ESP: Extrasensory perception or effect of subjective probability

This paper consists of two parts. In the first, we discuss the neuropsychological correlates of belief in a ‘paranormal ’ or magical causation of coincidences. In particular, we review experimental evidence demonstrating that believers in ESP and kindred forms of paranormal phenomena differ from disbelievers with respect to indices of sequential response production and semantic-associative processing. Not only do believers judge artificial coincidences as more ‘mean-ingful ’ than disbelievers, they also more strongly suppress coincidental produc-tions (i.e. repetitions) in their generation of random sequences. These findings illuminate the cognitive mechanisms underlying the formation and maintenance of paranormal beliefs for which the right cerebral hemisphere is hypothesized to play a central role. These same right hemispheric semantic-associative process-ing characteristics are centrally implicated in the creative thought process as well as the genesis of delusional (pathological) beliefs (e.g. ideas of reference). The second part of the paper highlights how fundamental limitations in the concept of randomness constrain the analysis and interpretation of forced-choic