According to a paranormal study by Daryl Bem we can see the future. Professor Bem is a social psychologist at Cornell University in the States and he has released results of his nine studies which indicate the brain is able to not only reflect on the past but it can also anticipate the future.

Sounds pretty neat.

Bem’s series of experiments basically reversed two of the fundamentals widely accepted in the field of psychology – namely that studying improves memory and priming facilitates response times. Bem took these fundamentals and turned the timing on its head.

Let’s have a look at one of these studies.

Bem used the priming effect in reverse. In its typical form, the priming effect requires subjects to indicate if a photo is positive or negative. First, they are subliminally shown a word (eg happy or ugly) which is immediately followed by a picture (eg dog or cat).

Typically, in these priming studies, people who are primed with a word consistent with the photo they are shown will be able to categorize the picture quicker as being either positive or negative, by pushing a button.

In Bem’s retroactive priming study, he reversed the sequence by flashing the primed word after the person had categorized the photo.

The experiment went something like this.

People were individually shown a dog picture. Then, they chose whether to push the positive or negative button. Shortly after, they were primed with a word which was a good or bad match. The results showed that somehow people were quicker at categorizing a photo when it was followed by a randomly chosen and consistent prime word.

Thus, the result was the same regardless of whether the priming word was subliminally shown before or after the picutre.

It was as if, while participants were categorizing the photo, their brain knew what word was coming next and used this information in their decision making.