This issue is dedicated to friend and colleague Dan Allman who passed away of the 27 January 2022... more This issue is dedicated to friend and colleague Dan Allman who passed away of the 27 January 2022. Dan had a paper in the special issue that he did not get a chance to complete; we have included a Tribute to his work that summarises his ideas. May he rest in peace.
Reverse psychology is increasingly being used in marketing to enhance a brand’s attractivity and ... more Reverse psychology is increasingly being used in marketing to enhance a brand’s attractivity and product differentiation. Even though this concept is well known in popular culture, very little research has investigated its effectiveness in simple decision-making processes. We investigated a magician force – technique that covertly influence the spectator’s choice – to study how reverse psychology influences people’s selection process. The Five Card Mental Force is thought to rely on reverse psychology instructions to lead the audience member to choose a specific card among four others that are presented in a horizontal line. In four experiments, we investigated the effectiveness of reverse psychology instructions, position and contrast effects on participants’ choice. Our results suggest that reverse psychology significantly influences participants’ choices toward the force card, but that the position of the cards did not have a significant impact. Moreover, contrary to what the ma...
A new research program has recently emerged that investigates magicians' mind control tricks, als... more A new research program has recently emerged that investigates magicians' mind control tricks, also called forces. This research highlights the psychological processes that underpin decisionmaking, illustrates the ease by which our decisions can be covertly influenced, and helps answer questions about our sense of freewill and agency over choices.
<p>These figures display timelines of each of the magic videos used in our misdirection res... more <p>These figures display timelines of each of the magic videos used in our misdirection research. They are drawn from stills and illustrated by Allison Friebertshauser.</p
<p>In Experiment 1 the pantomimed actions were made at a location 10 cm from the object. Th... more <p>In Experiment 1 the pantomimed actions were made at a location 10 cm from the object. The black dot represents the starting position.</p
This study explored the interaction between visual metacognitive judgments about others and cues ... more This study explored the interaction between visual metacognitive judgments about others and cues related to the workings of System 1 and System 2. We examined how intrinsic cues (i.e., saliency of a visual change) and experience cues (i.e., detection/blindness) affect people’s predictions about others’ change detection abilities. In Experiment 1, 60 participants were instructed to notice a subtle and a salient visual change in a magic trick that exploits change blindness, after which they estimated the probability that others would detect the change. In Experiment 2, 80 participants watched either the subtle or the salient version of the trick and they were asked to provide predictions for the experienced change. In Experiment 1, participants predicted that others would detect the salient change more easily than the subtle change, which was consistent with the actual detection reported in Experiment 2. In Experiment 2, participants’ personal experience (i.e., whether they detected t...
We examined how the emerging digital culture has affected magicians’ careers, the development of ... more We examined how the emerging digital culture has affected magicians’ careers, the development of their expertise and the general practices of their professions. We used social network analysis (n=120) to identify Finland’s most highly regarded magicians (n=16) representing different generations. The participants were theme interviewed and also collected self-report questionnaire data. The results revealed that digital transformations have strongly affected the magical profession in terms of changing their career paths and entry into the profession. Magic used to be a secretive culture, where access to advanced knowledge was controlled by highly regarded gatekeepers who shared their knowledge with a selected group of committed newcomers as a function of their extended efforts. Openly sharing magical knowledge on the Internet has diminished the traditionally strong role of these gatekeepers. Although online tutorials have made magical know-how more accessible to newcomers, professiona...
Magicians’ forcing techniques allow them to covertly influence spectators’ choices. We used a typ... more Magicians’ forcing techniques allow them to covertly influence spectators’ choices. We used a type of force (Position Force) to investigate whether explicitly informing people that they are making a decision results in more deliberate decisions. The magician placed four face-down cards on the table in a horizontal row, after which the spectator was asked to select a card by pushing it forward. According to magicians and position effects literature, people should be more likely to choose a card in the third position from their left, because it can be easily reached. We manipulated whether participants were reminded that they were making a decision (explicit choice) or not (implicit choice) when asked to select one of the cards. Two experiments confirmed the efficiency of the Position Force—52% of participants chose the target card. Explicitly informing participants of the decision impairs the success of the force, leading to a more deliberate choice. A range of awareness measures ill...
We present two experiments investigating the effect of the perceived gender of a magician on the ... more We present two experiments investigating the effect of the perceived gender of a magician on the perception of the quality of magic tricks. In Experiment 1, tricks performed by an allegedly female magician were considered worse than those by an allegedly male magician. In Experiment 2, participants had to generate possible solutions to how the tricks were done. Under these conditions, male participants were better at explaining the tricks, but the gender effect found in Experiment 1 disappeared. We discuss the gender bias in Experiment 1 and the lack of bias in Experiment 2 in terms of specific social and cognitive mechanisms (e.g., cognitive dissonance).
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2018
Internal spatial body configurations are crucial to successfully interact with the environment an... more Internal spatial body configurations are crucial to successfully interact with the environment and to experience our body as a three-dimensional volumetric entity. These representations are highly malleable and are modulated by a multitude of afferent and motor information. Despite some studies reporting the impact of sensory and motor modulation on body representations, the long-term relationship between sensory information and mental representation of own body parts is still unclear. We investigated hand representation in a group of expert sleight-of-hand magicians and in a group of age-matched adults naïve to magic (controls). Participants were asked to localise landmarks of their fingers when their hand position was congruent with the mental representation (Experiment 1) and when proprioceptive information was “misleading” (Experiment 2). Magicians outperformed controls in both experiments, suggesting that extensive training in sleight of hand has a profound effect in refining h...
A number of authors have suggested that the computation of another person's visual perspective oc... more A number of authors have suggested that the computation of another person's visual perspective occurs automatically. In the current work we examined whether perspective-taking is indeed automatic or more likely to be due to mechanisms associated with conscious control. Participants viewed everyday scenes in which a single human model looked towards a target object. Importantly, the model's view of the object was either visible or occluded by a physical barrier (e.g., briefcase). Results showed that when observers were given five seconds to freely view the scenes, eye movements were faster to fixate the object when the model could see it compared to when it was occluded. By contrast, when observers were required to rapidly discriminate a target superimposed upon the same object no such visibility effect occurred. We also employed the barrier procedure together with the most recent method (i.e., the ambiguous number paradigm) to have been employed in assessing the perspective-taking theory. Results showed that the model's gaze facilitated responses even when this agent could not see the critical stimuli. We argue that although humans do take into account the perspective of other people this does not occur automatically.
Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 2018
Beliefs in supernatural entities are integral parts of both our culturally embedded religions and... more Beliefs in supernatural entities are integral parts of both our culturally embedded religions and more individualized magical belief systems (e.g., paranormal beliefs, spirituality). Scholars regularly link the occurrence of beliefs to individuals' cognitive and affective ways of information processing. For magical beliefs in particular, we expect children to endorse them. When reaching adulthood, however, individuals should have abandoned magical beliefs, and become pragmatic, sceptical, critical and rational thinkers. The reality is, a large proportion of the adult population can be described as magical thinkers, or report having had magical experiences, even in the recent past. Moreover, psychological research in adults shows a large range of magical beliefs, which correlate with particular psychological processing biases (e.g., repetition avoidance, seeing signal in noise). Unfortunately, these correlational studies do not tell us whether such psychological processing biases precede magical beliefs or whether they result from these magical beliefs. Knowing the direction of such relationships is key to understand which psychological biases might contribute to adult belief formation (or the persistence of beliefs from childhood). To test such causal relationships, we started to systematically apply an experimental approach in which people are exposed to anomalous events. Such a central event allows before-after comparisons of psychological biases. First empirical results confirmed that the use of magic performances, particularly when of paranormal nature, results in an important amount of paranormal explanations. Pre-existing beliefs enhanced this explanation bias. These results show how easily naïve observers can be Btricked^into unsubstantiated beliefs.
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2018
When confronted with an insight problem, some factors limit our capacity to discover the optimal ... more When confronted with an insight problem, some factors limit our capacity to discover the optimal solution. Previous research on problem solving has shown that the first idea that comes to participants’ minds can inhibit them from finding better alternative solutions. We used a magic trick to demonstrate that this mind fixing effect is more general than previously thought: a solution that participants knew to be incorrect and impossible inhibited the discovery of an easy alternative. We show that a simple exposure to an obvious false solution (e.g., the magician hides the card in the palm of his hand to secretly transfer it to his back pocket) can inhibit participants from finding the real secret of the trick (e.g., he used a duplicate card), even if the magician proves that this false solution is impossible (e.g., he shows his hand is empty). We discuss the psychological processes underlying this robust fixing effect.
<p>These figures display timelines of each of the magic videos used in our misdirection res... more <p>These figures display timelines of each of the magic videos used in our misdirection research. They are drawn from stills and illustrated by Allison Friebertshauser.</p
Paranormal beliefs (PBs), such as the belief in the soul, or in extrasensory perception, are comm... more Paranormal beliefs (PBs), such as the belief in the soul, or in extrasensory perception, are common in the general population. While there is information regarding what these beliefs correlate with (e.g., cognitive biases, personality styles), there is little information regarding the causal direction between these beliefs and their correlates. To investigate the formation of beliefs, we use an experimental design, in which PBs and belief-associated cognitive biases are assessed before and after a central event: a magic performance (see also Mohr et al., 2018). In the current paper, we report a series of studies investigating the "paranormal potential" of magic performances (Study 1, N = 49; Study 2, N = 89; Study 3, N = 123). We investigated (i) which magic performances resulted in paranormal explanations, and (ii) whether PBs and a belief-associated cognitive bias (i.e., repetition avoidance) became enhanced after the performance. Repetition avoidance was assessed using a random number generation task. After the performance, participants rated to what extent the magic performance could be explained in psychic (paranormal), conjuring, or religious terms. We found that conjuring explanations were negatively associated with religious and psychic explanations, whereas religious and psychic explanations were positively associated. Enhanced repetition avoidance correlated with higher PBs ahead of the performance. We also observed a significant increase in psychic explanations and a drop in conjuring explanations when performances involved powerful psychic routines (e.g., the performer contacted the dead). While the experimentally induced enhancement of psychic explanations is promising, future studies should account for potential variables that might explain absent framing and before-after effects (e.g., emotion, attention). Such effects are essential to understand the formation and manipulation of belief.
Magic tricks offer powerful tools to manipulate people’s attention and conscious experience. Usin... more Magic tricks offer powerful tools to manipulate people’s attention and conscious experience. Using realworld eyetracking we can investigate how different misdirection cues drive people’s eye movements. Moreover, by measuring people’s susceptibility to the trick, we can evaluate how these cues influence people’s conscious experience. We used a magic trick to explore the way in which spoken questions and gaze cues influence eye movements and awareness. The trick involved a fully visible colour change as a probe of whether participants displayed change blindness due to social misdirection. Our results show that the question misdirected attention towards the magician’s face and prevented people from perceiving the colour change. In this paper we discuss how linguistic misdirection is modulated by gaze cues. The misdirection of attention by visual and social cues is of interest to understanding visual and social cognition.
Figure showing how gestures can be used to prime a card. Figure based on the following paper. <... more Figure showing how gestures can be used to prime a card. Figure based on the following paper. <br><br>Pailhès, A., & Kuhn, G. (2020). Influencing choices with conversational primes: How a magic trick unconsciously influences card choices. <i>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</i>, 202000682. doi:10.1073/pnas.2000682117<br><br>
This issue is dedicated to friend and colleague Dan Allman who passed away of the 27 January 2022... more This issue is dedicated to friend and colleague Dan Allman who passed away of the 27 January 2022. Dan had a paper in the special issue that he did not get a chance to complete; we have included a Tribute to his work that summarises his ideas. May he rest in peace.
Reverse psychology is increasingly being used in marketing to enhance a brand’s attractivity and ... more Reverse psychology is increasingly being used in marketing to enhance a brand’s attractivity and product differentiation. Even though this concept is well known in popular culture, very little research has investigated its effectiveness in simple decision-making processes. We investigated a magician force – technique that covertly influence the spectator’s choice – to study how reverse psychology influences people’s selection process. The Five Card Mental Force is thought to rely on reverse psychology instructions to lead the audience member to choose a specific card among four others that are presented in a horizontal line. In four experiments, we investigated the effectiveness of reverse psychology instructions, position and contrast effects on participants’ choice. Our results suggest that reverse psychology significantly influences participants’ choices toward the force card, but that the position of the cards did not have a significant impact. Moreover, contrary to what the ma...
A new research program has recently emerged that investigates magicians' mind control tricks, als... more A new research program has recently emerged that investigates magicians' mind control tricks, also called forces. This research highlights the psychological processes that underpin decisionmaking, illustrates the ease by which our decisions can be covertly influenced, and helps answer questions about our sense of freewill and agency over choices.
<p>These figures display timelines of each of the magic videos used in our misdirection res... more <p>These figures display timelines of each of the magic videos used in our misdirection research. They are drawn from stills and illustrated by Allison Friebertshauser.</p
<p>In Experiment 1 the pantomimed actions were made at a location 10 cm from the object. Th... more <p>In Experiment 1 the pantomimed actions were made at a location 10 cm from the object. The black dot represents the starting position.</p
This study explored the interaction between visual metacognitive judgments about others and cues ... more This study explored the interaction between visual metacognitive judgments about others and cues related to the workings of System 1 and System 2. We examined how intrinsic cues (i.e., saliency of a visual change) and experience cues (i.e., detection/blindness) affect people’s predictions about others’ change detection abilities. In Experiment 1, 60 participants were instructed to notice a subtle and a salient visual change in a magic trick that exploits change blindness, after which they estimated the probability that others would detect the change. In Experiment 2, 80 participants watched either the subtle or the salient version of the trick and they were asked to provide predictions for the experienced change. In Experiment 1, participants predicted that others would detect the salient change more easily than the subtle change, which was consistent with the actual detection reported in Experiment 2. In Experiment 2, participants’ personal experience (i.e., whether they detected t...
We examined how the emerging digital culture has affected magicians’ careers, the development of ... more We examined how the emerging digital culture has affected magicians’ careers, the development of their expertise and the general practices of their professions. We used social network analysis (n=120) to identify Finland’s most highly regarded magicians (n=16) representing different generations. The participants were theme interviewed and also collected self-report questionnaire data. The results revealed that digital transformations have strongly affected the magical profession in terms of changing their career paths and entry into the profession. Magic used to be a secretive culture, where access to advanced knowledge was controlled by highly regarded gatekeepers who shared their knowledge with a selected group of committed newcomers as a function of their extended efforts. Openly sharing magical knowledge on the Internet has diminished the traditionally strong role of these gatekeepers. Although online tutorials have made magical know-how more accessible to newcomers, professiona...
Magicians’ forcing techniques allow them to covertly influence spectators’ choices. We used a typ... more Magicians’ forcing techniques allow them to covertly influence spectators’ choices. We used a type of force (Position Force) to investigate whether explicitly informing people that they are making a decision results in more deliberate decisions. The magician placed four face-down cards on the table in a horizontal row, after which the spectator was asked to select a card by pushing it forward. According to magicians and position effects literature, people should be more likely to choose a card in the third position from their left, because it can be easily reached. We manipulated whether participants were reminded that they were making a decision (explicit choice) or not (implicit choice) when asked to select one of the cards. Two experiments confirmed the efficiency of the Position Force—52% of participants chose the target card. Explicitly informing participants of the decision impairs the success of the force, leading to a more deliberate choice. A range of awareness measures ill...
We present two experiments investigating the effect of the perceived gender of a magician on the ... more We present two experiments investigating the effect of the perceived gender of a magician on the perception of the quality of magic tricks. In Experiment 1, tricks performed by an allegedly female magician were considered worse than those by an allegedly male magician. In Experiment 2, participants had to generate possible solutions to how the tricks were done. Under these conditions, male participants were better at explaining the tricks, but the gender effect found in Experiment 1 disappeared. We discuss the gender bias in Experiment 1 and the lack of bias in Experiment 2 in terms of specific social and cognitive mechanisms (e.g., cognitive dissonance).
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2018
Internal spatial body configurations are crucial to successfully interact with the environment an... more Internal spatial body configurations are crucial to successfully interact with the environment and to experience our body as a three-dimensional volumetric entity. These representations are highly malleable and are modulated by a multitude of afferent and motor information. Despite some studies reporting the impact of sensory and motor modulation on body representations, the long-term relationship between sensory information and mental representation of own body parts is still unclear. We investigated hand representation in a group of expert sleight-of-hand magicians and in a group of age-matched adults naïve to magic (controls). Participants were asked to localise landmarks of their fingers when their hand position was congruent with the mental representation (Experiment 1) and when proprioceptive information was “misleading” (Experiment 2). Magicians outperformed controls in both experiments, suggesting that extensive training in sleight of hand has a profound effect in refining h...
A number of authors have suggested that the computation of another person's visual perspective oc... more A number of authors have suggested that the computation of another person's visual perspective occurs automatically. In the current work we examined whether perspective-taking is indeed automatic or more likely to be due to mechanisms associated with conscious control. Participants viewed everyday scenes in which a single human model looked towards a target object. Importantly, the model's view of the object was either visible or occluded by a physical barrier (e.g., briefcase). Results showed that when observers were given five seconds to freely view the scenes, eye movements were faster to fixate the object when the model could see it compared to when it was occluded. By contrast, when observers were required to rapidly discriminate a target superimposed upon the same object no such visibility effect occurred. We also employed the barrier procedure together with the most recent method (i.e., the ambiguous number paradigm) to have been employed in assessing the perspective-taking theory. Results showed that the model's gaze facilitated responses even when this agent could not see the critical stimuli. We argue that although humans do take into account the perspective of other people this does not occur automatically.
Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 2018
Beliefs in supernatural entities are integral parts of both our culturally embedded religions and... more Beliefs in supernatural entities are integral parts of both our culturally embedded religions and more individualized magical belief systems (e.g., paranormal beliefs, spirituality). Scholars regularly link the occurrence of beliefs to individuals' cognitive and affective ways of information processing. For magical beliefs in particular, we expect children to endorse them. When reaching adulthood, however, individuals should have abandoned magical beliefs, and become pragmatic, sceptical, critical and rational thinkers. The reality is, a large proportion of the adult population can be described as magical thinkers, or report having had magical experiences, even in the recent past. Moreover, psychological research in adults shows a large range of magical beliefs, which correlate with particular psychological processing biases (e.g., repetition avoidance, seeing signal in noise). Unfortunately, these correlational studies do not tell us whether such psychological processing biases precede magical beliefs or whether they result from these magical beliefs. Knowing the direction of such relationships is key to understand which psychological biases might contribute to adult belief formation (or the persistence of beliefs from childhood). To test such causal relationships, we started to systematically apply an experimental approach in which people are exposed to anomalous events. Such a central event allows before-after comparisons of psychological biases. First empirical results confirmed that the use of magic performances, particularly when of paranormal nature, results in an important amount of paranormal explanations. Pre-existing beliefs enhanced this explanation bias. These results show how easily naïve observers can be Btricked^into unsubstantiated beliefs.
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2018
When confronted with an insight problem, some factors limit our capacity to discover the optimal ... more When confronted with an insight problem, some factors limit our capacity to discover the optimal solution. Previous research on problem solving has shown that the first idea that comes to participants’ minds can inhibit them from finding better alternative solutions. We used a magic trick to demonstrate that this mind fixing effect is more general than previously thought: a solution that participants knew to be incorrect and impossible inhibited the discovery of an easy alternative. We show that a simple exposure to an obvious false solution (e.g., the magician hides the card in the palm of his hand to secretly transfer it to his back pocket) can inhibit participants from finding the real secret of the trick (e.g., he used a duplicate card), even if the magician proves that this false solution is impossible (e.g., he shows his hand is empty). We discuss the psychological processes underlying this robust fixing effect.
<p>These figures display timelines of each of the magic videos used in our misdirection res... more <p>These figures display timelines of each of the magic videos used in our misdirection research. They are drawn from stills and illustrated by Allison Friebertshauser.</p
Paranormal beliefs (PBs), such as the belief in the soul, or in extrasensory perception, are comm... more Paranormal beliefs (PBs), such as the belief in the soul, or in extrasensory perception, are common in the general population. While there is information regarding what these beliefs correlate with (e.g., cognitive biases, personality styles), there is little information regarding the causal direction between these beliefs and their correlates. To investigate the formation of beliefs, we use an experimental design, in which PBs and belief-associated cognitive biases are assessed before and after a central event: a magic performance (see also Mohr et al., 2018). In the current paper, we report a series of studies investigating the "paranormal potential" of magic performances (Study 1, N = 49; Study 2, N = 89; Study 3, N = 123). We investigated (i) which magic performances resulted in paranormal explanations, and (ii) whether PBs and a belief-associated cognitive bias (i.e., repetition avoidance) became enhanced after the performance. Repetition avoidance was assessed using a random number generation task. After the performance, participants rated to what extent the magic performance could be explained in psychic (paranormal), conjuring, or religious terms. We found that conjuring explanations were negatively associated with religious and psychic explanations, whereas religious and psychic explanations were positively associated. Enhanced repetition avoidance correlated with higher PBs ahead of the performance. We also observed a significant increase in psychic explanations and a drop in conjuring explanations when performances involved powerful psychic routines (e.g., the performer contacted the dead). While the experimentally induced enhancement of psychic explanations is promising, future studies should account for potential variables that might explain absent framing and before-after effects (e.g., emotion, attention). Such effects are essential to understand the formation and manipulation of belief.
Magic tricks offer powerful tools to manipulate people’s attention and conscious experience. Usin... more Magic tricks offer powerful tools to manipulate people’s attention and conscious experience. Using realworld eyetracking we can investigate how different misdirection cues drive people’s eye movements. Moreover, by measuring people’s susceptibility to the trick, we can evaluate how these cues influence people’s conscious experience. We used a magic trick to explore the way in which spoken questions and gaze cues influence eye movements and awareness. The trick involved a fully visible colour change as a probe of whether participants displayed change blindness due to social misdirection. Our results show that the question misdirected attention towards the magician’s face and prevented people from perceiving the colour change. In this paper we discuss how linguistic misdirection is modulated by gaze cues. The misdirection of attention by visual and social cues is of interest to understanding visual and social cognition.
Figure showing how gestures can be used to prime a card. Figure based on the following paper. <... more Figure showing how gestures can be used to prime a card. Figure based on the following paper. <br><br>Pailhès, A., & Kuhn, G. (2020). Influencing choices with conversational primes: How a magic trick unconsciously influences card choices. <i>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</i>, 202000682. doi:10.1073/pnas.2000682117<br><br>
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Papers by Gustav Kuhn