Title

You Can Tell the Past, Boy, I Can Tell the Future: Identifying Psychological Effects of Divination by Using Tarot Cards

Creator

Horiachkina, Nikol

Abstract

In a world full of anxiety-inducing events and instability people always tend to seek for some kind of relief, certainty and maybe even a guarantee that uncontrollable factors can be controlled or to some extent predicted. One of such ‘visibility of control’ practice for many centuries is divination that uses tarot cards as a medium. Since the beginning of the course, I started seeing how many biases can play a role in making scientific experiment invalid, unreliable and far from reality. In my experiment with in-person reading and questionnaire I registered the presence of several psychological effects despite sample’s size.

Keywords

divination

bias

psychology

Subject

Interdisciplinary

Date Available

May 28, 2026

Type

Experiment

Course

HNS 2250 Debunking Pseudoscience

Course Offering Term

Fall semester 2025

Instructor

Valahas, Michael

Session

Honors Creative Projects

Location

Student Lounge

Event

Year 2026 | 10th Annual Student Research and Creative Arts Symposium