Prerequisites for a clairvoyance hypothesis

Abstract

A pack of Zener cards (25 cards of five simple designs) was shuffled 3 times and cut once. The two subjects were familiar with the constitution of the pack and guessed it throughout before it was opened. The experimenter served as one subject by recording his own guesses, and an "empirical" chance series of guesses was introduced by shuffling a second Zener pack and recording it as the guessed series of a third subject. The conclusion (based on 200 runs for each subject) is that there is no evidence for clairvoyance, but the experiment is a demonstration of a technique which may be regarded as a prerequisite to the postulation of any extra-sensory hypothesis. The paper was presented as a critique on J. B. Rhine's monograph on extra-sensory perception. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)