Zener cards

Zener cards are cards used to conduct experiments for extra-sensory perception (ESP), most often clairvoyance. Perceptual psychologist Karl Zener designed the cards in the early 1930s for experiments conducted with his colleague, parapsychologist J. B. Rhine.^[1] Image File history File links Cartas_Zener. ... Image File history File links Cartas_Zener. ... In the scientific method, an experiment (Latin: ex- periri, of (or from) trying) is a set of observations performed in the context of solving a particular problem or question, to retain or falsify a hypothesis or research concerning phenomena. ... Extra-Sensory Perception (ESP) is defined as ability to acquire information by paranormal means independent of any known physical senses or deduction from previous experience. ... Clairvoyance, from 17th century French Clair meaning clear and voyant meaning seeing, is a term used to describe the transference of information about an object, location or physical event through means other than the 5 traditional senses (See Psi). ... A psychologist is an expert in psychology, the systematic investigation of the human body, including behavior, cognition, and affect. ... Karl Edward Zener (April 22, 1903 - Sept. ... Joseph Banks Rhine (September 29, 1895 - February 20, 1980) was a pioneer of parapsychology. ...

Design

There are just five different Zener cards: a hollow circle (one curve), a Greek cross (two lines), three vertical wavy lines (or "waves"), a hollow square (four lines), and a hollow five-pointed star. There are 25 cards in a pack, five of each design. This article is about the shape and mathematical concept of circle. ... This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... For other uses, see Square. ... This article is about the astronomical object. ...

When Zener cards were first used, they were made out of a fairly thin translucent white paper. Several subjects or groups of subjects scored very highly until it was discovered that they had often been able to see the symbols through the backs of the cards. A redesign made it impossible to see the designs through the cards under any conditions. A subsequent deck featured an illustration of a building at Duke University on its reverse side, but the use of a non-symmetric reverse design allowed the deck to be exploited as a one-way deck. A one-way deck is a deck of playing cards where the back of the cards has a pattern which can be oriented to have a top and bottom. Magicians and card sharps can use the orientations of cards in one-way decks to encode information that allows them to...

Use in experiments

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2008)

In a test for clairvoyance, the person conducting the test (the experimenter) picks up a card in a shuffled pack, observes the symbol on the card, and records the answer of the person being tested for ESP (the subject), who must correctly determine which of the five designs is on the card in question. The experimenter continues until all the cards in the pack have been tested. Image File history File links Question_book-3. ...

Third parties may oversee or videotape an experiment to make sure it is conducted fairly. While it is especially important to ensure that the subject cannot see any cards and does not receive any vocal or visual cues from the experimenter, other methods of cheating are possible. To this end, physical separators may be placed between the experimenter and the subject. As with other ESP tests, experiments with Zener cards have used elaborate methods to keep the subject from seeing the cards or the experimenter, sometimes placing the subject in a separate room.

If the subject is informed during the test that specific guesses were correct or incorrect, card counting can increase their accuracy; also, poor shuffling methods can make the order of cards in the deck easier to predict.^[2] In his experiments, Rhine first shuffled the cards by hand but later decided to use a machine for shuffling. Card counting is a card game strategy used to determine when a player has a probability advantage. ... A riffle shuffle being performed during a game of poker Shuffling is a procedure used to randomize a deck of playing cards to provide an element of chance in card games. ...

Online variations of Zener card tests currently exist on the internet. If properly constructed, tests of this nature can circumvent the issues of bias and cheating common to standard Zener card tests. One such online system, the Anima Project^[3], gathers user results into a master database which is then analyzed using a variety of statistical techniques.

Although Zener cards are usually used to test for clairvoyance, they may also be used to test for telepathy, in which case one subject will draw a card and attempt to mentally project the image on it to the mind of another subject. Here, the statistical tendency of the receiver to report a specific design must be taken into account — for example, they might tend to report receiving an image of a square more than other images — so the deck used must contain an equal number of cards of each design. Telepathy, from the Greek τῆλε, tele, remote; and πάθεια, patheia, to be effected by, describes the hypothetical transfer of information on thoughts or feelings between individuals by means other than the five classical senses. ...

Statistics

If the null-hypothesis (no psychic ability) is assumed and each card selected for testing is chosen in a truly random fashion, a user's success ratio is expected to approach 20% (1 hit per 5 trials) as their number of trials increases. The further the observed scenario is from the expected scenario, the more cause for believing the null-hypothesis is not true (the results are not simply due to chance).

In media

Zener cards were used in an early scene of the movie Ghostbusters, with the character Dr. Venkman ostensibly testing two college students for ESP ability using a set of the cards. For other uses, see Ghostbusters (disambiguation). ...

References

1. ^ Zener Cards. Glossary of Skepticism & the Paranormal. About.com. Retrieved on 2006-12-20.
2. ^ Carroll, Todd (2006-02-17). Zener ESP Cards. The Skeptic's Dictionary. Retrieved on 2006-07-18.
3. ^ The Anima Project. Retrieved on 2008-04-08.

Screenshot of About. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 354th day of the year (355th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 48th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... The Skeptics Dictionary is a web site with a collection of cross-referenced skeptical essays by Robert Todd Carroll, PhD. It primarily exposes claims that its editors consider pseudoscientific. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 199th day of the year (200th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 2008 (MMVIII) is the current year, a leap year that started on Tuesday of the Anno Domini (or common era), in accordance to the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 98th day of the year (99th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

External links

• Statistical analysis of precognition/clairvoyance involving online Zener card test
• Zener card test (JRE download is required)
• Zener Cards Online Test
• A tool for two people to run Zener card tests over any network (For Mac, Windows & Linux)