Who is calling? An Independent Replication of a Telephone Telepathy Test

We present the results of a new preregistered experiment aimed at testing telephone telepathy. One hundred and seventeen participants were requested to identify which one of two callers was calling to their smartphone. The correct identifications were 294 out of 604 trials, corresponding to 48.6%, slightly below the expected chance of 50%, supporting the lack of any telepathic phenomenon. A subsequent exploratory analysis, comparing the performance of the participants divided according to the cognitive strategies used to solve the task, revealed that participants claiming to have adopted intuitive strategies outperformed the participants claiming to have adopted more rational strategies (56% versus 35.4 %), suggesting that telepathic skills could be enhanced by reducing rational, controlled cognitive strategies.

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Publication Details

Journal
Journal of Scientific Exploration
Published
2025-06-30
DOI
https://doi.org/10.31275/20253543
Citations
1
Primary Topic
Media, Religion, Digital Communication
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
17.27
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article

Who is calling? An Independent Replication of a Telephone Telepathy Test

Patrizio Tressoldi, Tom Stedall
1 citations
Journal of Scientific Exploration
Media, Religion, Digital Communication
17.27
article

Who is calling? An Independent Replication of a Telephone Telepathy Test

Patrizio Tressoldi, Tom Stedall
article en
1 citations

Abstract

We present the results of a new preregistered experiment aimed at testing telephone telepathy. One hundred and seventeen participants were requested to identify which one of two callers was calling to their smartphone. The correct identifications were 294 out of 604 trials, corresponding to 48.6%, slightly below the expected chance of 50%, supporting the lack of any telepathic phenomenon. A subsequent exploratory analysis, comparing the performance of the participants divided according to the cognitive strategies used to solve the task, revealed that participants claiming to have adopted intuitive strategies outperformed the participants claiming to have adopted more rational strategies (56% versus 35.4 %), suggesting that telepathic skills could be enhanced by reducing rational, controlled cognitive strategies.

Journal of Scientific ExplorationVol. 39(2)
University of Padua (IT), The Schumacher Institute (GB)
Openalex Percentile: Top 2%
Media, Religion, Digital Communication
17.27
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