Psychokinesis (PK), sometimes called telekinesis, is the claimed ability to influence physical objects or systems using the mind alone, without any physical means of contact. Alongside Extrasensory Perception, it forms the other major branch of what parapsychologists broadly term "psi" — the key distinction being that ESP concerns claimed perception of information, while psychokinesis concerns claimed direct influence over matter.
Origin of the term
The word "psychokinesis" was coined in 1914 by American author Henry Holt, but it was popularised specifically through J. B. Rhine's research at Duke University in the 1930s and 1940s.
Early research: dice-throwing
Rhine's PK research began in 1933, when a young gambler approached him claiming he could influence the outcome of a thrown die simply by willing a particular result. This led Rhine to develop dice-throwing as PK's standard early experimental method, eventually testing more than 650,000 individual die throws by the end of 1941. Researchers noted that scoring tended to decline over the course of longer test series — a pattern they argued was consistent with mental fatigue and therefore harder to explain away as simple die bias or trickery, since fraud would not be expected to produce such a systematic decline. Methodology was progressively refined over this period, including standardised throwing procedures, dice-throwing machines to remove direct participant handling, and independent recording of results, after researchers discovered that commercial dice were often unevenly weighted due to the pips carved into their faces.
Random number generators and the PEAR lab
From the 1970s onward, PK research shifted from dice toward electronic random number generators (RNGs), following pioneering work by parapsychologist Helmut Schmidt. The most extensive such effort was the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) laboratory, founded in 1979 by engineer Robert G. Jahn, which ran for nearly three decades asking volunteers to try mentally biasing an RNG's output higher or lower than chance. PEAR's cumulative results showed extremely small but statistically apparent deviations from chance; critics identified methodological flaws in the programme, and a 1988 U.S. National Research Council review found no scientifically convincing evidence for psychokinesis across the wider research literature. The PEAR lab closed in 2007.
Notable claimants
Alongside laboratory-based statistical research, psychokinesis is also associated with individual claimants demonstrating dramatic, visible effects — most famously Uri Geller's televised spoon-bending performances, and Soviet subject Nina Kulagina's filmed demonstrations of apparently moving small objects. Unlike the statistical RNG research, these large-scale, visible demonstrations have consistently failed to hold up under properly controlled conditions with independent observers and professional magicians present — magician James Randi's long-running public challenge to psychic claimants, offering a large cash prize for a demonstrated paranormal ability under test conditions, went unclaimed throughout its existence.
Relationship to poltergeist activity
A spontaneous, uncontrolled form of psychokinesis is central to Recurrent Spontaneous Psychokinesis (RSPK), the leading living-agent hypothesis for reported Poltergeist cases such as the Enfield Poltergeist — see that page for the full account.
Scientific perspective
Mainstream science does not recognise psychokinesis as an established phenomenon. Even researchers sympathetic to the RNG research literature acknowledge that reported effects are extremely small, inconsistent across independent labs, and lack any plausible mechanism under known physics, while every well-documented large-scale demonstration has failed under rigorous, magician-assisted testing conditions.