Northwestern University Psychology professor Dr. Julia Mossbridge's has a novel experiment demonstrating psychic abilities among her male students.

Photo by Daniela Vladimirova

The experiment is tantalizingly simple, you're presented four images and asked which one the computer will select. It may be simple, but since the images are randomly selected after you've made your choice it's also impossible, right? Not according to a new research study that shows our body may know when events in the future are likely to occur. And, here's the twist -- it seem to happen often for men who are obsessed with being right. In her recently published study, Dr. Julia Mossbridge showed that men who "wanted to win" were statistically more likely to accurately predict the future than women who expressed no interest in "winning."

But this research into presentiment, and our body's ability to to know the unknowable, has implications far beyond Psych 110 experiments on college Freshman. It strikes a blow against mainstream science's insistence on the narrow limits of our abilities and our very nature.

Join Alex Tsakiris for an interview with Dr. Julia Mossbridge where the experiment and the broader implications for neuroscience and science at large are discussed:

Julia Mossbridge: I had Northwestern Psych 110 students. That’s the first Psych course they take and they have to do some research as part of that, be participants in research. So I had them come in and get hooked up to a skin conductance machine so it’s measuring the changes in the electrical conductance of their skin which is related to arousal. When you get more aroused your skin conductance goes up. It’s like a lie detector test in a way. I give them a computer monitor where they’re looking at a computer and they had to choose between four images. The question I asked them was try to guess which of these four images is going to be shown to you after you choose one of the images. So it’s like trying to predict the future.

Alex Tsakiris: To them, I would think anyone who sat for that experiment it’s kind of nonsensical. What do you mean choose which one wins? It doesn’t make any sense but that’s part of the game, right?

Julia Mossbridge: Yes and I sort of laugh with them about it. Okay, I’m going to ask you to do the crazy thing and they like that. And so I say I’m hooking you up to this skin conductance [machine] and we’ll just see how you respond...

It looks like [men’s] skin conductance increases significantly when they’re about to be correct -- to say this is the image that actually shows up about ten seconds beforehand versus where they’re about to be wrong.

Alex Tsakiris: So the study sought to try and understand whether or not your physiology--in this case the skin conductance--is somehow related to some future event. Tying that back to what you said earlier, you said you had this hunch that you’ve confirmed in further research. Our physiology is able to predict future events if they’re meaningful to us. If they’re important to us. So the interesting twist here is maybe these young men are more motivated to be right than the girls are.

Julia Mossbridge: The difference in the physiology is apparent in both 10 seconds before and 10 seconds after they find out that they’re right. So for the boys there’s a huge difference in the arousal when they’re correct ve...