The Psychology of a Psychic

The dog snarled viciously as the doorbell rang. Yet, nobody came to the door. I started to have second thoughts as the barking got louder. Maybe it wasn’t a great idea to be here on a Tuesday between my classes with only some loose change bouncing around in my pocket. Maybe my childhood doctor was right, and I should “seek ADHD treatment.”

At first, I was giddy as I waited, because I was going to trick a psychic and lie to a professional liar. It began a few weeks before as a joke between one of my friends and me, and it had now escalated to me standing in a very real, very strange place.

Maybe this experiment was mean. Maybe I got scammed. No, I definitely got scammed—but gosh darn it, I got a good story out of it!

Now, I must admit that while some believe in the supernatural, I do not believe in palm reading, tarot cards or eating a diet that consists of less than a minimum of 75% sugar (I live off of those little bags of chocolate you can get from the Cellar Market in Benson). But, I do believe that psychics and magicians—who both make a living off of tricking you and running away with your money, aka con artists—utilize psychological principles to create the illusion of prediction—one which I observed happening right in front of me.

The "Baader-Meinhof phenomenon," or frequency illusion, refers to the false perception that something that you've recently learned of occurs more frequently than it really does. It also tends to encompass “confirmation bias,” a tendency to remember and believe evidence that confirms a pre-existing belief. So that, combined with incredibly vague answers, gives a “psychic” a lot to work off of.

Sigmund Freud, the founding father of modern psychology and psychoanalysis, proposed that the “subconscious” could reveal a lot about a person’s psyche. Similarly, the vague images and words a “psychic” uses are almost like a sort of “rorschach," or inkblot, being interpreted subjectively rather than actually predictive.

For instance, if someone tells you, “You have a shadow cast over your life,” then you might think of something relevant due to the broadness of that statement, or you may very well find that someone took your sandwich at work the next week. And, you might remember all the little things that went wrong, because of that aforementioned confirmation bias. These are just some of the psychological tools that a “psychic” could easily exploit.

“Hello?” I called nervously into the old, broken-down house with a big, neon sign touting “Psychic.” The dog was getting louder, and then the door cracked open.

Before I knew it, I was sitting face to face with an ancient-looking woman who, with a gravelly, raspy smoker’s voice, began to intone my “future.” With a strange mixture of excitement and confusion bubbling in my stomach, she began doing her magic for “Mary,” my alter ego for this experiment.

“Hold out your hand,” prompted the palm reader. “I see you…on a beach.”

I love beaches, but it’s about to get cold so I’m not going anytime soon.

“I see for you…long life. You have a kind heart, but you give too much…you were hurt in love. Someone is casting a shadow over your life.” Through time-weary eyes, she looked at me like she knew something, asking, “Who is the boy?”

I coughed awkwardly. “Ummmm…oh…uh no…there isn’t anyone?”

She suddenly changed the subject after talk of my love life didn’t spark the reaction she was hoping for. From just one pick from her deck of cards, she declared “Mary” is a nurse.

I couldn’t argue with a confident pronouncement like that. I am not, in fact, a nurse—I’m a Communication major with a few part-time jobs. We’re at miss number 3 on my mental scoreboard.

“Sure,” I replied, smiling nervously, waiting to see how far this could snowball into fantasy land.

“Just like I predicted,” said the palm reader confidently, “You are in medicine. I predicted that.”

“Okay,” I leaned forward with wide eyes, a not-so-sincere smile and just a touch of guilt, “What can you tell me about that?”

“You want to help people. You smile, but inside you’re going in a loop,” said the palm reader.

I smiled wider and shook my head, responding to her claims with a polite “I’m actually pretty good, thank you,” triggering an awkward pause. The palm reader furrowed her eyebrows and huffed. I kept smiling, but I was quite uncomfortable, so her prediction was surprisingly half right, in an odd sort of way.

“Is there anything else you would like to know?”

“Er, can you like, talk to the dead or anything?”

I was pushing my luck. She stared incredulously like I was a particularly annoying student asking something intentionally ridiculous, and very seriously snapped, “That isn’t part of it.”

Then, another awkward pause commenced. The palm reader studied me, carefully, and I kept smiling so she smiled back at me and clapped her hands. “You have a good heart, sweetheart. You’ll be alright. What’s your name, hun?”

I panicked. It was a private joke turning into something downright bizarre, and I was starting to feel a dash of embarrassment. My gaze drifted towards a statue of Jesus—who was looking a little judgey today. So, a single name drifted in by association. Learning by association, now there’s another psychological principle.

“M-mary,” I stammered—silently adding “please help me” in my internal monologue. I’m an awful liar and my confidence and general sense of humor were wearing thin at this point.

“Well Mary,” asthe palm reader held out her hand, “I hope you were satisfied with your reading. Now pay up.”

From my loose change, I scrounged up an embarrassing amount of cash and kept on smiling incredulously. I was always curious about how psychics tricked their customers, but the predictions I had heard that day were so off I had to bite my tongue to keep from bursting out into laughter.

My alter-ego “Mary”—a nurse with a rocky love life and an even rockier past who supposedly needs to take a vacation—may have gone to scam a psychic that day, but, in the end, I still lost my money. So who’s the real sucker?