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Sixth sense - myth or real?
contents
- The five senses
- The sixth Sense
- Esoteric vs. Psychology
- intuition
- What does science say??
- precognition
- What do skeptics say??
- Manipulation and experience
- The forer effect
- What do controlled tests say?
- Self-fulfilling prophecies
- Cold Reading
- People are manipulatable
- The intuition
- The automatic thinking
- Fast thinking, slow thinking
- The conscious system
- The unconscious system
- When intuition is deceiving
- Clairvoyance in the literature
- Psychic Detectives
A Micha offers on the Internet: "Clairvoyant, accurate, well-known medium" telepathy "energy transfer on request during the conversation" otherworldly contacts "and calls for a phone call 98 cents a minute. What is to be kept from such clairvoyance??
Does the sixth sense exist? Image: psdesign1 - fotolia The five senses
Seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching characterize the five senses of man. The sixth sense is a real or supposed ability to perceive things beyond that are neither tangible nor comprehensible with these five senses, but seemingly, allegedly or really to turn out to be true.
However, there are more to the five senses: the sense of temperature, the sense of balance, the sensation of pain, and the sense of depth.
The sixth Sense
The "sixth sense" includes premonitions and a sense of moods that turn out to be real or supposedly true. For example, some mothers feel that their child is bad, even though they are physically far from the child.
Or people know when the phone rings, who calls them. They drive out of "gut feeling" with the tram instead of the car and later learn that an accident occurred.
Or in a dream, something bad happens to a person, and weeks later, the doctors find that this person suffers from cancer.
Esoteric vs. Psychology
Esoteric and religious see the sixth sense and the second face as extrasensory blessings or a special connection to supernatural powers. Many scientists reject the idea of a "sixth sense": According to them, it is mainly about fallacies that give special meaning to coincidences.
So if someone does not drive a car on a particular day and an accident happens then, he interprets this coincidence as a consequence of his actions. He could have done just as well with the train without any connection.
Consequently, these are cognitive short circuits that place events in a causal relationship that does not exist. Similarly, it would be the same with people who think they know who calls them when the phone rings.
On the one hand, it could be an experience, because it is time for this person to get in touch, and for another, those affected forget the many moments when they thought of that person without them registering.
intuition
Another explanation that many psychologists prefer is intuition, that is, unconscious perception and action, also called quick thinking. This is closely related to the experiences and associations that the brain forms and processes in the dream.
Intuition equals 6th sense? Image: pathdoc - fotolia A dream of a human being being sick would not be a future clairvoyance, but the brain would work on the unconscious with information that the person in question is not aware of. That is, if this other person appears to him in a dream, The dreaming unconsciously perceived signals that indicate that he is ill.
The same applies to parents. When their children are close to them, they consciously or unconsciously deal with them. If the child does not report for a long time, although it usually does, the maternal brain sounds the alarm: Something is going wrong.
Disregarded are the countless situations in which mothers worry about their children without anything happening to the children, or even over-warding mothers, who always worry and are confirmed when the child finally gets hurt.
Or they scare the child so much that it causes the dangerous situation itself.
What does science say??
The second face and the sixth sense have occupied religion for millennia, as has modern science-
Eberhard Bauer from the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health wrote: "Forebodings, visions, dreams and the second face are human experiences that have always been part of cultural history.
While there is no doubt that such extraordinary testimonials exist, the question is how to interpret them. Studies in parapsychology indicate that in fact anomalous interactions between humans and their environment occur that - so far! - withdraw a satisfactory conventional explanation. "
He concluded: "Either we learn from it that we are subtly deceived, or we find a new explanatory model for such anomalies. Science and society can only profit from it. "
Bernd Harder from the Society for the Scientific Investigation of Parasitic Sciences, on the other hand, sees the sixth sense as nothing other than the ability to draw conclusions from unconscious observations: "One car drive tells a man to his wife:" We could go dancing again. "His wife is surprised - she had just thought the same thing. A supernatural phenomenon?
No. Shortly before they had seen a poster promoting a type of cheese from a resort. There the couple had been dancing more often during the holidays.
The sixth sense is little more than the ability to make the right conclusions from limited information. Hunts are based on observations that we unconsciously perceive.
Anyone who believes that they are gifted paranormal can be tested by the US skeptic James Randi. For a verifiable real phenomenon, he pays one million dollars in prize money. "
The example of dancing can be transferred to countless situations. Suppose a young student is in a life crisis. He studies in Hamburg and comes from Buxtehude. One night he wanders lonely through St. George, then he climbs, only half aware, on the train because it draws him to his old home.
It is seven o'clock in the morning and on the track in Buxtehude he meets his father, who drives to work. Otherwise he always drove by car.
The father realizes that something is wrong with the son, the mother calls, and she picks him up from the train station.
Short circuit is the sixth sense because the student did not know his father was at the station.
However, the young man longed for nest warmth, but did not dare to say that directly to the parents.
Without anchoring it in the consciousness, he had heard that his father is currently traveling by train to work. It is an intuitive action.
precognition
Prägoknition refers to the ability to grasp future events that can not be rationally revealed. There were various experiments with random generators. Another name for it is clairvoyance.
For one, we are constantly predicting the future, and as people are planning their future, so must we. We include our knowledge, our experience, our observations and the opinions of other people.
We do that consciously, but mostly unconsciously and automatically, the brain works sparingly and conscious thought processes need time and energy.
What do skeptics say??
Skeptics hold the belief in supernatural clairvoyance for psychologically conditioned:
1) Paranormal predictions are seemingly accurate, but only until they are scrutinized and analyzed.
2) We all have dark visions of the future, and they appear in our dreams
3) A seemingly low probability that the predictions will arrive by mere chance
4) Exaggerated coverage of alleged psychics in the tabloid media, which are far from scientific minimum standards - for example, when in talk shows "psychics with supernatural abilities" on equal footing with reputed psychologists discuss
5) a lack of knowledge about intuition as the sum of acquired knowledge and applied experience. What appears to be clairvoyance, therefore, would be only human knowledge
6) selective perception and selective memory
7) unconscious sealing of memories, dreams and visions after the event
8) lack of understanding of the Law of the Great Number
9) believe what we want to believe
Manipulation and experience
Bad cases of manipulation by the mass media are deliberate lies: Tamara Rand, psychic, worked with talk show host Gary Greco in Las Vegas. Both published a video in which Rand allegedly predicted the attempted murder of Ronald Reagan on January 6, 1981. In fact, the team fraudulently turned the band but on March 31, 1981, so after the assassination.
Predictions of psychics arrive as well as predictions of non-psychics arrive. In everyday life, we often make real predictions about the future: If someone predicts that their partner wants him to suck the apartment, he does not need psychic abilities. Rather, these are acquired experiences that allow me to predict thoughts.
People who have knowledge in one area that lacks the other can easily go through as clairvoyants: If someone has no idea about flooding and builds their house right on the riverbank, and a local predicts that the basement will be flooded, this may seem unmanageable as a supernatural gift - this is a head start in experience and knowledge.
The forer effect
As a Forer effect, we refer to the rule that a prediction is more likely to occur, the more vague it is, and then it seems to be even more accurate.
We forgot on the one hand the "aesthetic" dreams that did not arrive (!), On the other certain forebodings, which we did not tell, so as not to be considered a coward. For example, if we did not take a plane trip because we believed, feared or "suspected" that the plane crashed without it being.
A classic forer effect is the belief in weekly or daily horoscopes. First of all, we read it at breakfast in the morning and unconsciously adapt to the predictions. The formulations are so spongy that they can always apply.
For example, in the case of the sign of the zodiac fish: In the first half of the day you have to make a decision, in the second part of the day you are successful in your projects, if nothing comes up.
Fraud or sixth sense? Clairvoyance. Image: Monika Wisniewska - fotolia Every person makes a lot of decisions every day. So, if I decide to wear the black coat instead of the blue jacket, the chart says the truth.
In the second half of the day, when I intend to write my tax return, my husband persuades me to eat ice cream, and I can not finish. Something comes in between. If I finish the tax return, it is also correct.
Anecdotes, "experiences" and testimonies are not scientific evidence, often rather the opposite. Judges, prosecutors and empirical scientists are aware of the inadequacy of testimonies - not because those affected are lying, but because our brains are making stories that work, not those that correspond to objective truth.
What do controlled tests say?
Controlled tests with clairvoyant abilities that exclude chance or natural causes have always failed. Esoterics explain this with the fact that the test situation disturbs the "vibrations" or "energies". Scientists, on the other hand, say that psychics fail to test their abilities because they do not have those skills.
James Randi, who studied clairvoyance scientifically, came to the following conclusion
1) The subjects had never tested their abilities under controlled conditions
2) Some brought grotesque and ridiculous reasons for their failure
3) Others were genuinely surprised by their failure
Self-fulfilling prophecies
Particularly critical are people who believe to be clairvoyant and interweave "foreboding", speculation and their own fears.
Martina (name changed), for example, is terrified of being raped. Her psychotherapist attributes this to the violence she was subjected to as a child by her father.
The young woman was diagnosed with a doctor suffering from borderline syndrome. These include psychosis states in which they can not separate external and internal events.
Martina says about herself: "I have a very keen intuition." So she jogged through a park and saw two men in a dark corner. Immediately she would have felt a "warning" in her stomach and ran in the other direction. One thing she "knew" exactly: "The two wanted to rape me."
Nothing happened here, which could have proved a "premonition". With a clairvoyance into the future, this "gut feeling" has nothing to do, but very much with the angels of the "psychic".
These self-fulfilling prophecies also hit patients who caught clairvoyants who warned them that bad things would happen. For example, those affected behave on the day when the "prophet" foretells misfortune, especially insecure, causing an accident.
Cold Reading
Inge Hüsken and Wolgang Hund explain to the Society for the Scientific Examination of Parasitic Sciences "In controlled tests, fortune tellers are not more successful than chance would suggest. The fact that many clients still report stunning results is attributed by psychologists above all to the technique of "cold reading", with which fortune tellers give the interlocutor the misleading impression that they are fully informed about his personality and his life situation. "
What is Cold Reading? The skeptics say, "At its core, cold reading is to draw conclusions about the person's appearance and behavior (such as clothing, posture, speech, seemingly harmless remarks). This can happen unconsciously or be deliberately used to pretend access to supernatural sources of information. "
Then there is the Barnum effect: "The psychics use generally held statements that the client refers to his individual situation and assessed as appropriate."
People are manipulatable
Florian Freistetter wrote on the science blogs in 2012: "If a" clairvoyant "tells you that" no one else can know, "then you've either gone after a real fraudster who has previously learned about you. Or you gave him the information in the conversation itself and he just repeated it later. "
Nobody is safe from such charlatans. Freistetter writes: "We would like to believe that we do not fall for such tricks - but we are all not so smart and attentive, we imagine this secretly. We forget fast, we think selectively and let ourselves be impressed too easily. An experienced clairvoyant, astrologer or geographer can take advantage of this and later present us with information that he has just recently received from us as "mysterious" knowledge. "
In fact, some people have special abilities that they call psychic clairvoyance. These talents include a trained gift of observing other people. The "psychics" conclude from the facial expressions, gestures and body language of a human being on his fears, desires and interests. For a specific question, the "magicians" can then direct their victim in a certain direction.
The intuition
Rational and irrational thinking, unconscious and conscious action, reason and feeling - intuitive and deductive understanding; Psychology today brings a little clarity to the way people process information.
Esotericists use the term intuition inflationary and associate it directly with fortune-tellers, psychics, extrasensory forces, supposed afterlife encounters, and higher consciousness.
Even the artists of the romantic world glorified intuition, the subjective, without, however, using the term.
Gerd Gigerenzer of the Max Planck Institute for Educational Research writes: "An intuition is neither a whim nor a sixth sense, neither clairvoyance nor God's voice. It is a form of unconscious intelligence. "
Research has only been devoted to intuition as a source of human thought for several decades.
The automatic thinking
Intuition is the feeling of being in a certain direction, without consciously knowing why we are doing it. The feelings are so strong that we often act directly out of them.
The simplest explanation for this is that the brain quickly fades out most information and separates important information from unimportant information to make quick decisions.
Most researchers agree that intuition works the better the more experience we have in a particular area. The brain then selects essential information faster and "more correctly" than when we enter uncharted territory.
Gigerenzer believes that the traditional division between logic and illogic, reason and feeling, intelligence and stupidity is completely wrong. Intelligence is by no means always conscious and deliberate, according to the psychologist.
Intuition is gut feeling, and we would rely on this feeling even more than head decisions. Intuitive decisions, according to him, were based on a small amount of information and would ignore everyone else.
Fast thinking, slow thinking
Daniel Kahnemann explored the pitfalls of intuition. He distinguishes fast thinking, ie the unconscious from the slow thinking, the conscious. Thus, there are two different modes in which the brain works, with intuitive thinking coming to the fore much more often.
For example, quick thinking is when someone appeals to us and we immediately hear hostility or friendship.
The conscious system
The conscious system, on the other hand, analyzes and calculates, carefully considering different options, for example when shopping: which product has which advantages, which disadvantages.
However, this requires concentration, and conscious thinking only does one task at the same time, calculating it takes time and mental energy, because memory can only process a certain amount of information at the same time.
The unconscious system
The unconscious system, on the other hand, is fast and has had tremendous benefits in our evolutionary development: "It increased the chances of survival when you quickly recognized the most serious threats or the most promising opportunities and immediately responded to them."
The unconscious system. Image: freshidea - fotolia When rustling in the bushes, the shadow on a branch, it was almost forbidden to analyze step by step, whether it was a big cat, a breeze or a harmless bird. If it had been a big cat, the slow thinking would have cost our ancestors their heads.
When intuition is deceiving
The unconscious situation usually works well in everyday situations: without thinking long and logically, we automatically change the road when we get the information out of the corner of our eye that no car is in sight.
Without thinking, we scratch our shoulders when itches. We smell the smell of coffee and automatically close: This is a cafeteria.
The trap, according to Kahnemann, is that intuition uses information that is easily accessible to memory. As a result, intuition repeatedly falls into the trap of distortions, as Kahnemann demonstrated in years of experiments.
An example is the task:
A racket and a ball together cost 1.10 euros. The racket costs one euro more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
The first answer of the intuition would be 10 cents. That is wrong. If the racket costs one euro more than the ball, then both cost 1.20 euros. The correct answer, which gives logical reasoning, is 5 cents.
Clairvoyance in the literature
Stephen King uses clairvoyance as a means in his horror novels.
Johnny Smith can see into the future in "The Assassination" after an accident bothered part of his brain. Then he wants to change the future by changing the present.
In "Affection," the bruja witch reads Mama Delorme's thoughts and says she has the second face. She knows right away that Martha Rosewall is pregnant, which the young woman herself does not know.
Psychic Detectives
Esoterics believe, and the gossip press reports on "psychic detectives," psychics who help the police investigate. In marriages of esotericism, the afterlife encounters, and the jars of glass, for example, in the 1880s and 1920s, such allegedly psychic media actually sought out the police as "supernatural helpers." Even the term "criminal telepathy" circulates on the Internet as if it were a science.
The specialist magazine "The Kriminalpolizei" commented on this: "Particularly important to the author in this context is the finding that - according to the police stations surveyed - the clairvoyants in no case gave a useful indication or even helped remotely." (Dr. Utz Anhalt)
Specialist supervision: Barbara Schindewolf-Lensch (doctor)