Telecommunication Telepathy: A Meta-Analysis
📄 Original study ↗📌 Appears in:
Plain English Summary
Ever just known who was calling before you picked up the phone? This meta-analysis -- the most thorough number-crunching of 'telephone telepathy' experiments to date -- pooled 26 studies spanning two decades of phone, email, and text message trials. The headline result is striking: people guessed the right caller about 8.7% more often than pure luck would predict, a finding so statistically robust it hit odds of one in ten million against chance. Emotionally close pairs and people pre-screened for psychic ability performed even better. Interestingly, when tested for precognition (knowing the future) instead of telepathy, results flatlined at chance. Skeptics can still point to high variability between studies and a lack of preregistered follow-ups, keeping the debate very much alive.
Actual Paper Abstract
Objective: We bring together results from 15 published papers describing 26 telecommunication telepathy experiments published between 2003 and 2024 in a meta-analysis to explore the patterns in these results and their overall significance. Methods: The basic experimental design in these experiments involved four potential callers in remote locations. For each trial one of these callers was chosen at random and asked to call the participant, who was on a telephone without a caller ID. The participant then named the caller before answering the phone. Similar experiments were carried out with email and SMS messages. By random guessing, the hit rate would be around 25%. We collected relevant studies from reference lists and online searches and used a random-effects model in the meta-analysis. Results: Overall, hit rates were very significant above chance level (p = 1x10-7). By contrast, in tests carried out under precognitive conditions, the hit rates were at chance. There was no significant difference between the results of Sheldrake and his colleagues, who carried out most of the studies, and independent replications. Selected participants had significantly higher hit rates than unselected participants, and hit rates were significantly higher when callers and participants shared an emotional bond. The effect sizes in telecommunication telepathy are higher than those in ganzfeld and dream telepathy tests. Conclusion: Research on telecommunication telepathy could become an increasingly fruitful area for psi research, especially in conjunction with automated intuition training apps. Keywords: telephone telepathy, e-mail telepathy, psi, anomalous cognition, meta-analysis, precognition, automated tests.
Research Notes
Most complete quantitative synthesis of the telephone/email/SMS telepathy program currently in the library and a key anchor for Controversy 13. It strengthens the pro-psi aggregate case while preserving skeptical pressure points: high heterogeneity, small independent-replication subsets, and limited preregistered confirmatory follow-up.
Can people identify who is contacting them before answering when several possible callers exist? This meta-analysis pooled 26 telecommunication telepathy experiments from 15 papers (2003-2024), covering telephone, email, SMS, and automated protocols, and applied random-effects modeling (REML with Hartung adjustments). Telepathy-condition performance was 8.7% above chance (95% CI 5.3-11.9; standardized ES = 0.17, p = 1x10^-7), whereas three precognition-condition datasets were near chance. Moderator analyses showed stronger effects for preselected participants and emotionally bonded pairs, with publication-bias sensitivity checks indicating the overall signal remained significant.
Links
Related Papers
Meta Analyzes
- Experimental Tests for Telephone Telepathy — Sheldrake, Rupert (2003)
- Videotaped Experiments on Telephone Telepathy — Sheldrake, Rupert (2003)
- Who's Calling at this Hour? Local Sidereal Time and Telephone Telepathy — Lobach, Eva (2004)
- Do You Know Who Is Calling? Experiments on Anomalous Cognition in Phone Call Receivers — Schmidt, Stefan (2009)
- A Filmed Experiment on Telephone Telepathy with the Nolan Sisters — Sheldrake, Rupert (2004)
- Testing for Telepathy in Connection with E-mails — Sheldrake, Rupert (2005)
- An Automated Online Telepathy Test — Sheldrake, Rupert (2007)
- An Automated Test for Telepathy in Connection with Emails — Sheldrake, Rupert (2009)
- Sensing the Sending of SMS Messages: An Automated Test — Sheldrake, Rupert (2009)
- A Rapid Online Telepathy Test — Sheldrake, Rupert (2009)
- Telepathy in Connection with Telephone Calls, Text Messages and Emails — Sheldrake, Rupert (2014)
- Automated Tests for Telephone Telepathy Using Mobile Phones — Sheldrake, Rupert (2015)
- Who's Calling? Evaluating the Accuracy of Guessing Who Is on the Phone — Wahbeh, Helané (2024)
Companion
- Detecting Telepathy: A Meta-Analysis for Extrasensory Perception Experiments in Last 20 Years — Liu, Yawen (2023)
- Stage 2 Registered Report: Anomalous Perception in a Ganzfeld Condition - A Meta-Analysis of More Than 40 Years Investigation — Tressoldi, P.E (2024)
- On the Correspondence Between Dream Content and Target Material Under Laboratory Conditions: A Meta-Analysis of Dream-ESP Studies, 1966-2016 — Storm, Lance (2017)
- A Comparison of Four New Automated Telephone Telepathy Tests — Sheldrake, Rupert (2024)
Cites
Also by these authors
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📋 Cite this paper
Sheldrake, Rupert, Stedall, Tom, Tressoldi, Patrizio (2025). Telecommunication Telepathy: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition. https://doi.org/10.31156/jaex.25934
@article{sheldrake_2025_telecommunication_telepathy_meta,
title = {Telecommunication Telepathy: A Meta-Analysis},
author = {Sheldrake, Rupert and Stedall, Tom and Tressoldi, Patrizio},
year = {2025},
journal = {Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition},
doi = {10.31156/jaex.25934},
}