Do You Know Who Is Calling? Experiments on Anomalous Cognition in Phone Call Receivers
📄 Original study ↗📌 Appears in:
Plain English Summary
Can you really sense who's calling before you pick up the phone? Researchers put this classic "telephone telepathy" claim to a serious test -- pre-registered plans, videotaped every trial, and used casino-quality dice to randomize callers. Across 557 trials with 29 people, the group as a whole performed right at chance (about 25% correct with four possible callers). No telepathy signal in the crowd. But here's where it gets wild: one standout participant nailed 42.5% accuracy over 80 calls, a result you'd expect by luck only once in about 6,600 attempts. That's genuinely striking. The big takeaway? If phone telepathy exists, it might be a rare gift rather than something everyone has -- fueling a lively debate about whether psi abilities cluster in exceptional individuals.
Actual Paper Abstract
Many people report that they know in advance who is on the phone when the telephone is ringing. Sheldrake and Smart [1, 2] conducted experiments where participants had to determine which one of four possible callers is on the phone while the telephone was still ringing. They report highly significant hit rates that cannot be explained by conventional theories.
We attempted to replicate these findings in a series of three experiments. In study one, 21 participants were asked to identify the callers of 20 phone calls each. Overall 26.7 % were identified correctly (mean chance expectation 25%, ns). In a second study a pre-selection test was introduced in a different experimental setting. Eight participants identified 30% of the calls correctly (p = .15). However one of the participants recognized 10 out of 20 calls correctly (p = .014). We conducted a third study with only this participant. In an additional 60 trials she could identify 24 callers correctly (p = .007). We conclude that we could not find any anomalous cognition effect in self-selected samples. But our data also strongly suggest that there are a few participants who are able to score reliably and repeatedly above chance.
Research Notes
The most methodologically rigorous independent replication of Sheldrake's telephone telepathy paradigm. Pre-deposited protocols, videotaped trials, and casino-grade dice randomization. Null group result challenges Sheldrake's strong effects, but the single exceptional participant — consistent across 80 trials — feeds the individual-differences debate in telepathy research.
Replication attempt of Sheldrake and Smart's telephone telepathy experiments across three studies with 29 participants and 557 videotaped trials. Study 1 (N=21, office setting) yielded 26.7% hit rate (chance = 25%, ns). Study 2 (N=8, home setting with email pre-screening) yielded 30% (p = .15). One exceptional participant scored 10/20 in Study 2 and continued in Study 3, achieving 24/60 correct (40%, p < .01, h = 0.32). Across 80 trials this participant hit 42.5% (p = .00015). Overall results driven entirely by one individual; no group-level anomalous cognition detected.
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Related Papers
Replication Of
Cites
- Telepathic Telephone Calls: Two Surveys — Sheldrake, Rupert (2000)
- Who's Calling at this Hour? Local Sidereal Time and Telephone Telepathy — Lobach, Eva (2004)
- The Anticipation of Telephone Calls: A Survey in California — Brown, David Jay (2001)
- Does Psi Exist? Replicable Evidence for an Anomalous Process of Information Transfer — Bem, Daryl J (1994)
Companion
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📋 Cite this paper
Schmidt, Stefan, Erath, Devi, Ivanova, Viliana, Walach, Harald (2009). Do You Know Who Is Calling? Experiments on Anomalous Cognition in Phone Call Receivers. The Open Psychology Journal. https://doi.org/10.2174/1874350100902010012
@article{schmidt_2009_who_is_calling,
title = {Do You Know Who Is Calling? Experiments on Anomalous Cognition in Phone Call Receivers},
author = {Schmidt, Stefan and Erath, Devi and Ivanova, Viliana and Walach, Harald},
year = {2009},
journal = {The Open Psychology Journal},
doi = {10.2174/1874350100902010012},
}