ESP: Extrasensory Perception
The scientific study of perception beyond the five senses—telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and more. Learn what research reveals and how to test your own abilities.
What is ESP?
Extrasensory perception (ESP) is the reception of information not gained through the recognized physical senses, but sensed by the mind. The term was coined by psychologist J.B. Rhine in 1934 during his groundbreaking research at Duke University.
ESP is sometimes called the "sixth sense" and encompasses several distinct abilities, all sharing the common characteristic of obtaining information through means that cannot be explained by current scientific understanding of sensory systems.
Scientific note: While the mechanisms of ESP remain unknown, numerous controlled studies have produced statistically significant results. Meta-analyses suggest the effect is small but consistent and cannot be explained by methodological flaws alone.
Types of ESP
Telepathy
Mind-to-mind communication; perceiving thoughts, feelings, or mental states of another person.
Clairvoyance
Perceiving distant or hidden objects, locations, or events without prior knowledge.
Precognition
Perceiving future events before they occur, also known as premonition or foreknowledge.
Psychometry
Gaining impressions from objects by touching them; reading the "history" of items.
Scientific research on ESP
ESP has been studied scientifically for over 140 years. While controversial, several lines of research have produced compelling evidence:
Ganzfeld Experiments
Using sensory deprivation to enhance ESP, these studies show hit rates of approximately 32% when 25% would be expected by chance. Meta-analyses confirm this effect across hundreds of studies.
Remote Viewing Research
Stanford Research Institute conducted 20+ years of government-funded ESP research, producing thousands of sessions with statistically significant results.
Learn about the Stargate ProjectPresentiment Studies
Research showing physiological responses to future emotional stimuli seconds before they occur, suggesting unconscious precognition.
How to test your ESP
The best way to test ESP is with blind protocols where you have no normal way of knowing the target. Remote viewing provides an ideal framework:
Receive a random target coordinate (you don't know what it represents)
Quiet your mind and record any impressions that arise
Submit your session before the target is revealed
Compare your impressions to the actual target
Track your results over many sessions to see patterns
Start testing now: Social RV provides free blind targets with AI-powered scoring. After just a few sessions, you'll begin to see whether your results exceed chance—and many people are surprised by what they discover.
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