment with Jaytee is described in:
Wiseman, R., Smith, M., Milton, J. (1998). Can animals detect when their
owners are returning home? An experimental test of the 'psychic pet' phenomenon.
British Journal of Psychology, 89, 453-462.
Rupert Sheldrake has also conducted research with Jaytee and believes
that the results provide evidence for psychic ability. This work is described
in his book ‘Dogs That Know When Their Owners are Coming Home’. My response
to these studies is available at www.richardwiseman.com/jaytee
For further information about illusory correlations, see:
L.J Chapman and J.P Chapman (1967). ‘Genesis of popular but erroneous
psychodiagnostic observations’. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 72, pages
193–204.
D.A Redelmeier and A. Tversky (1996). ‘On the belief that arthritis pain
is related to the weather’. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, 93, pages 2895-6.