Presentiment: "Feeling the Future"
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Trust your hunches - science has shown that we can actually feel the near future. Through dozens of peer-reviewed studies, researchers have shown that people respond to emotionally-laden events up to 10 seconds before the events occur. The effect, dubbed “presentiment,” challenges our intuitive assumptions about the nature of time and its relationship to human consciousness, and it even causes us to question our understanding of cause and effect.
The Research on Presentiment
People have long tried to test instances of precognition - the ability to know about things in the future - by reflecting on dreams and divinations, but the first tests for evidence of presentiment - the ability to feel things in the future, on a sensory or emotional level - were not conducted until the 1970s.
Among the first to look at physiological measures as a test for precognition or presentiment were Jerry Levin and James Kennedy, staff members at the J. B. Rhine Institute. Levin and Kennedy attempted to measure people’s minute bodily reactions before and after they reacted to a light flashing either green or red. When the light turned green, the participants were asked to press a button. When it turned red, they were asked to do nothing.
Levin and Kennedy found that just before the green light was shown, participants’ brainwaves behaved differently than they did before the red light. The results were published in 1975, but two replication studies by John Hartwell at Utrecht University failed to produce significant positive results. At the same time however, Zoltan Vassy reported an experiment that involved measuring the skin conductance of two independent participants shocked three seconds apart, and found that the “receiver” anticipated his or her own shock at the same time that the “sender” received hers, even though they were both physically isolated.
Nearly two decades later, the scientific attempt to measure presentiment was resumed by psychologist Dean Radin, now of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. Radin again used skin conductance as his measure, but chose to show photographs to participants, rather than lights. He selected a range of unemotional images - photos of lamps and apples, for example - and a range of highly emotional ones, good and bad, including erotic photos and photos of gruesome accidents. Images were randomly selected immediately before they were shown to the observer, so that no one involved in the experiment - not even the researcher - could have known ahead of time what the participant would see.
Still, Radin found that participants responded to the emotional images - and only the emotional images - up to 10 seconds before the images appeared. His results were highly statistically significant.
Later the same year, psychologist Dick Bierman at the University of Amsterdam successfully replicated Radin’s results with equally high statistical significance. A flurry of replication studies followed using similar measures - skin conductance, heart rate, pupil dilation, and blood flow, for example - to test how and when people reacted to future stimuli.
Explaining the Presentiment Effect
A meta-analysis of these and earlier studies by Psychologist Patrizio Tressoldi of Padova University demonstrated that the abundance of positive results were almost certainly not due to chance alone, and not due to selective reporting. In another meta-analysis in 2012, Tressoldi, with Julia Mossbridge and Jessica Utts showed that 26 of the 49 studies showed a significant presentiment effect. The authors further determined that higher-quality, more rigorous studies were associated with greater effect sizes. They also found that some studies at least, ruled out the gambler’s fallacy, in which participants’ expectations about what the next image “ought to be” based on what they’ve seen already determines their physiological reactions.
Now demonstrated in more than 50 scientific studies, the presentiment effect is virtually proved, but the results are still highly controversial.
Some deny that there is any real data there at all, pointing to two replications of Daryl Bem’s 2011 study on retroactive influence from future events that failed to produce positive results. Eric-Jan Wagemakers of the University of Amsterdam has criticized the statistical methods of the presentiment advocates and proposed controversial new data analysis methods that make their effect disappear.
Others acknowledge positive results, but argue that they could all be explained by natural, non-psi causes. Samuel Schwarzkopf of University College, London, criticized the quality of some of the presentiment data - specifically, one of Bierman’s fMRI studies - and pointed to several possible design flaws in the greater body of research. He pointed out that imbalances in the number of control and target stimuli in many presentiment studies created a pattern that participants could have learned and anticipated.
Schwarzkopf also suggested that certain methods of analyses introduced artifacts in the data, and pointed to the lack of common design protocols as undermining the reliability of the meta-analyses. He predicted that if expectation biases were controlled for directly, the presentiment effect would disappear. Mossbridge, Radin, Tressoldi and others published a rebuttal in 2015 that addressed all of Schwarzkopf’s critiques, and none of his hypotheses have been experimentally demonstrated.
Significance
The debate over the data is significant, as the implications of the presentiment effect are potentially enormous. By some interpretations, the data force us to reconsider our understanding of the relationship between time and human consciousness.
If we are truly “reaching forward” in time, then whatever mechanism is responsible could also explain anecdotal cases of people being forewarned of traumatic events by “gut” feelings and physiological symptoms. This raises the question: In making choices in life, are we limited to the information available at the present moment, or can we also “feel ahead” for future emotional outcomes? If the latter is the case, then it would seem to constitute a reversal of cause and effect, allowing human agents to introduce causes according to their future effects.
A lot more research is needed to determine the true cause of the presentiment effect. But the data we have now suggests that resolving this scientific anomaly may entail a radical revision of some of our most fundamental metaphysical assumptions.
Sources:
Cerdena, Etzel, John Palmer and Avid Marcusson-Clavertz. "Parapsychology: A Handbook for the 21st Century." Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2015.
Bierman, Dick and Dean Radin. “Anomalous anticipatory response on randomized future conditions.” Perceptual and Motor Skills 84.
Kennedy, James and Jerry Levin. “The Relationship of Slow Cortical Potentials to Psi Information Man, Journal of Parapsychology," 39, 1975.
Mossbridge, Julia, Patrizio Trespoli and Jessica Utts. “Predictive physiological anticipation preceding seemingly unpredictable stimuli: a meta-analysis.” Frontiers in Psychology 3:390, 2012: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00390
Radin, Dean. “Unconscious Perception of Future Emotions: An Experiment in Presentiment.” Journal of Scientific Exploration 11, no. 2, 1997.
Tressoldi, Patrizio. "Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence: The Case of Non Local Perception, a Classical and Bayesian Review of Evidences.” Frontiers in Psychology 2 (no. 117) (2011).
Vassy, Zoltan. “Method for Measuring the Probability of 1 bit extra-sensory information transfer between living organisms." Journal of Parapsychology 42, no. 2, 1978.
Support new videos on Patreon: https://patreon.com/user?u=3375417
Think Anomalous is created by Jason Charbonneau. Illustration by Colin Campbell. Music by Josh Chamberland. Animation by Brendan Barr. Sound design by Will Mountain.
Trust your hunches - science has shown that we can actually feel the near future. Through dozens of peer-reviewed studies, researchers have shown that people respond to emotionally-laden events up to 10 seconds before the events occur. The effect, dubbed “presentiment,” challenges our intuitive assumptions about the nature of time and its relationship to human consciousness, and it even causes us to question our understanding of cause and effect.
The Research on Presentiment
People have long tried to test instances of precognition - the ability to know about things in the future - by reflecting on dreams and divinations, but the first tests for evidence of presentiment - the ability to feel things in the future, on a sensory or emotional level - were not conducted until the 1970s.
Among the first to look at physiological measures as a test for precognition or presentiment were Jerry Levin and James Kennedy, staff members at the J. B. Rhine Institute. Levin and Kennedy attempted to measure people’s minute bodily reactions before and after they reacted to a light flashing either green or red. When the light turned green, the participants were asked to press a button. When it turned red, they were asked to do nothing.
Levin and Kennedy found that just before the green light was shown, participants’ brainwaves behaved differently than they did before the red light. The results were published in 1975, but two replication studies by John Hartwell at Utrecht University failed to produce significant positive results. At the same time however, Zoltan Vassy reported an experiment that involved measuring the skin conductance of two independent participants shocked three seconds apart, and found that the “receiver” anticipated his or her own shock at the same time that the “sender” received hers, even though they were both physically isolated.
Nearly two decades later, the scientific attempt to measure presentiment was resumed by psychologist Dean Radin, now of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. Radin again used skin conductance as his measure, but chose to show photographs to participants, rather than lights. He selected a range of unemotional images - photos of lamps and apples, for example - and a range of highly emotional ones, good and bad, including erotic photos and photos of gruesome accidents. Images were randomly selected immediately before they were shown to the observer, so that no one involved in the experiment - not even the researcher - could have known ahead of time what the participant would see.
Still, Radin found that participants responded to the emotional images - and only the emotional images - up to 10 seconds before the images appeared. His results were highly statistically significant.
Later the same year, psychologist Dick Bierman at the University of Amsterdam successfully replicated Radin’s results with equally high statistical significance. A flurry of replication studies followed using similar measures - skin conductance, heart rate, pupil dilation, and blood flow, for example - to test how and when people reacted to future stimuli.
Explaining the Presentiment Effect
A meta-analysis of these and earlier studies by Psychologist Patrizio Tressoldi of Padova University demonstrated that the abundance of positive results were almost certainly not due to chance alone, and not due to selective reporting. In another meta-analysis in 2012, Tressoldi, with Julia Mossbridge and Jessica Utts showed that 26 of the 49 studies showed a significant presentiment effect. The authors further determined that higher-quality, more rigorous studies were associated with greater effect sizes. They also found that some studies at least, ruled out the gambler’s fallacy, in which participants’ expectations about what the next image “ought to be” based on what they’ve seen already determines their physiological reactions.
Now demonstrated in more than 50 scientific studies, the presentiment effect is virtually proved, but the results are still highly controversial.
Some deny that there is any real data there at all, pointing to two replications of Daryl Bem’s 2011 study on retroactive influence from future events that failed to produce positive results. Eric-Jan Wagemakers of the University of Amsterdam has criticized the statistical methods of the presentiment advocates and proposed controversial new data analysis methods that make their effect disappear.
Others acknowledge positive results, but argue that they could all be explained by natural, non-psi causes. Samuel Schwarzkopf of University College, London, criticized the quality of some of the presentiment data - specifically, one of Bierman’s fMRI studies - and pointed to several possible design flaws in the greater body of research. He pointed out that imbalances in the number of control and target stimuli in many presentiment studies created a pattern that participants could have learned and anticipated.
Schwarzkopf also suggested that certain methods of analyses introduced artifacts in the data, and pointed to the lack of common design protocols as undermining the reliability of the meta-analyses. He predicted that if expectation biases were controlled for directly, the presentiment effect would disappear. Mossbridge, Radin, Tressoldi and others published a rebuttal in 2015 that addressed all of Schwarzkopf’s critiques, and none of his hypotheses have been experimentally demonstrated.
Significance
The debate over the data is significant, as the implications of the presentiment effect are potentially enormous. By some interpretations, the data force us to reconsider our understanding of the relationship between time and human consciousness.
If we are truly “reaching forward” in time, then whatever mechanism is responsible could also explain anecdotal cases of people being forewarned of traumatic events by “gut” feelings and physiological symptoms. This raises the question: In making choices in life, are we limited to the information available at the present moment, or can we also “feel ahead” for future emotional outcomes? If the latter is the case, then it would seem to constitute a reversal of cause and effect, allowing human agents to introduce causes according to their future effects.
A lot more research is needed to determine the true cause of the presentiment effect. But the data we have now suggests that resolving this scientific anomaly may entail a radical revision of some of our most fundamental metaphysical assumptions.
Sources:
Cerdena, Etzel, John Palmer and Avid Marcusson-Clavertz. "Parapsychology: A Handbook for the 21st Century." Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2015.
Bierman, Dick and Dean Radin. “Anomalous anticipatory response on randomized future conditions.” Perceptual and Motor Skills 84.
Kennedy, James and Jerry Levin. “The Relationship of Slow Cortical Potentials to Psi Information Man, Journal of Parapsychology," 39, 1975.
Mossbridge, Julia, Patrizio Trespoli and Jessica Utts. “Predictive physiological anticipation preceding seemingly unpredictable stimuli: a meta-analysis.” Frontiers in Psychology 3:390, 2012: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00390
Radin, Dean. “Unconscious Perception of Future Emotions: An Experiment in Presentiment.” Journal of Scientific Exploration 11, no. 2, 1997.
Tressoldi, Patrizio. "Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence: The Case of Non Local Perception, a Classical and Bayesian Review of Evidences.” Frontiers in Psychology 2 (no. 117) (2011).
Vassy, Zoltan. “Method for Measuring the Probability of 1 bit extra-sensory information transfer between living organisms." Journal of Parapsychology 42, no. 2, 1978.
Support new videos on Patreon: https://patreon.com/user?u=3375417
Think Anomalous is created by Jason Charbonneau. Illustration by Colin Campbell. Music by Josh Chamberland. Animation by Brendan Barr. Sound design by Will Mountain.
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