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Also known as applied parapsychology and psionics, applied psi is a branch of parapsychology that assumes psychic ability exists and seeks ways to apply it in everyday life.

Applied psi is used today when anyone acts on his or her intuition to make a decision. Experimental studies of applied psi date back to the eighteenth century, but it wasn’t until the twentieth century that the discipline was seriously explored. In 1963 the Newark College of Engineering in New Jersey became one of the first engineering centres in the US to explore psi ability in people. Researchers found that successful people use psi and precognition daily in their jobs in the form of intuition, hunches and gut feelings. In the early 1980s, American parapsychologist Jeffrey Mishlove urged parapsychologists to assume that psi existed and to focus on ways to use it in everyday life. By 1984 applied psi did become an informal part of a number of fields, including archaeology, agriculture, executive decision-making, scientific discovery, military intelligence, criminal investigations and weather prediction. However, over subsequent years the erratic nature of psi made it an unreliable tool.

Some experiments raised interesting questions as to how effective applied psi can be when it comes to making financial investments. It is not uncommon for people to place a bet or buy and sell stock on gut instinct. Experiments, such as one conducted by the St Louis Business Journal in 1982, compared the results of a group of experienced brokers with a psychic. The stocks picked by the brokers fell in value, but the ones picked by the psychic rose. Despite such successes, however, widespread use of applied psi in the stock market has never materialized – if it did it would probably spell the end of the stock market, thriving as it does on unpredictability and chance.