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Bagienski SE, Kuhn G. A balanced view of impossible aesthetics: An empirical investigation of how impossibility relates to our enjoyment of magic tricks. Iperception 2023; 14:20416695221142537. [PMID: 36636255 PMCID: PMC9829883 DOI: 10.1177/20416695221142537] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/15/2022] [Accepted: 11/15/2022] [Indexed: 01/05/2023] Open
Abstract
The performance art of magic allows us to experience the impossible, and this study used a balancing magic trick to investigate the relationship between participants' enjoyment and perceived impossibility. Participants watched a live performance of a magic trick in which the magician balanced objects in progressively more impossible configurations. At seven different time points observers rated their enjoyment, and the extent to which they believed what they saw was impossible. Regression analysis revealed that participants' enjoyment of the magical effect relates to their perceived impossibility of the magic trick, and this relationship was independent of how much they enjoyed magic in general. Moreover, a one-way within-subjects analysis of variance showed that participants enjoyed the performance More as the trick became more impossible. However, once the magical effect was anticipated, enjoyment began to plateau while perceived impossibility continued to increase. These results are discussed in the context of people's aesthetic appreciation of magic and current arts appreciation models.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Gustav Kuhn
- Gustav Kuhn, Goldsmiths University of London, London, UK.
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2
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Camí J, Gomez-Marin A, Martínez LM. On the cognitive bases of illusionism. PeerJ 2020; 8:e9712. [PMID: 32904334 PMCID: PMC7453929 DOI: 10.7717/peerj.9712] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/31/2020] [Accepted: 07/23/2020] [Indexed: 12/16/2022] Open
Abstract
Cognitive scientists have paid very little attention to magic as a distinctly human activity capable of creating situations that are considered impossible because they violate expectations and conclude with the apparent transgression of well-established cognitive and natural laws. This illusory experience of the "impossible" entails a very particular cognitive dissonance that is followed by a subjective and complex "magical experience". Here, from a perspective inspired by visual neuroscience and ecological cognition, we propose a set of seven fundamental cognitive phenomena (from attention and perception to memory and decision-making) plus a previous pre-sensory stage that magicians interfere with during the presentation of their effects. By doing so, and using as an example the deconstruction of a classic trick, we show how magic offers novel and powerful insights to study human cognition. Furthermore, live magic performances afford to do so in tasks that are more ecological and context-dependent than those usually exploited in artificial laboratory settings. We thus believe that some of the mysteries of how the brain works may be trapped in the split realities present in every magic effect.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jordi Camí
- Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
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Barnhart AS, Costela FM, Martinez-Conde S, Macknik SL, Goldinger SD. Microsaccades reflect the dynamics of misdirected attention in magic. J Eye Mov Res 2019; 12:10.16910/jemr.12.6.7. [PMID: 33828753 PMCID: PMC7962680 DOI: 10.16910/jemr.12.6.7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/29/2022] Open
Abstract
The methods of magicians provide powerful tools for enhancing the ecological validity of laboratory studies of attention. The current research borrows a technique from magic to explore the relationship between microsaccades and covert attention under near-natural viewing conditions. We monitored participants' eye movements as they viewed a magic trick where a coin placed beneath a napkin vanishes and reappears beneath another napkin. Many participants fail to see the coin move from one location to the other the first time around, thanks to the magician's misdirection. However, previous research was unable to distinguish whether or not participants were fooled based on their eye movements. Here, we set out to determine if microsaccades may provide a window into the efficacy of the magician's misdirection. In a multi-trial setting, participants monitored the location of the coin (which changed positions in half of the trials), while engaging in a delayed match-to-sample task at a different spatial location. Microsaccades onset times varied with task difficulty, and microsaccade directions indexed the locus of covert attention. Our combined results indicate that microsaccades may be a useful metric of covert attentional processes in applied and ecologically valid settings.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Francisco M Costela
- Schepens Eye Research Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
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4
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Ekroll V. Never Repeat the Same Trick Twice-Unless it is Cognitively Impenetrable. Iperception 2018; 9:2041669518816711. [PMID: 30627415 PMCID: PMC6311584 DOI: 10.1177/2041669518816711] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/30/2018] [Accepted: 11/01/2018] [Indexed: 11/26/2022] Open
Abstract
In their quest for creating magical experiences, magicians rely on a host of psychological factors. Here, we compare tricks based on attentional misdirection with tricks based on amodal completion. Based on the notion that amodal completion is a cognitively impenetrable perceptual phenomenon, we predicted that the tricks based on this perceptual effect should-to a much larger extent than tricks based on attentional misdirection-retain their deceptive power when the tricks are repeated. The results of an experiment with four magic tricks involving attentional misdirection and four magic tricks based on amodal completion lend strong support to this prediction. Asking subjects to try to figure out the secret behind these tricks after one, two, or three presentations of each trick, we found that the observed solution rates for tricks based on attentional misdirection increased much more with repeated viewing than those for tricks based on amodal completion, which remained very low throughout. Thus, the results lend further support to the idea that amodal completion is based on cognitively impenetrable perceptual mechanisms.
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Affiliation(s)
- Vebjørn Ekroll
- Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, University of
Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium; Department of Psychosocial Science, University of
Bergen, Norway
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5
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Abstract
When magicians perform spectacles that seem to defy the laws of nature, they do so by manipulating psychological reality. Hence, the principles underlying the art of conjuring are potentially of interest to psychological science. Here, we argue that perceptual and cognitive principles governing how humans experience hidden things and reason about them play a central role in many magic tricks. Different from tricks based on many other forms of misdirection, which require considerable skill on the part of the magician, many elements of these tricks are essentially self-working because they rely on automatic perceptual and cognitive processes. Since these processes are not directly observable, even experienced magicians may be oblivious to their central role in creating strong magical experiences and tricks that are almost impossible to debunk, even after repeated presentations. We delineate how insights from perceptual psychology provide a framework for understanding why these tricks work so well. Conversely, we argue that studying magic tricks that work much better than one intuitively would believe provides a promising heuristic for charting unexplored aspects of perception and cognition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Vebjørn Ekroll
- Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium
| | - Bilge Sayim
- Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium
| | - Johan Wagemans
- Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium
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6
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Carbon CC. The Folded Paper Size Illusion: Evidence of Inability to Perceptually Integrate More Than One Geometrical Dimension. Iperception 2016; 7:2041669516658048. [PMID: 27698977 PMCID: PMC5030743 DOI: 10.1177/2041669516658048] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
The folded paper-size illusion is as easy to demonstrate as it is powerful in generating insights into perceptual processing: First take two A4 sheets of paper, one original sized, another halved by folding, then compare them in terms of area size by centering the halved sheet on the center of the original one! We perceive the larger sheet as far less than double (i.e., 100%) the size of the small one, typically only being about two thirds larger—this illusion is preserved by rotating the inner sheet and even by aligning it to one or two sides, but is dissolved by aligning both sheets to three sides, here documented by 88 participants’ data. A potential explanation might be the general incapability of accurately comparing more than one geometrical dimension at once—in everyday life, we solve this perceptual-cognitive bottleneck by reducing the complexity of such a task via aligning parts with same lengths.
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Affiliation(s)
- Claus-Christian Carbon
- Department of General Psychology and Methodology, University of Bamberg, Bamberg, Germany Research group EPÆG (Ergonomics, Psychological Æsthetics, Gestalt), Bamberg, Germany Bamberg Graduate School of Affective and Cognitive Sciences (BaGrACS), Bamberg, Germany
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Hergovich A, Oberfichtner B. Magic and Misdirection: The Influence of Social Cues on the Allocation of Visual Attention While Watching a Cups-and-Balls Routine. Front Psychol 2016; 7:761. [PMID: 27303327 PMCID: PMC4885884 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00761] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/20/2016] [Accepted: 05/06/2016] [Indexed: 11/29/2022] Open
Abstract
In recent years, a body of research that regards the scientific study of magic performances as a promising method of investigating psychological phenomena in an ecologically valid setting has emerged. Seemingly contradictory findings concerning the ability of social cues to strengthen a magic trick’s effectiveness have been published. In this experiment, an effort was made to disentangle the unique influence of different social and physical triggers of attentional misdirection on observers’ overt and covert attention. The ability of 120 participants to detect the mechanism of a cups-and-balls trick was assessed, and their visual fixations were recorded using an eye-tracker while they were watching the routine. All the investigated techniques of misdirection, including sole usage of social cues, were shown to increase the probability of missing the trick mechanism. Depending on the technique of misdirection used, very different gaze patterns were observed. A combination of social and physical techniques of misdirection influenced participants’ overt attention most effectively.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andreas Hergovich
- Department of Applied Psychology: Work, Education and Economy, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna Vienna, Austria
| | - Bernhard Oberfichtner
- Department of Applied Psychology: Work, Education and Economy, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna Vienna, Austria
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Thomas C, Didierjean A, Maquestiaux F, Gygax P. Does Magic Offer a Cryptozoology Ground for Psychology? REVIEW OF GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY 2015. [DOI: 10.1037/gpr0000041] [Citation(s) in RCA: 32] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Cyril Thomas
- Laboratoire de Psychologie, Université de Franche-Comté
| | | | | | - Pascal Gygax
- Département de Psychologie, Université de Fribourg
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Van de Cruys S, Wagemans J, Ekroll V. The Put-and-Fetch Ambiguity: How Magicians Exploit the Principle of Exclusive Allocation of Movements to Intentions. Iperception 2015; 6:86-90. [PMID: 28299166 PMCID: PMC4950023 DOI: 10.1068/i0719sas] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/16/2015] [Revised: 03/29/2015] [Indexed: 11/04/2022] Open
Abstract
In many magic tricks, magicians fool their audience by performing a mock action (a so-called “ruse”), which merely serves the purpose of providing a seemingly natural explanation for visible movements that are actually part of the secret move they want to hide from the audience. Here, we discuss a special magic ruse in which the action of secretly putting something somewhere is “explained away” by the mock action of fetching something from the same place, or vice versa. Interestingly, the psychological principles underlying the amazing potency and robustness of this technique seem to be very similar to the general perceptual principles underlying figure–ground perception and the assignment of border ownership. This analogy may be useful for exploring the possibility that this and similar magical effects involve immediate “unconscious inferences” about intentions more akin to perceptual processing than to explicit deliberations based on a reflective “theory” of mind.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sander Van de Cruys
- Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Leuven, Belgium
| | - Johan Wagemans
- Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Leuven, Belgium
| | - Vebjørn Ekroll
- Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Leuven, Belgium
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10
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Rensink RA, Kuhn G. A framework for using magic to study the mind. Front Psychol 2015; 5:1508. [PMID: 25698983 PMCID: PMC4313584 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01508] [Citation(s) in RCA: 54] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/27/2014] [Accepted: 12/07/2014] [Indexed: 12/04/2022] Open
Abstract
Over the centuries, magicians have developed extensive knowledge about the manipulation of the human mind—knowledge that has been largely ignored by psychology. It has recently been argued that this knowledge could help improve our understanding of human cognition and consciousness. But how might this be done? And how much could it ultimately contribute to the exploration of the human mind? We propose here a framework outlining how knowledge about magic can be used to help us understand the human mind. Various approaches—both old and new—are surveyed, in terms of four different levels. The first focuses on the methods in magic, using these to suggest new approaches to existing issues in psychology. The second focuses on the effects that magic can produce, such as the sense of wonder induced by seeing an apparently impossible event. Third is the consideration of magic tricks—methods and effects together—as phenomena of scientific interest in their own right. Finally, there is the organization of knowledge about magic into an informative whole, including the possibility of a science centered around the experience of wonder.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ronald A Rensink
- Departments of Psychology and Computer Science, University of British Columbia Vancouver, BC, Canada
| | - Gustav Kuhn
- Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths University of London London, UK
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Barnhart AS, Goldinger SD. Blinded by magic: eye-movements reveal the misdirection of attention. Front Psychol 2014; 5:1461. [PMID: 25566139 PMCID: PMC4269107 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01461] [Citation(s) in RCA: 19] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/27/2014] [Accepted: 11/29/2014] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Recent studies (e.g., Kuhn and Tatler, 2005) have suggested that magic tricks can provide a powerful and compelling domain for the study of attention and perception. In particular, many stage illusions involve attentional misdirection, guiding the observer's gaze to a salient object or event, while another critical action, such as sleight of hand, is taking place. Even if the critical action takes place in full view, people typically fail to see it due to inattentional blindness (IB). In an eye-tracking experiment, participants watched videos of a new magic trick, wherein a coin placed beneath a napkin disappears, reappearing under a different napkin. Appropriately deployed attention would allow participants to detect the "secret" event that underlies the illusion (a moving coin), as it happens in full view and is visible for approximately 550 ms. Nevertheless, we observed high rates of IB. Unlike prior research, eye-movements during the critical event showed different patterns for participants, depending upon whether they saw the moving coin. The results also showed that when participants watched several "practice" videos without any moving coin, they became far more likely to detect the coin in the critical trial. Taken together, the findings are consistent with perceptual load theory (Lavie and Tsal, 1994).
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Affiliation(s)
- Anthony S. Barnhart
- Cognitive Research Lab, Department of Psychological Sciences, Northern Arizona UniversityFlagstaff, AZ, USA
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12
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Shalom DE, de Sousa Serro MG, Giaconia M, Martinez LM, Rieznik A, Sigman M. Choosing in freedom or forced to choose? Introspective blindness to psychological forcing in stage-magic. PLoS One 2013; 8:e58254. [PMID: 23516455 PMCID: PMC3596404 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0058254] [Citation(s) in RCA: 21] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/28/2012] [Accepted: 02/05/2013] [Indexed: 11/30/2022] Open
Abstract
We investigated an individual ability to identify whether choices were made freely or forced by external parameters. We capitalized on magical setups where the notion of psychological forcing constitutes a well trodden path. In live stage magic, a magician guessed cards from spectators while inquiring how freely they thought they had made the choice. Our data showed a marked blindness in the introspection of free choice. Spectators assigned comparable ratings when choosing the card that the magician deliberately forced them compared to any other card, even in classical forcing, where the magician literally handles a card to the participant This observation was paralleled by a laboratory experiment where we observed modest changes in subjective reports by factors with drastic effect in choice. Pupil dilatation, which is known to tag slow cognitive events related to memory and attention, constitutes an efficient fingerprint to index subjective and objective aspects of choice.
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Affiliation(s)
- Diego E Shalom
- Laboratory of Integrative Neuroscience, Physics Department, University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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