Precognition and Premonitions: What They Mean and What the Evidence Shows

Premonition meaning in plain terms

Everyday use of the word premonition is looser than the technical one. Dictionaries define it as a strong feeling that something is about to happen, especially something bad. In psychic circles it takes on a stronger sense, as a warning that carries real information from the future. A person who says they have precognition is claiming that this happens reliably, rather than once in a while.

Related words are worth keeping apart. Déjà vu is the sense that a present moment has happened before, a memory effect rather than a glimpse ahead. Presentiment is a term used in experimental parapsychology for a claimed bodily reaction before a stimulus appears, and like precognition it has not been reliably replicated.

The forms precognition is said to take

People report their premonitions in a few typical ways, and the kind of experience shapes how convincing it feels afterwards.

• A dream that appears to show an event before it happens
• A sudden dread about a person, trip or place that proves justified
• A clear thought of someone just before they make contact
• A vivid mental picture of a scene that later occurs
• A refusal to do something, with no reason, that avoids a problem

The 2011 experiment and what happened next

In 2011 the psychologist Daryl Bem published a paper in a leading psychology journal, reporting nine experiments in which people seemed to respond to events before they occurred. The claims drew wide attention, and they led to repeat attempts.

Several independent groups ran the same experiments and did not find the effect. Stuart Ritchie, Richard Wiseman and Christopher French reported one such failure in 2012. The episode is now remembered mainly as a spur to the improvement of research methods in psychology, because it showed how a standard analysis could produce a positive result that was not real.

Why a premonition can feel so convincing

A handful of well understood effects account for most of the stories. People everywhere dream every night, and over a lifetime some dreams are bound to resemble later events. Memory then does the rest: we recall the match vividly and forget the many dreams that led nowhere. After an event, hindsight bias leads us to feel we saw it coming, and memory of the earlier feeling shifts to fit.

Worry is also a factor. People who are anxious about a family member are likely to dream about them, and an accident or illness that follows seems to confirm the dream. This is no comment on the sincerity of those who tell the stories. It is simply how pattern-seeking minds work.

What to do with a bad feeling

Treat a bad feeling as a reason to check, not as proof. If it concerns your safety or someone else's, take the ordinary precaution: delay a trip, call the person, look at the facts. These measures cost little and they work whether or not the feeling means anything.

If a recurring dread is affecting your sleep or your daily life, it is more useful to look at stress and worry than to hunt for a hidden message. A doctor or counsellor can help with that.