Ekroll, Vebjørn; Sayim, Bilge; Wagemans, Johan (2017). The Other Side of Magic: The Psychology of Perceiving Hidden Things. Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 12(1), pp. 91-106. Sage 10.1177/1745691616654676
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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.
Item Type: |
Journal Article (Original Article) |
|---|---|
Division/Institute: |
07 Faculty of Human Sciences > Institute of Psychology > Cognitive Psychology, Perception and Methodology |
UniBE Contributor: |
Sayim, Bilge |
Subjects: |
100 Philosophy > 150 Psychology |
ISSN: |
1745-6924 |
Publisher: |
Sage |
Language: |
English |
Submitter: |
Bilge Sayim |
Date Deposited: |
25 Jun 2018 11:31 |
Last Modified: |
05 Dec 2022 15:12 |
Publisher DOI: |
10.1177/1745691616654676 |
PubMed ID: |
28073329 |
Uncontrolled Keywords: |
magic; amodal completion; visual metacognition; cognitive impenetrability; problem solving |
BORIS DOI: |
10.7892/boris.114094 |
URI: |
https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/114094 |
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