The Ouija board is one of the great icons of Spiritualism . The idea that we can communicate with disembodied and supernatural beings has seduced many people since this wooden board with letters and answer options was created in the nineteenth century.

The idea is simple: a board on which are written all the letters of the alphabet, the numbers from 0 to 9 and basic options such as “yes”, “no”, “hello” and “goodbye”. To use the Ouija board, participants place their fingers on a plate or glass that they place on the board, ask questions, and watch as the object slides over the letters and numbers offering answers as if it came to life.

But the Ouija board doesn’t work

As expected, the Ouija sessions cannot be explained by attributing the movement of the token or the glass to forces from the beyond. Not only does it make no sense to believe this, but it can be demonstrated by a simple experience that Professor Larry Barrieau takes on periodically with his students.

In these sessions, first of all, the teacher asks his students to say to what extent they believe in Spiritism. Then, he chooses the people who are most believing and convinced that the Ouija works and asks them to choose a board that they believe works for contacting the spirits. Once the students have chosen, the Ouija session begins, and they are promised that if the movement of the board points to the correct answers to the questions that will be asked, the whole class will have a grade of excellent. But with one small change: the students have to hold a piece of cardboard under their chin, so that they cannot see the letters and numbers on the board.

In all the experiences Larry has conducted, the answers never make sense , basically because the students can’t see anything that’s going on on the board. However, the wooden piece does move without the students having any sense of control over it. Why is this?

The ideomotor effect

Of course, there are people who believe that its functioning is based on a real capacity to contact the beyond, but if we rule out this possibility and focus on the scientific explanation that explains the existence of people who believe in the effectiveness of Ouija after having experimented with it, what is left? Next we will see the psychological phenomenon that allows us to understand why Ouija seems to be connected with spirits. Its name is ideomotor effect .

This is a concept that serves to describe the phenomenon by which certain suggested people move parts of their body involuntarily, making these movements have a logical connection with beliefs, desires or ideas that are expressed unconsciously. Therefore, the idea of mental processes that are beyond the reach of our consciousness plays a very important role in understanding how this type of suggestion can appear.

An experimental example

The theory of the ideomotor effect has been observed in several experiments carried out in a laboratory environment.

In one of these experiences, a number of volunteers were chosen and asked to answer a series of questions through a computer, selecting the options “yes” or “no”. They were then asked to do something similar, but using a Ouija board instead of a computer program. This time, moreover, a companion would put his or her finger on the wooden board at the same time as them, but they would have to answer blindfolded. But this investigation contained a surprise: as soon as the eyes had been blindfolded, the person accompanying the volunteer at the Ouija board would leave the table, leaving only one finger resting on the wooden board, which, however, moved.

The results showed that the participants were very surprised to learn that nobody had accompanied them in the Ouija session , since they often believed that the other person would be in league with the researchers and would be in charge of moving the card. In addition, the questions whose answers were not known for sure were correct on 65% of the occasions. Somehow the fact that they unconsciously believed more in one answer than the other, and that they did not rule out the possibility of the spirits manifesting themselves through the Ouija board to give an answer for them, caused them to unwittingly give an answer themselves.

Concluding

In science, under equal conditions, the simplest hypothesis always wins . And, in the case of the Ouija board, the ideomotor effect is a much more useful idea than the existence of spirits manifesting themselves through a board game.

Furthermore, the possibility of experimenting with the ideomotor effect is a good way to better study the functioning of the human unconscious, a very promising field of research in the field of psychology.