On a rare evening when there was no sports practice pick-up and no homework to supervise, I sat down to watch one of those ubiquitous talent contests on television. A magician was the next performer. I watched through the mundane banter and setup for his routine, the fluidity of his hand movements as he manipulated the cards. I sat in amazement for those moments, completely separated from the stressors and demands of the day. One of the judges asked the contestant what he was doing to prepare for the next round, and the performer answered, “I practice a whole ton.” The judge followed by saying, “I don’t want to ask too many questions because I like being surprised.”
I then wondered about the psychology of magic. Knowing my field of study, I was sure that some psychologist, somewhere at some point, devoted time to studying the psychology of magic. As it turned out, I was right.
One of the earliest analyses was published in 1894 by the psychological assessment pioneer Alfred Binet. In his article, “Psychology of Prestidigitation,” published in the Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’Etranger. Alfred Binet’s interest in unique and exceptional individuals led him to study this unique group’s skills. His discoveries were so fascinating that his work was translated into English by the Smithsonian Institute.
Binet recognized that “magic is an art” with a unique goal of developing techniques to “mislead and trick us about what we are seeing.” Essentially, it is the goal of the magician to exploit the flaws in our perception and processing. Binet used chronophotography, a technology that allowed for the slow-motion visual recording of tricks and illusions. With that technology, he was able to assess the technique or movement itself and the time necessary to execute the maneuver.
Binet invited several famous magicians of the day to his Sorbonne laboratory for his studies. From these unique investigations, Binet (1894) concluded. “All prestidigitation . . . rests on psychology,” and “It is not our senses that trick us, it is our mind.” In all his work, he determined that the primary tool of the magician is misdirection. More specifically, the magician misdirects attention, a phenomenon known as inattentional blindness (Mack & Rock, 1998), or the failure to process and perceive what is otherwise fully visible.
Interestingly, the misdirection is not always in the magician’s movement but the expectation created by the magician. Simply stated, the focus of our attention is manipulated to make an unexpected outcome. Magicians will use their eyes and the direction of their gaze to draw the audience’s attention to a desired target or focus (Kuhn, Teszka, Tenaw, & Kingstone, 2014). Add to that what is referred to as the magician’s “patter” or conversation to manipulate and guide the audience’s attention (Kuhn et al., 2015). Of course, Binet also recognized the use of screens or visual blocks to hide the audience’s view and exploit the human tendency to fill in what can’t be seen (Kuhn et al., 2105).
As it turns out, much has been written about the psychology of magic and the ability of the performer to exploit well-researched psychological phenomena and vulnerabilities. Interestingly, while I certainly know more about the cognitive vulnerabilities being challenged by the magician, I hesitate to delve further. Perhaps I’m just like the talent contest judge who said, “I like being surprised.”
Dr. Dan DaSilva is a neuropsychologist with specialties in pediatric and aviation neuropsychology. He has extensive experience in the evaluation of a wide range of pediatric cognitive disorders including those resulting from traumatic brain injury, cancer, infections, and developmental disorders, as well as the full range of learning disabilities.
Binet, A. (1894d). La psychologie de la prestidigitation [Psychology of prestidigitation]. Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’Etranger, 37, 346–348.
Kuhn, G., Caffaratti, H. A., Teszka, R., & Rensink, R. A. (2014). A psychologically-based taxonomy of misdirection. Frontiers in Psychology, 5. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014 .01392
Kuhn, G., Teszka, R., Tenaw, N., & Kingstone, A. (2015). Don’t be fooled. Don’t be fooled! Attentional responses to social cues in a face-to-face and video magic trick reveals greater top-down control for overt than covert attention. Cognition, 146, 136–142.
Mack, A., & Rock, I. (1998). Inattentional blindness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
