Overview

In a typical psi experiment, a person tries to guess a hidden target. Maybe it is a card, a picture, or a number. If they score above chance, that is called psi-hitting. But sometimes people score below chance in a way that is just as unlikely as scoring above it. That pattern is called psi-missing.

Think of it this way. If you flip a fair coin 100 times and guess heads each time, you expect about 50 correct guesses. Getting 65 right would be surprising. But so would getting only 35 right. Both outcomes are equally far from chance. Psi-missing is the 35-right outcome in a psi test.

Why does this matter? Pure random error should cluster around the average, not consistently fall below it. When a person or group scores below chance in a reliable pattern, some researchers argue that something is actively steering them away from the correct answer. That something, they suggest, could be psi itself operating in a kind of reverse gear.

This section will be expanded with historical context and a full definition once the curator and generator pass is complete.

Evidence and findings

Empirical findings from primary sources will appear here once the content generation pass is complete. Each claim will carry numbered citation anchors that link to the References section below. Use the Sources toggle at the top of the page to show or hide those markers.

Open questions

Several questions remain unresolved. A few of the most important ones are listed here as placeholders until the full content is generated.

• Is psi-missing a real, repeatable effect, or does it reflect flaws in how studies are run?
• What psychological states seem to produce psi-missing rather than psi-hitting?
• Is psi-missing related to the sheep-goat effect, where believers score higher than skeptics?
• Can a single theoretical model explain both psi-hitting and psi-missing as two sides of the same process?

References