Mystery is not a connecting link with the spiritual world, but why can we make movements and yet do not realize that we ourselves create them? The fortune-telling board and the pendulum are just two examples of mystical objects that seem to move of their own accord, while they are actually moved by the people who hold them. The only secret is not a connection with the spiritual world, but why we can make movements that we ourselves are not aware of. In psychology, this is called ideomotor acts.
Ideomotor effect
In everyday life, you can sometimes watch how some objects move on their own. You can verify this yourself if you hang a small weight on a thread, such as a ring. Hold the end of the thread in front of you so that the subject hangs freely. Try not to move. The weight will begin to rotate clockwise or counterclockwise in small circles. Do not start this movement on your own. Instead, just ask yourself a question - any question - and say that the weight will fluctuate clockwise to answer “Yes” and counterclockwise to “No”. Remember this thought, and soon, even if you try not to make any movements, the weight will begin to swing in response to your question.
Magic? Only ordinary everyday magic of consciousness is an ideomotor act in which there is no supernatural power, only tiny movements that you make without realizing it. The thread allows you to exaggerate these movements, the inertia of the weight allows them to maintain and exaggerate this state until it forms a regular oscillatory movement. The effect is known as the Chevrel pendulum in honor of a 19th-century French scientist who investigated it.
Fortune-telling Board
The same basic phenomenon lies at the heart of fishing - where small hand movements make the pointer on a fortunetelling board move on the surface. Typically, several people hold this sign, which seems to move by itself to answer questions by pointing to certain letters.
The concept of an ideomotor act
The interesting thing about the phenomenon is what it says about the mind. The fact that we can make movements that we don’t understand indicates that we should not be so confident in our other judgments about which movements we consider to be ours. Of course, under the right circumstances, you can make people believe that they were caused by things that really come from a completely independent source.
An ideomotor act in psychology is a phenomenon when a subject makes movements unconsciously. By the way, psychologist Daniel Wegner argued that our normal sense of mastery of an action is an illusion, a construction. The mental processes that directly control our movements are not related to the same processes that determine what caused what happened.
The concept of “ideomotor acts” comes from the terms “ideo” (idea, or mental representation) and “motor” (muscle action). The phrase is most often used in relation to a process in which a thought or mental image introduces an apparent “reflexive” or automatic muscle response, often with a slight degree and potentially outside the subject's awareness.
Ideomotor acts and mysticism
Mystics often attributed these effects to paranormal or supernatural powers. Philosophers have come to the conclusion that there is no way to determine if it is natural or supernatural. The related term “ideo-dynamic response” (or “reflex”) refers to a wider field and extends to the description of all bodily reactions caused in the same way by certain ideas. For example, salivation is often triggered by the imagination of eating lemon, which is a secretory response.
The concept of an ideomotor act contributed to the first neuro-psychological explanation of the principle of hypnotism by James Braid. With the advent of spiritualism in the 1840s, mediums developed and improved various methods of communication supposedly with the spiritual world, including desktop and tablet boards for "communicating with spirits." These phenomena and devices quickly became the subject of scientific research.
Carpenter Effect
The term “ideomotor” was first used in a scientific article discussing the ways in which these spiritualistic phenomena produced the effect of William Benjamin Carpenter in 1852 (alternative term “Carpenter effect”). It was he who derived the word from the components “ideo”, which means “idea” or “mental representation”, and “motor”, which means “muscle action”). In his article, Carpenter explained his theory that muscle movement can be independent of conscious desires or emotions.
The questions of the influence of suggestion on the change and direction of muscle movement, regardless of the will, were addressed by the psychologist-physiologist William B. Carpenter in 1852. Later this concept received wider publicity in the works of Harvard psychologist William James. Carpenter wanted to show that the various currently popular phenomena had ordinary scientific explanations, rather than widespread supernatural ones. The phenomena he considered included dipping (“witchcraft of water”), a magic pendulum, some aspects of hypnosis, “turning the table of the spiritualists” and “odillic power” of Reichenbach.
Carpenter did not question the reality of the phenomena and the honesty of the people who were involved. He only disputed the explanation, arguing that all phenomena can be explained from a biological point of view when they are carefully studied. He argued that intelligence and thoughts influence the actions of the body. Thus, Carpenter called ideomotor acts not a paranormal explanation of various phenomena that were attributed to new physical forces, spiritual intervention, or other supernatural reasons. He published many books and articles in the second half of the nineteenth century, setting forth his ideas about ideomotor action.
William James, Carpenter's follower
Carpenter argued that muscle movement can be initiated by the mind, regardless of will or emotion. James viewed ideomotor action not as curiosity, but as "just a normal process, devoid of disguise." The ideomotor effect refers to the effect of suggestion or expectation on involuntary and unconscious motor behavior.
William James elaborated on Carpenter's ideas, arguing that ideomotor activity was the main process that underlies all volitional acts: “Everywhere where the movement goes without hesitation and immediately follows his idea, we have ideomotor action. Of course, all kinds of neuromuscular responses arise, but we know absolutely nothing about their education and performance. ”
Opinion of I.M.Sechenov
Ideomotor acts, according to I.M.Sechenov, directly concern the idea that thought is a reflex that is to some extent inhibited in its extreme motor part. The arc of this reflex passes through the neurons of the main mental organ - the cortex of the cerebral hemispheres. I.M.Sechenov argued that stimulation of afferent cells would certainly contribute to the corresponding movement.
It is interesting that ideomotor acts and ideomotor training affect the work of many organs and even body systems. According to numerous studies of domestic and foreign psychologists and physiologists, with the help of only ideas about movement, the state of many systems of a living organism can be functionally changed. Pulse, blood circulation, water distribution and so on may increase. As electroencephalograms and electromyograms show, a change in brain potentials occurs due to the mere thought of any work and the state of readiness for it.
The ideomotor effect is well documented, but it still remains an effect that is largely incomprehensible to most people, including scientists.