You might not have realized it, but here are four more senses that even Karen hasn’t mastered.
Schadenfreude: Don’t you just love it when your enemies fail? This German loanword, refers to intense pleasure drawn from the pain or discomfort of others, especially rivals. This is that sadistic feeling of joy that creeps into your spine, like the time when Purdue lost to IU by 37 points. In fact, German and Danish scientists believe sports fans unconsciously use schadenfreude to justify hating rival sports teams and fans for irrational reasons.
“There seems to be a lot of evidence that we derive at least some of our self-esteem from our comparisons with others,” IU psychology professor Edward Hirt says.
L’esprit de l’escalier: Meaning “wit of the staircase,” this vengeful feeling happens when you find the perfect comeback after a bitter argument. Why the staircase? Imagine leaving someone’s house after a confrontation and conjuring up the best possible retort on the way out. Leaving a discussion with unfinished thoughts or plans can cause “the spirit” to stick with you all day.
“There is good evidence that we continue to process information and ruminate about things after an experience, particularly when we feel a sense of incompleteness,” Hirt says.
“It is called the Zeigarnik effect and manifests itself in a lot of ruminative outcomes like this. Even after the argument ends, we are playing it out in our minds and thinking about how we might have responded differently or better to various aspects of it.”
(False) Telepathy: It’s Friday afternoon. The weekend is near and plans need to be made. You can’t wait to see your friends. Suddenly, your best friend calls and wants to party! This faux-psychic feeling of telepathy is often misattributed to some sort of “paranormal” phenomenon. In reality, there’s no direct scientific correlation between your thoughts and your friend’s call.
“Many superstitions and false beliefs can be attributed to selective recall of instances that fit our expectations, leading to development and maintenance of false beliefs such as telekinesis,” Hirt says. “We do not consider all of the other relevant contingency information, like how often we think of someone and the phone doesn’t ring, all of which are relevant to establishing a true relationship between these phenomena.”
‘I see porpoises ...’
One senior shares his own sixth sense story
Ever wake up from sleeping and realize you can’t move? You didn’t imagine it. Your mind can actually paralyze your body during early or late stages of sleep. Sleep paralysis occurs when the brain activates its mental alertness but is unable to activate the body’s motor functions. Between six and 60 percent of the adult American population have experienced sleep paralysis. But 20 percent of these dreams involve something more — hallucinations.
Senior Jackson Caldwell has experienced hallucinogenic sleep paralysis twice. Caldwell’s first paralyzed sleep experience was “hypnopompic,” meaning he became aware of his surroundings before his mind was done with REM sleep.
“The first time was really cool,” Caldwell says. “In my dream, a really, really vivid dream, I was swimming in a sea of porpoises.”
“I could feel water on my skin,” he says. “I could feel the porpoises’ slimy bodies on my legs. I could see that dream projected on my ceiling. I saw the crystal blue water.”
Caldwell’s second, more recent incident with sleep paralysis was considerably scarier, he says. In November 2012, Caldwell was starting to feel tired at a friend’s place when reality began to blur with his incoming sleep.
In “hypnagogic,” or pre-dormal sleep paralysis, the person is still aware of their surroundings even after their body has entered REM sleep. Caldwell says he saw his roommate on the other side of the living room. But he was headless.
“Even though it was him, I knew it obviously wasn’t,” Caldwell says. “I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t cry out. Then I snapped out of it.”
