Psychics and Grief

A psychic is someone who claims to have supernatural abilities, such as being able to read minds or foretell the future. Although scientific and governmental studies have neither confirmed nor disproved psychic ability, millions of people around the world believe in psychics and spend billions of dollars yearly to consult them. While some psychics are fraudulent, others may be able to make accurate predictions.

Psychics are often able to manipulate their audience’s expectations by using a variety of tactics. They may employ cold reading, which involves asking big questions to elicit information, for example by asking whether anyone in the audience has a husband named John who died of a heart attack. They also may use hot reading, in which they have previously collected information about their audience members, such as by looking at social media profiles. These deceptions explain why some psychics seem so accurate and insightful.

When people are thrilled to receive information about loved ones from a psychic, they are often succumbing to a mental error known to psychologists as motivated reasoning. This is a type of wishful thinking in which people are more likely to accept beliefs that support their goals or feelings, rather than those that do not. Grief from the loss of a loved one is a powerful motivator, so it is not surprising that many people take what psychics tell them as truth.

A.L. Kennedy, in her novel The Blue Book, uses a range of experimental narrative techniques to show how psychics draw information out of their audiences by means of guesswork and invention. She suggests that the process is similar to the act of writing fiction, since both psychics and novelists must walk a fine line between making suggestions and stating facts.

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