ABSTRACT
Many individuals claim to possess psychic ability. For example, faith healers and psychic surgeons state that they are able to cure illness. Psychic readers claim to be able accurately to divine the past and predict the future, and mediums often seem to be able to contact the dead. Moreover, law enforcement agencies are approached by individuals offering ‘psychic tips’ that they feel might help to solve a crime, and alleged psychics have also been used within industry and business. Investigations into these claims have often revealed evidence of trickery (Hansen, 1990), and recently academics have started to explore the psychology behind this rather unusual form of deception (Hansen, 1990; Wiseman and Morris, 1995a; Lamont and Wiseman, 1999).
