Many people want to believe (and do believe) in ESP in spite of strong evidence to the contrary. For example, two California psychologists, Barry Singer and Victor Benassi, put on a magic show for a group of college students and asked them whether they thought that ESP was at work. Seventy-five percent said yes. The psychologists repeated their "show" for another group of students and told the students that everything they were doing involved trickery. Fifty percent rejected that explanation and maintained that psychic powers were in use (Marks & Kammann, 1980). In a similar but non-experimental vein, when Uri Geller, the celebrated psychic of the 1970s, appeared on The Tonight Show and was unable to perform any of his telekinetic feats (because his handlers were prevented from tampering with the props that Johnny Carson's staff provided), many people refused to accept that this was evidence of the fraudulence of his claims and continued to believe in his powers. His fame still did not diminish for many years after the fiasco.
These examples strongly suggest that people want to believe in psychic powers.
