Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind, brain, behavior and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a guest. He will stimulate your mind and give
Speaker 1: you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world
Speaker 1: to live in. Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into
Speaker 1: human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast today.
Speaker 1: It's great to have Gustav Kohn on the show. Born
Speaker 1: in Switzerland, Cohn discovered his passion for magic at the
Speaker 1: age of thirteen, and much of his teenage years were
Speaker 1: dedicated to the art of illusion and deception. At the
Speaker 1: age of nineteen, he moved to London to follow his
Speaker 1: dream of becoming a professional magician, but his career took
Speaker 1: a dramatic change after he discovered a keen interest for
Speaker 1: psychology uh oh. Gustav went on to study psychology at
Speaker 1: Sussex University, and towards the end of his PhD, he
Speaker 1: noticed a direct link between magic and psychology. His unique
Speaker 1: background in science and magic allowed him to build bridges
Speaker 1: between these two domeans, which helped him establish a science
Speaker 1: of Magic. Colnan is a reader at Goldsmith University of
Speaker 1: London and director of the Magic Lab, who stands for
Speaker 1: mind attention and general illusory cognition. He's one of the
Speaker 1: pioneering researchers in the science of magic, and he's one
Speaker 1: of the founding members and president of the Science of
Speaker 1: Magic Association. His latest book is called Experiencing the Impossible,
Speaker 1: The Science of Magic. Gustav so great to talk to
Speaker 1: you today. Hello, Hi, you sound very excited to be
Speaker 1: on the show. Yeah, okay, yeah, well, thank you for
Speaker 1: being on the show. This is the first time we've
Speaker 1: represented magic, and personally, I'm very excited to have this
Speaker 1: conversation with you because I was really to magic as
Speaker 1: a child, and he used to do like apartments and
Speaker 1: things like that, only that you know, like Glenn Children's
Speaker 1: parties and never really got invited back. But yeah, actual performances, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I'd pour rabbits out of hats and oh wow wow,
Speaker 1: all sorts of things. But I you know, I was
Speaker 1: just fascinated with it. I wonder to what extent it
Speaker 1: influenced my interest in psychology. There's a link there, right,
Speaker 1: There's something that let you up when you discovered psychology
Speaker 1: and what's the overapp there? What's the ven diagram? Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: in some ways it's a bit of a weird link
Speaker 1: because it took a lot longer than I expected it
Speaker 1: would take because I don't know what you were like
Speaker 1: when you were performing magic. But I was interested in
Speaker 1: anything that could improve my performances, and I read lots
Speaker 1: of really weird books, from palm reading to body language,
Speaker 1: and of course psychology as well, because magic is really
Speaker 1: all about psychology. Magic is a process that happens in
Speaker 1: spectator's mind, and to create a powerful magical illusion, you
Speaker 1: really need to understand how humans think and behave, And
Speaker 1: so I've read a lot of psychology or pop psychology
Speaker 1: your books as a teenager, and it was really my
Speaker 1: passion for magic, and that sparked my interest in psychology.
Speaker 1: So I went to study psychology at university. But I
Speaker 1: was rather disappointed because none of the psychology that I
Speaker 1: came across at university had anything to do with magic,
Speaker 1: and not to talk to people about magic. They thought
Speaker 1: it was interesting, but there just simply hadn't been any
Speaker 1: research done on this. And I then went on to
Speaker 1: do a PhD in consciousness and it was only towards
Speaker 1: the end of my PhD that I actually properly realized
Speaker 1: this link between psychology and magic because a lot of
Speaker 1: questions that psychologists are interested in, it's just consciousness, belief, attention,
Speaker 1: free will. Well, these are all principles that magicians have
Speaker 1: learned about over generations. And that was really the spark
Speaker 1: for me to establish a science of magic. And it
Speaker 1: really started by simply trying to understand how magicians can
Speaker 1: missdirect people's attention. Yeah, I mean, if you look at
Speaker 1: the perception literature, it's all about illusions. Well, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's a lot of it is, and there's lots
Speaker 1: of indirect links. I mean, if you think about the
Speaker 1: perception of literature, but even developmental psychologists as well, because
Speaker 1: a lot of the developmental paradigms that I used are
Speaker 1: actually simple magic tricks as well. So developmental psychologists perform
Speaker 1: magic tricks for infants and young children, and they measure
Speaker 1: how they respond to them as a way of really
Speaker 1: understanding how their brain works. And rather than performing magic
Speaker 1: just for kids, we actually perform magic tricks for adults,
Speaker 1: again as a way of understanding how human cognition works. Wonderful,
Speaker 1: So you still perform in all or did you ever perform? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I used to perform semi professionally. My big aim was
Speaker 1: to become a professional magician. I grew up in Switzerland.
Speaker 1: I at the age of nineteen I moved to London
Speaker 1: to start my career really as a professional magician. I
Speaker 1: failed quite badly in that I just simply couldn't find
Speaker 1: enough work, and that's what then led me back into
Speaker 1: academia again. Really, so it's like those who can't teach
Speaker 1: what's the expression, those who can't do it teach it
Speaker 1: or something? Yeah, well it was maybe this is not
Speaker 1: quite as much on yourself, not quite as direct as that.
Speaker 1: I think it's also I realized that actually I became
Speaker 1: more interested in studying more about the human mind than
Speaker 1: just simply performing magic. Is that kargditive dissonance. I don't
Speaker 1: think it is. I think it's also it was I
Speaker 1: came to London and at the time where magic just
Speaker 1: simply wasn't actually that popular. I don't think magic is
Speaker 1: really popular in the UK at the moment, but at
Speaker 1: the time it was very difficult to get paid work.
Speaker 1: I was also trained as a busker, but in London,
Speaker 1: busking was banned in most places at the time, so
Speaker 1: again that made it very difficul or to make a living.
Speaker 1: I have two questions. One was busking and two why
Speaker 1: was it banned as a busking? Well, busking is street performing.
Speaker 1: As student of Chimpcillini, so I was trained as a
Speaker 1: street performer, and why it was banned, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I never really fully understood this. There were any very
Speaker 1: few places in London where you're actually allowed to busk.
Speaker 1: So let's back up a second and define the word magic,
Speaker 1: because you talk about that a little bit in your book,
Speaker 1: and I was wondering if we could put some parameters
Speaker 1: around that, like what's not magic? Well, magic is one
Speaker 1: of these really tough terms to define, like consciousness or
Speaker 1: lots of other things, and I think it's a very
Speaker 1: ill defined term and a quite a poorly understood term
Speaker 1: as well. What's interesting about magic from a performance point
Speaker 1: of view is that magicians spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: writing about how you can actually create magic, but they
Speaker 1: don't spend that much time actually trying to understand what
Speaker 1: the concept did say means. So very little is really
Speaker 1: known about the concept of magic itself in a performance context.
Speaker 1: And again, here. I mean, this is where it gets
Speaker 1: a bit murky. The kind of magic that I'm interested
Speaker 1: in is performance magic. So this is the magic that
Speaker 1: where magicians use tricks and deception to create the illusion
Speaker 1: of the impossible. And that's different to some people who
Speaker 1: genuinely believe in magical miracles. So the magic that I'm
Speaker 1: talking about is really the entertainment magic. So to understand magic,
Speaker 1: I think of magic as really all being about conflict.
Speaker 1: It's about cognitive conflict, deep and signed our brains between
Speaker 1: the things you believe to be possible and the things
Speaker 1: that you just experience. So I mean you were talking
Speaker 1: about how you made the rabbits appear from hats up
Speaker 1: bar Mitzvahas there's a beautiful example where consciously and logically
Speaker 1: you know that rabbits can't simply materialize inside a hat.
Speaker 1: As you're pulling that rabbit out of that hat, that's
Speaker 1: exactly what you're experiencing. And so magic creates a very
Speaker 1: interesting cognitive conflict between the things that you're experiencing and
Speaker 1: the things that you believe to be possible. That's what
Speaker 1: I think of as magic, and we need magic in
Speaker 1: a world. I mean, if nothing was magical, wouldn't life
Speaker 1: be pretty boring? I think so, I think. I mean again,
Speaker 1: this is one of the interesting questions that we've been
Speaker 1: starting to look at as well as well. Why are
Speaker 1: people so drawn towards magic? And I think when we
Speaker 1: talk about the science of magic, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: focus on the deception and the illusions and the tricking.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of positive sides about magic as well,
Speaker 1: in that magic can the list a wonder, can listen
Speaker 1: a whole range of really powerful positive emotions, and it
Speaker 1: can make the world just a happier place as well. Ah.
Speaker 1: I love that because I mean that's the particular link
Speaker 1: that you've scientifically investigating, the link to well being. How
Speaker 1: is magic link to well being? So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of programs, a lot of magicians have been using magic
Speaker 1: as a way of enhancing people's well being, and we've
Speaker 1: become very interested in trying to make this link between
Speaker 1: magic and the enhancement of well being. And my PhD
Speaker 1: student Steve Baganski, he's dedicated his whole PhD towards understanding this.
Speaker 1: And I think magic can be used to enhanced well
Speaker 1: being in different ways. One of the most powerful ways
Speaker 1: is really through teaching people to perform magic, and we
Speaker 1: actually do this at Goldsmiths where we train a lot
Speaker 1: of our students up in magic. They participate in magic
Speaker 1: workshops right at the beginning of their course where they
Speaker 1: learn a whole range of magic tricks, and we find
Speaker 1: that this has got a really positive impact on their
Speaker 1: lives in that it enhances their self esteem. So the
Speaker 1: report that actually learning magic makes them feel better about themselves,
Speaker 1: and it also enhances their reported well being as well.
Speaker 1: So after participating in these workshops, they report they actually
Speaker 1: feel better about themselves as well. So learning how to
Speaker 1: perform magic increases well being, Yes, it can. I think
Speaker 1: it can in certain ways. Now, what we're interested in
Speaker 1: and the thing that Steve is particularly investigating, and say
Speaker 1: who Steers aren't going to know exactly who Steve is,
Speaker 1: So Steph Aganski is one of my PhD students in
Speaker 1: the Magic Lab who's really focusing on this well being
Speaker 1: aspect of our research. But yeah, I think magic has
Speaker 1: got a lot of really powerful components because for one,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why we're interested in magic is
Speaker 1: that very few I mean, you're an exception in that
Speaker 1: you've got a very deep background in magic as well,
Speaker 1: but most of our students have never pulled the rabbit
Speaker 1: out of the hat, so they're all starting at the
Speaker 1: same point in terms of their expertise in magic. And
Speaker 1: although it takes thousands of hours of training to become
Speaker 1: a professional magician, it's actually quite easy for people to
Speaker 1: learn simple magic tricks. And what we find is that
Speaker 1: magic is a great tool whereby we can teach someone
Speaker 1: a skill that previously they thought was just completely impossible.
Speaker 1: So you watch a magician performing a trick, so for example,
Speaker 1: he may cut a piece of rope in half and
Speaker 1: then magically restore that. You watch that, you're very curious
Speaker 1: about it. You feel I have no idea how it's done.
Speaker 1: And our participants generally think that it's impossible for them
Speaker 1: to be able to do this, And within a relatively
Speaker 1: short amount of time we can actually teach them to
Speaker 1: perform these types of tricks. And performing these tricks in
Speaker 1: front of other people gives them lots of really positive feedback,
Speaker 1: and I think that's what makes them feel better about themselves.
Speaker 1: And also there's this feeling like a sense of control,
Speaker 1: right like you hear a lot of magicians talk about
Speaker 1: their early childhood. It is like being bullied or being
Speaker 1: outcast in some way, And doesn't it kind of make
Speaker 1: you feel like you're doing one up on others? I
Speaker 1: think so. I mean, I think it means interests an
Speaker 1: interesting point really the whole bullying, because when you talk
Speaker 1: to a lot of magicians, a lot of magicians claim
Speaker 1: that they got into magic because they were struggling at
Speaker 1: school or they were the outcasts in some ways. And
Speaker 1: I think magic can give you that special skill that
Speaker 1: you can do something which others can't do. And I mean,
Speaker 1: I know from I never got bullied at school, but
Speaker 1: I definitely being able to perform magic that opened doors
Speaker 1: that would have been closed otherwise. And I think that
Speaker 1: can be a really useful thing, again in terms of
Speaker 1: helping people who may not necessarily feel very good about
Speaker 1: themselves or have all lack social skills as well. I
Speaker 1: think because being able to perform magic gives you a
Speaker 1: script of how you can conduct a social interaction, and
Speaker 1: it gives something that people can talk about and it
Speaker 1: makes you interesting as well. So again I think that's
Speaker 1: another really interesting aspect of magic. Yeah, it's just an
Speaker 1: observation I've made about magicians. Yeah, there's also obviously well
Speaker 1: being benefits to experiencing magic, right, not like it being
Speaker 1: the one doing it, but just being in the audience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think there's a Again, there's not that much
Speaker 1: is known about the impact that experiencing magic, so simply
Speaker 1: watching magic as a spectator can have on people's well being.
Speaker 1: But there's some research by Eugene Zubotsky who showed that
Speaker 1: watching magical content content can increase people's creativity. So these
Speaker 1: were studies that were carried on children where children got
Speaker 1: to see video clips of Harry Potter extracts, and some
Speaker 1: of these extracts included magic, the others non magical, and
Speaker 1: the kids who actually watched the magical content they scored
Speaker 1: high on creativity. How is creativity like division? Thinking? Sorry,
Speaker 1: like division thinking? Like how many uses? So the so
Speaker 1: I think one of the So they used a drawing
Speaker 1: task and an alternative use as task as well, whereby
Speaker 1: the kids are given a word or concept than they
Speaker 1: have to come up with lots of different creative uses
Speaker 1: for that concept. So those types of tasks, Well, that's cool,
Speaker 1: that link to creativity. Why do you think there was
Speaker 1: that link to creativity? Personally? I think magic is all
Speaker 1: about what it's about experiencing the impossible, and it pushes
Speaker 1: the boundaries of what's possible. So you watch some so
Speaker 1: you imagine like when you watch someone doing some mind
Speaker 1: reading and they consciously you think, you know that mind
Speaker 1: reading isn't actually possible, and yet suddenly you're experiencing something
Speaker 1: that previously you felt was just completely impossible. And I
Speaker 1: think that can potentially enhance people's wide than your thinking,
Speaker 1: and that's what can enhance people's creativity as well. WHOA,
Speaker 1: what was that? That was just a bit of I
Speaker 1: think it's just some fireworks in the back right now.
Speaker 1: I'm in London and it's just started a bit dark. Okay,
Speaker 1: sound like good shot. But anyway, we'll just overlook that. So, oh,
Speaker 1: this is great. I'm glad you touched on. You know,
Speaker 1: creativity is my like I get a giddy whenever one
Speaker 1: of my guests uses the word creativity. You know, there's
Speaker 1: just research showing that just experiencing, I mean, there is
Speaker 1: like systematic research showing that weird experiences increase creative thinking.
Speaker 1: Like they've done experiments where they put you in a
Speaker 1: virtual reality environment and if you walk towards a table
Speaker 1: and it's defined the law of gravity, so thinks you're
Speaker 1: supposed to get bigger as you get closer them, but
Speaker 1: they get smaller. You know, people just completely changing all
Speaker 1: the things people are used to in their daily life,
Speaker 1: and you find that they do better on creativity tests.
Speaker 1: I'll send you some of those papers. Okay, that'd be great. Actually,
Speaker 1: I mean that links really with sort of some of
Speaker 1: the ideas that we have about magic as well, because
Speaker 1: of course magic is really all about, Yeah, you're entering
Speaker 1: a world where new things are possible, and I think
Speaker 1: there's a there's a there's a link to childhood as well.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'll see it. I've got three young kids
Speaker 1: and their sense of creativity is just absolutely amazing. And
Speaker 1: quite often when we talk to people after they're watching
Speaker 1: some magic tricks, they report that it feels it reminds
Speaker 1: them of their childhood. And again, I think we haven't
Speaker 1: done much research on this yet, but I do strongly
Speaker 1: believe that when you're watching very strong magic, it can
Speaker 1: elicit emotional experiences that are very similar to childhood experiences,
Speaker 1: and it can evoke this sensation where you're in a
Speaker 1: world or really lots of things are possible, again, I
Speaker 1: mean if I look at my kids when they're playing,
Speaker 1: their pretend to play is so creative, and I mean
Speaker 1: I'm so boring compared to them because I have all
Speaker 1: these strict rules, these areas about what is about what
Speaker 1: is possible? And so again, I think it's possible that
Speaker 1: watching and experiencing magic elicits these kind of emotional experiences
Speaker 1: that can just break down some of these barriers and
Speaker 1: make you more creative. Love that anything that I'll make
Speaker 1: us more creative. I'm a big proponent of that. So
Speaker 1: you mentioned misdirection earlier. I think misdirection is just like
Speaker 1: one of the biggest things and the magician's toolkit. There's
Speaker 1: been these elaborate setups and things like I'll watch like
Speaker 1: a show and be like, wow, that was just impossible,
Speaker 1: and then I'll like google like have that magician do that?
Speaker 1: And they're all these like forums and threads. You can
Speaker 1: sometimes actually find out that the truth and some of
Speaker 1: the things are the most banal. Like it's a whole
Speaker 1: elaborate thing, but it all came down to just the
Speaker 1: magician at one point was just I turned my head
Speaker 1: and looked at they said like, look at this amazing
Speaker 1: thing over here, and then and then they just put
Speaker 1: the whole elephin there and we didn't see it. But
Speaker 1: do you see, I'm saying, like some of it it
Speaker 1: seems so elaborate when it just came down a really
Speaker 1: simple misdirection. Yes, I mean I think, I mean, I
Speaker 1: fully agree in that misdirection is really central to all
Speaker 1: of magic. I published a paper a few years ago
Speaker 1: which tried to conceptualize and categorize all different principles in misdirection,
Speaker 1: and by doing so I suddenly realized and actually fact
Speaker 1: all magic is missdirection in that it's almost impossible to
Speaker 1: think of any miss any magic trick without misdirection. But
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of misconceptions really about what
Speaker 1: missdirection is as well. When you look up the term
Speaker 1: missed direction and Wikipedia or any dictionary generally simply talks
Speaker 1: about attention. It talks about distracting someone's attention to prevent
Speaker 1: them from seeing certain things happen, and attentional misdirection is
Speaker 1: an important component. A misdirection is far more complex in
Speaker 1: that it involves cognitive processes across a whole wide range
Speaker 1: of spectrum, so manipulating what you're at tending to is
Speaker 1: simply one misdirection process, because you can use misdirection to
Speaker 1: manipulate how what you remember about an event, and you
Speaker 1: can also use misdirection to manipulate how you reconstruct an
Speaker 1: event and actually reason about an event. And so the
Speaker 1: way that we think of misdirection now is really linking
Speaker 1: it to our cognitive understanding of the human mind, which
Speaker 1: looks at the encoding process. So that's the perception of something,
Speaker 1: the memory of the event, and then you're reasoning about
Speaker 1: the event as well. So there's a lot more that
Speaker 1: goes into it. Yeah, there's a lot. So it's I mean,
Speaker 1: you can think about misdirection as manipulating what you're seeing.
Speaker 1: But of course when you're watching a magic trick and
Speaker 1: afterwards you try and work out how it's done, mistakes
Speaker 1: can happen at lots of different levels, so you may
Speaker 1: not necessarily have seen what's happened, so it can that
Speaker 1: can prevent you from actually working out how it's done.
Speaker 1: Or maybe you saw it but you simply didn't remember it,
Speaker 1: so that's where the memory processes can kick in. Or
Speaker 1: you can actually remember all of the details about the
Speaker 1: magic trick, but you see cannot actually work it out,
Speaker 1: and so that would be the reasoning process that's being misdirected. Nice.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious, like, does magic have a neural basis?
Speaker 1: Like what if we looked at in the brain of
Speaker 1: the person as they're being misdirected, Like, what would we see?
Speaker 1: What is your own research on Well, I think everything's
Speaker 1: got a neural basis. I know, as long as you're alive.
Speaker 1: It was a leaning question and as long as you
Speaker 1: accept that all cognition happens, right, Well, this is the
Speaker 1: question you posed in your book. But I think there's
Speaker 1: a back. This is nearly this is about ten years
Speaker 1: ago or more. We started a project that tried to
Speaker 1: study the neural basis of magic in terms of and
Speaker 1: here by magic I mean watching simple magic tricks. Now,
Speaker 1: I was lucky to collaborate with a friend of mine,
Speaker 1: Ben Paris, who was working in a big lab where
Speaker 1: they had access to neuroimaging, which allowed us to use
Speaker 1: functional neuroimaging to try and study the brain activation whilst
Speaker 1: people are watching a magic trick. Now, at the time
Speaker 1: we were this is I mean, I have to say
Speaker 1: this is quite a while ago. Neuroimaging has moved on
Speaker 1: a lot in the last ten years, but this was
Speaker 1: a time where you could still get really excited about
Speaker 1: just identifying a brain area that would be responsible for
Speaker 1: particular task or so. And our dream was at the
Speaker 1: time to just find this one spot in the brain
Speaker 1: that will be responding to magic, and we already came
Speaker 1: up with the name of calling it the magic spot.
Speaker 1: This kind of show was a little bit how naive.
Speaker 1: We were kind of like about this reception, and so
Speaker 1: we created lots of video clips of me performing magic tricks.
Speaker 1: A lot of this was actually filmed. We didn't have
Speaker 1: much funding for this. A lot of this was filmed
Speaker 1: in my bedroom of me performing magic tricks. And we
Speaker 1: had control conditions as well. So for example, I would
Speaker 1: make a coin disappear, but in these kind of studies
Speaker 1: you needed control condition as well. So I would use
Speaker 1: a coin and do something unusual with it. I can't
Speaker 1: remember what it was. Maybe I would have brushed my
Speaker 1: teeth with it or shoved it in my ear or
Speaker 1: something like that. And we then scanned people's brains whilst
Speaker 1: they were watching these magic tricks and compared compared the
Speaker 1: neural activation to when they're watching something that was simply
Speaker 1: unusual The results were really very surprising in that we
Speaker 1: got fairly localized activation that was responsible for the perception
Speaker 1: of magic tricks, which was in the also actual prefun
Speaker 1: to cortex and then air. We are known as the
Speaker 1: ACC of the SEC conflict resolution exactly. And now at
Speaker 1: the time we were a bit disappointed because we were
Speaker 1: trying to find a more specific area. But then, of
Speaker 1: course it turns out that the ACC is responsible for
Speaker 1: this conflict resolution, which fits very nicely now with this
Speaker 1: idea that magic is really all about cognitive conflict between
Speaker 1: the things that you're experiencing and the things that you
Speaker 1: believe to be possible. So although we were a bit
Speaker 1: disappointed at the time, actually, now the way that we're
Speaker 1: thinking about magic, a lot of this neuroimaging works makes
Speaker 1: a lot more sense. Oh for sure. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: there isn't like a magic part of the brain. Like
Speaker 1: this is a process that we go through a lot
Speaker 1: in our daily life, and magic plays off of these
Speaker 1: deeply evolved brain areas. Yeah, and I think that's a
Speaker 1: really important point. I mean, magic is unique in that
Speaker 1: it can create this sense of wonder, but of course
Speaker 1: a lot of the cognitive process that are actually involved
Speaker 1: in magic happened to us all the time, I mean
Speaker 1: all the time, exceptual illusions. We are constantly being fooled
Speaker 1: by all of these illusions. It's just that during the
Speaker 1: day to day life, you just don't realize that you're
Speaker 1: being fooled by the illusions. And again with this cognitive conflict,
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe there is something unique to magic, or
Speaker 1: maybe it's really very similar to other kinds of conflict
Speaker 1: that we are still really at the beginning of trying
Speaker 1: to discover. So do we all experience the same magic.
Speaker 1: It's very difficult to under to really know what someone
Speaker 1: else is experiencing. But I don't think we do. And
Speaker 1: there's several reasons for one. I mean, if we think
Speaker 1: about so in terms of magic, like if we now
Speaker 1: think of magic as being about this conflict, this conflict
Speaker 1: relies on two main factors. The first one is what
Speaker 1: you are perceiving, and the second one is what you
Speaker 1: believe to be possible. Now, of course, we all have
Speaker 1: different beliefs about what is possible. If you think about
Speaker 1: an extreme example with kids. Now, kids have got very
Speaker 1: different beliefs about the world, and so things that seem
Speaker 1: impossible for us may actually seem possible for them. So
Speaker 1: if you think about the concept like early early on infants,
Speaker 1: they don't have the concept of object permanency. And what
Speaker 1: this means is that for them, objects that go out
Speaker 1: of sight may also disappear. And of course you and
Speaker 1: I know that if an object is simply included by something.
Speaker 1: So if you've got a cup of coffee on your
Speaker 1: table and your box of rice crispies is including your
Speaker 1: view of your cup of coffee, you know that cup
Speaker 1: of coffee hasn't disappeared. It's still there even though you
Speaker 1: can't see it. Now, this is known as object permanency. End,
Speaker 1: there's a process that doesn't kick in until quite later
Speaker 1: on in life. And so that's really at this object
Speaker 1: permits is at the center of a lot of magic
Speaker 1: tricks where you make an object disappear and you really
Speaker 1: surprise and amaze by that. Now you're amazed by this
Speaker 1: because you know that objects don't simply disappear in everyday life.
Speaker 1: A young child won't have that concept and so for them,
Speaker 1: simply making an object to disappear won't elicit that type
Speaker 1: of cognitive conflict. And indeed, if we look developmentally, children
Speaker 1: have a very different experience of magic tricks to adults.
Speaker 1: But I think even for us adults, we all have
Speaker 1: different beliefs about the world, and since magic is about
Speaker 1: creating this conflict between your experience and your belief, you
Speaker 1: will probably experience a magic tricks very differently to the
Speaker 1: way I do it. And again, like anecdotally, we know.
Speaker 1: I've realized this when think about mind reading. I have
Speaker 1: performed mind reading effects for people who genuinely believe that
Speaker 1: these things are possible, and they actually experience the mind
Speaker 1: reading magic trick as being very different to someone who's
Speaker 1: more skeptical about this. So I think that's on one level,
Speaker 1: But then with this conflict, it's about the belief and
Speaker 1: your experience. And again, the more we're learning about how
Speaker 1: the human brain works, the more we've come to realize
Speaker 1: that all of our experiences of the world are really
Speaker 1: very different as well. And so given that we all
Speaker 1: experience the world differently, that also implies that we should
Speaker 1: be experiencing magic very differently as well. Yeah, but I mean,
Speaker 1: isn't the magician banking on the fact that their audience
Speaker 1: is not experiencing it differently? I guess you're hoping that
Speaker 1: your audience is a bunch of newbies. What you do
Speaker 1: to a certain extent. I mean, I think as a magician,
Speaker 1: you do try to create this illusion in everyone, but
Speaker 1: you'll never have Yeah, the audience will never respond. Everybody's different.
Speaker 1: Everybody will respond differently to a particular effect. Now, in
Speaker 1: certain circumstances, these differences may be smaller, about in others
Speaker 1: they may be bigger as well. Well, I'm just so
Speaker 1: interested in different types of magic, and there's a particular
Speaker 1: type that that they interest me on. These what are
Speaker 1: they called the like the mind illusionists? Yep, mentalism. So
Speaker 1: interested in mentalism. I saw a show in Vegas not
Speaker 1: that long ago that just really did well in my mind.
Speaker 1: I just can't understand how he and I talked to
Speaker 1: the people efforts like were you planned? They're like no,
Speaker 1: he literally guessed the name of the obscure name of
Speaker 1: my ex girlfriend. And I just don't understand how they
Speaker 1: do it. Can you tell me how they do it?
Speaker 1: I'm currently in enough trouble with the magic circle if
Speaker 1: I'll tell you how the magic circle muscle of you. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm carrently being investigated by the Exposure Committee and there's
Speaker 1: a chance that I'm being expelled from the magic stir.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, that sounds horrible telling people that I
Speaker 1: missed that magician's miss direct your attention. It's pretty much
Speaker 1: as sippy as that. Yeah, you have a whole theory
Speaker 1: about the Beasian theory of mister action. And they're like,
Speaker 1: that's so nerdy, that's you must be expelled. I'll have
Speaker 1: to be expelled for that. But I mean, I'll try
Speaker 1: to with a lot of this research. I mean, I
Speaker 1: love magic and I don't really want to give away
Speaker 1: any of the secrets. But and in this case, I
Speaker 1: have no idea how this has done. And I think mentalism,
Speaker 1: I mean, mentalism is a really fascinating area of magic
Speaker 1: and it's probably one of the most popular eras of
Speaker 1: magic as well. And I think what's really interesting about
Speaker 1: mentalism is that it blurs this boundary between real magic
Speaker 1: and trickery. So when you're watching a magician pulling a
Speaker 1: rabbit out of a hat, most people know it's a trick.
Speaker 1: Like you don't think that the magician has got genuine
Speaker 1: magical powers. You realize is that what you are seeing
Speaker 1: is an elaborate illusion. With mentalism, this isn't a slightly
Speaker 1: different area, because once someone starts reading your mind, we
Speaker 1: become much more likely to actually accept what you are
Speaker 1: seeing as being genuine or real, and in particular, when
Speaker 1: mentalists start using psychological principles as well. So I don't
Speaker 1: know in the States whether I mean in the UK,
Speaker 1: Darren Brown is a very popular to mention him. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's one of my favorite magicians. You know him personally,
Speaker 1: are your friends with him? I don't know him personally,
Speaker 1: but I do really really like a lot of his
Speaker 1: a lot of delusions and of course he so Darren Brown,
Speaker 1: he created a new type of magic, which he calls
Speaker 1: mind control. And so rather than claiming that he's reading
Speaker 1: people's minds, he claims to be using psychological principles to
Speaker 1: read someone's thoughts. So he may claim that he's reading
Speaker 1: your body language or micro expressions, or use elaborate psychological
Speaker 1: priming to influence your decision making as well. And what's
Speaker 1: interesting about this is that when people watch these types
Speaker 1: of illusions, they genuinely believe that that's what he's doing,
Speaker 1: when actual fact, it often involves simple magic tricks. I
Speaker 1: mean I'm saying simple. It's not simple because they're really
Speaker 1: very clever magic tricks. But it's a similar kind of
Speaker 1: magic tricks that other magicians may use when they claim
Speaker 1: that they're reading your mind. So what Darren Brown is doing,
Speaker 1: he's giving you a psychological pseudo explanation as to what
Speaker 1: he's actually doing. Now, we've done a lot of work
Speaker 1: research on this to show that people genuinely believe that
Speaker 1: this stuff is real. That what's even more worrying is
Speaker 1: that it doesn't really matter whether you tell people that
Speaker 1: they're watching a magician or psychologist. So even if they
Speaker 1: tell them, actually, you're watching a magician who's using tricks,
Speaker 1: people still genuinely believe that the kind of principles that
Speaker 1: they claim to be doing are actually real. And this
Speaker 1: is what makes mentalism so interesting in that it really
Speaker 1: blurs the distinction between real magic or what people think
Speaker 1: of as real magic and trickery. And obviously there's individual
Speaker 1: differences there and how people perceive that you might have
Speaker 1: the Dieharden sinx when you tell them, well, that like
Speaker 1: changes something in their brain and the way they perceive it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So we've been over the last five years or what
Speaker 1: we've been carrying out a big research project, not just
Speaker 1: on these mentalism effects using psychological explanations but also using
Speaker 1: spiritualist explanations. So what we're interested here is why people
Speaker 1: believe in genuine magic and things that normally will be impossible.
Speaker 1: And so in these experiments, we get a magician to
Speaker 1: come and perform some magic for our students, and they
Speaker 1: use this form of mentalism. So we create a fake
Speaker 1: spiritualist experience whereby the magician may read a person's or
Speaker 1: read personal information about the person and then do a
Speaker 1: really specific reading where we get them to find out
Speaker 1: about their deceased relatives. Now all of this is done
Speaker 1: using tricks. I mean, it's very clever tricks and very
Speaker 1: powerful tricks, but it is tricks. But half the participants
Speaker 1: were initially told that they're going to be watching a magician,
Speaker 1: whilst the other half we're told that they're watching a
Speaker 1: genuine psychic. That what's very interesting is that this manipulation,
Speaker 1: so this framing, whether we tell them it's a magician
Speaker 1: or psychic, has very little impact on how they interpret
Speaker 1: what they've just seen. So we have people who we've
Speaker 1: told you're watching a magician who's using tricks and is
Speaker 1: still genuinely believe that the person's gott got real spiritual powers.
Speaker 1: But what we find is that people's interpretation of what
Speaker 1: they're seeing is very strongly linked to their prior beliefs.
Speaker 1: As you suggested before in that that die hard skeptics, well,
Speaker 1: they will attribute what they're seeing down to trickery, whilst
Speaker 1: the mother the believers are more likely to attribute what
Speaker 1: they've seen to genuine spiritual powers. Have you looked at
Speaker 1: open as to experience as a personality moderator? We haven't
Speaker 1: in this context. No, we have in other context looking
Speaker 1: at people's enjoyment for magic, but rather surprisingly, we don't
Speaker 1: actually find any correlation between openers to experience and people's
Speaker 1: enjoyment for magic, which is something I would have predicted
Speaker 1: would predicted that too. I don't find any correlation between
Speaker 1: any of them age tits. What's good news for your
Speaker 1: as a researcher. That was very disappointing, but of course
Speaker 1: in some ways it is also very encouraging that it
Speaker 1: suggests that actually magic seems to tap into something that's
Speaker 1: really very rather universal universal. So what is the magician's force?
Speaker 1: The magician's force is a principle that magicians used to
Speaker 1: influence your decision making. So, for example, you may be
Speaker 1: asked to pick a card that might have a playing cards,
Speaker 1: I'll shoffle the cards and I'll ask you to pick
Speaker 1: a card. I then say, I'll read your mind by
Speaker 1: an actual fact rather than reading your mind, I forced
Speaker 1: that card, which means that I knew beforehand which card
Speaker 1: that you're going to be choosing. And the magician force
Speaker 1: is a general principle. It's a principle bit like misdirection,
Speaker 1: whereby magicians have got lots of different psychological tricks and
Speaker 1: principles that they can use too many plate your decision making.
Speaker 1: But what's important about this is that the decision making
Speaker 1: is being influenced even though you are not aware of
Speaker 1: this influence. So you feel that you've made a free choice,
Speaker 1: yet in actual fact that choice has been forced. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: So have you been studying that personally? Yeah? So again.
Speaker 1: So one of my other PhD students, Alice Palla, she's
Speaker 1: dedicating a whole PhD towards trying to understand the psychological
Speaker 1: mechanisms that underlie them, the psychological for these psychological forces.
Speaker 1: And again, a psychologists were really interested in this because
Speaker 1: if we think about it like free will, as a
Speaker 1: central concept to humans. Say, you're manipulating free will, and
Speaker 1: there's been, there, there's been. One of these holy grails
Speaker 1: of psychology really is to find powerful ways of manipulating
Speaker 1: people's decision making processes, to think about subliminal perception or
Speaker 1: other forms of priming. And although these principles work, their
Speaker 1: effects are generally really very very limited, which makes it
Speaker 1: quite difficult for us to actually study these processes in
Speaker 1: the lab. What we're finding with the Magician's Force is
Speaker 1: that we've got these really powerful principles which are highly reliable,
Speaker 1: and yet people are completely oblivious to the fact that
Speaker 1: their choice has been manipulated. And this provides us with
Speaker 1: great tools to study concepts such as free will and
Speaker 1: our people's center of agency. Yeah, I worry about people
Speaker 1: who use magic for not good, you know, for evil.
Speaker 1: I mean you have a lot of you do you
Speaker 1: have a lot of people studying up on like hgnosis
Speaker 1: and things like that trying to manipulate people. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I think there's a real worry with a lot
Speaker 1: of these. I mean there's sort of like I mean,
Speaker 1: you mentioned hypnosis. I think the whole the way, if
Speaker 1: you think about the whole the impact that fake news
Speaker 1: and a lot of these other forms of misdirection which
Speaker 1: work on a much a bigger scale have and are
Speaker 1: being exploited by politicians and other organizations. Think that is
Speaker 1: quite worrying, and I guess I mean this is one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why we're interested in a lot of
Speaker 1: this research is to find ways to protect ourselves from
Speaker 1: this as well. So we've just started a project which
Speaker 1: is funded by the Australian government, which is actually looking
Speaker 1: at whether we can implement some of these magic techniques
Speaker 1: into artificial intelligence, So whether we can actually use magic
Speaker 1: principles to prevent us sort of like to prevent us
Speaker 1: from being cheated by bots and other artificial intelligence devices. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are intelligence is an interesting one. Once they can
Speaker 1: get the competitional power to really blow our minds, hopefully
Speaker 1: magicians will never come absolutely. You know, it feels like
Speaker 1: the presentation part is a big part of it, right,
Speaker 1: the human charisma part two it, Yeah, the whole the
Speaker 1: showmanship within the magic performance is really essential. Follow agreed.
Speaker 1: I know that you do talk about the link between
Speaker 1: magic and human machine interaction in your Yeah, is there
Speaker 1: anything else you wanted to say about that topic? While
Speaker 1: we're on it. Well, that's an interesting link and one
Speaker 1: that probably a lot of people wouldn't have necessarily have thought.
Speaker 1: I was like, so cool. But of course, again mentioned
Speaker 1: really right at the beginning. One of the reasons why
Speaker 1: I'm interested in magic is because I think it relates
Speaker 1: to so many things that we just take for granted
Speaker 1: as well. We've spent quite a lot of time talking
Speaker 1: about perception and free will, but a lot of our
Speaker 1: human computer interaction also relies on very similar illusions as well.
Speaker 1: So as we are now having this conversation over skyper
Speaker 1: can see all of these different icons. Well, of course
Speaker 1: this is all an illusion. I mean, I can see
Speaker 1: a picture of your face there, but you're not actually
Speaker 1: really there. Similarly, when you're taking a file and you
Speaker 1: throw it into your trash can, well the file hasn't
Speaker 1: actually been deleted. This is all a very elaborate illusion.
Speaker 1: And as human computer interaction designers, well, the challenges that
Speaker 1: they face are really quite similar to the kind of
Speaker 1: challenges that a magician face because in some ways they've
Speaker 1: got As a computer programmer, you need to create a
Speaker 1: code that provides the illusion that you are actually interacting
Speaker 1: with a real object. As well underdeed. I mean, if
Speaker 1: we look at technological advances, a lot of these advances
Speaker 1: have been made possible by creating these powerful illusions. So
Speaker 1: when you're reading it, you might read a book on
Speaker 1: your iPad and you just have to swipe to move
Speaker 1: over to the to turn the next page. Well, these
Speaker 1: swiping actions create the illusion of you actually turning a
Speaker 1: physical page. And I think a lot of the principles
Speaker 1: that magicians have been developing within their magic performance context
Speaker 1: can be implemented to enhance our human computer interactions as well.
Speaker 1: Such an interesting this interesting how that develops in the
Speaker 1: coming years. Yeah, I mean this is something that has
Speaker 1: been moving quite quickly as well as our graphical interfaces
Speaker 1: are increasing as well. And so another one of my
Speaker 1: PhD students, Shringy, she's actually directly looking at how we
Speaker 1: can implement, for example, forcing principles in a gaming environment
Speaker 1: to increase the user experiencing user experiences whilst gaming as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's very similar principles I play there. Yeah, so how
Speaker 1: can we advance the magic endeavor? Well, this is something
Speaker 1: that I've spent the last fifteen years or more trying
Speaker 1: to convince scientists really to take magic more seriously because
Speaker 1: I think it allows us to studied human mind from
Speaker 1: a very unique angle and such a provisors with a
Speaker 1: great tool to sut of human cognition. We've moved quite far. Really.
Speaker 1: At the beginning, a lot of magicians, a lot of
Speaker 1: scientists just saw magic as just a bit of fun.
Speaker 1: And I think but now we had a point to
Speaker 1: where magic is taught and undergraduate courses as well as
Speaker 1: become part of textbooks as well. It's become a fairly
Speaker 1: established field now. I think in terms of the magicians,
Speaker 1: I've had a more frosty reception really and much more skeptical,
Speaker 1: which I've been really quite surprised by in that when
Speaker 1: I tell magicians about using science to enhance the endeavor,
Speaker 1: they often come back to me and say, well, you
Speaker 1: know what, we've been performing these magic or magicians not
Speaker 1: necessarily then personally, but magicians have been performing these magic
Speaker 1: tricks for centuries, if not millennia, and as such they've
Speaker 1: got a massive head start really on our psychologists now. Personally,
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't disagree with this. And one of
Speaker 1: my motivation for using magic as a tool to study
Speaker 1: the mind has been because we can tap into all
Speaker 1: of this useful quad knowledge about how the brain works.
Speaker 1: But whilst magicians are very good at knowing what kind
Speaker 1: of tricks work, they don't necessarily understand why they work.
Speaker 1: And I think that's where science can really help us,
Speaker 1: because as scientists and psychologists, we have got pretty good
Speaker 1: blueprints now of how the human mind works, and that
Speaker 1: can potentially allow magicians to create much more powerful illusions.
Speaker 1: But even I think that using the psychological or sort
Speaker 1: of like the scientific method can be used to enhance magic,
Speaker 1: because I mean, magic is a weird field in that,
Speaker 1: unlike most other art forms like music or fine art,
Speaker 1: or dance or drama, there's no magic schools. Magic is
Speaker 1: something that is learned through these informal structures, and most
Speaker 1: of the knowledge that magicians have accumulated relies on introspection.
Speaker 1: It relies on an informal introspection about doing, prying out performance,
Speaker 1: evaluating that performance just through person some experiences, and then
Speaker 1: writing these writing these ideas down and some of these
Speaker 1: ideas are probably correct, but others aren't. And I think
Speaker 1: if we really want to advance magic, I think we
Speaker 1: need to use more objective and more systematic scientific principles
Speaker 1: to really study whether these principles actually work or not,
Speaker 1: and I think that's where science can help as well.
Speaker 1: But at the moment, I think this is a very
Speaker 1: revolutionary idea, and it'll still take a few years for
Speaker 1: magicians for some board, but we've actually started a new
Speaker 1: research project in our lab which is directly using science
Speaker 1: as a way of enhancing magic, and hopefully magicians will
Speaker 1: take this on board. Oh that's so cool. So you
Speaker 1: can actually influence the field of magic itself, not just magic,
Speaker 1: influencing psychology. Yeah, I think that would be quite a
Speaker 1: nice way way to give certain things back as well,
Speaker 1: because most of our research, and I think this is
Speaker 1: all of the misunderstandings come from as well, most of
Speaker 1: our work uses magic as a way of understanding the
Speaker 1: human brain. And we're not we're not we're not We're
Speaker 1: not trying to enhance magic, And so magicians often look
Speaker 1: at this research and well, this isn't really a pull
Speaker 1: of me. I can't really see how I can directly
Speaker 1: use this knowledge to improve my magic. And of course
Speaker 1: the reason and why it doesn't work is because that's
Speaker 1: not what we in terms of you, and so what
Speaker 1: we're trying to do with the project is really illustrate
Speaker 1: how science can be used to enhance the magic endeavor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love it and I wish you all the best
Speaker 1: of this endeavor. Is there anything else you wanted to
Speaker 1: mention about the research you're currently working on. No, I
Speaker 1: guess the thing to mention is that it's a it's
Speaker 1: a very fairly new or it's a fairly new field
Speaker 1: of but I've been amazed how in the last fifteen
Speaker 1: years or so, it's just it's standing so dramatically, and
Speaker 1: we now have people from all over the world who
Speaker 1: are using magic as a way of understanding a whole
Speaker 1: range of psycho processes. And you mentioned the science of
Speaker 1: magic association at the beginning, so I think anybody who's
Speaker 1: interested in this do check out the Science of Magic Association.
Speaker 1: And we hold regular courses. The next one is going
Speaker 1: to be in Chicago, which brings together magicians and psychologists.
Speaker 1: So we've got Elizabeth Lofts and Dan Simon's who are
Speaker 1: keynote speakers from the psychology side, and really eminent magicians
Speaker 1: as well, Malin McKean and Simon Aaronson. And these are
Speaker 1: great conferences. They're bothly as well, and they really try
Speaker 1: to bridge this gap between science and magic. Oh that's great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of Daniel Simmons. Well, thanks again
Speaker 1: for being on the Psychology Podcast and talking about this
Speaker 1: topic that we haven't represented yet on the show. Thank
Speaker 1: you very much, Scott. Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you'd like to
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