An innovative technique for exploring the unconscious was developed using a seance board.
Canadian scientists have found an unconventional technique for exploring the unconscious using the Ouija board - a wooden board marked with the words "Yes" and "No".
The team at the University of British Columbia hopes to apply what they've learned to make objects like airplanes, cars, and household items more intuitive and safer.
"Most people think they have complete control over their minds, but they are wrong," says study co-author Ron Rensink. "The truth is that we perform thousands of unconscious mental and physical tasks every day."
Rensink cites driving a car as an ideal example: “Often times, we plan a route in a very difficult environment, thinking only about what to eat for dinner tonight,” he explains. "We come home and often remember very little about the trip."
The researchers found that people gave more accurate results when they simply guessed the answers to questions using the Ouija board (65 percent), as opposed to verbal responses (50 percent). Otherwise, when participants thought they knew the answer for sure, both methods gave almost the same accuracy.
"This unexpected finding suggests that we have a powerful 'second mind' behind our conscious mind, which we can access under certain conditions," says study co-author Helen Goshaw.
“We may think that we do not know the answer consciously, but have it in our subconscious. Maybe we heard it on the radio, but we just didn't pay attention to it. Perhaps the study triggered an ideomotor effect in the subjects, in which small muscle movements are unconsciously generated, which occurs, for example, when driving a car.
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The team refined the technique to get faster responses using a computerized version of the Ouija board. This study was published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition.