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Magic Isn't Magic: It's Psychology

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View count:52,445
Likes:3,996
Comments:233
Duration:06:45
Uploaded:2020-11-26
Last sync:2024-10-28 20:00
Thanks to Blinkist for sponsoring this episode. The first 100 people to go to http://blinkist.com/scishowPsych are going to get unlimited access for 1 week to try it out. You’ll also get 25% off if you want the full membership.


Magicians have a handy ace up their sleeve: Your brain, and they're not the only ones who know how to use it.

Hosted by: Hank Green
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Sources:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810015000057
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810015000057
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810015000057
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053810019304544?via%3Dihub
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810019304544
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1745691615588092
https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/169/16949050004.pdf
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https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1573-7861.2007.00011.x
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 Introduction (0:00)



This episode is sponsored by Blinkist. Blinkist takes all the need-to-know information from thousands of non-fiction books and condenses it down to just 15 minutes. Go to Blinkist.com/SciShowPsych to learn more.

We all know the trick. The magician says "pick a card, any card," and you randomly pick one. Except: your choice isn't random, and the magician knows it.

As humans, we naturally have biases we're not even aware of, and the magician plays upon those biases like a puppet-master, tricking us into doing things while letting us believe we are doing whatever we want.

While that may be fun at a magic show, these same mind tricks affect lots of other areas of our lives, like shopping, test-taking, and politics. The bright side is that by studying how magicians manipulate the mind, psychologists and neuroscientists have learned a lot about cognition, including how we can make freer decisions when it really matters.


 Salience Forcing (1:00)



When it comes to messing with our minds, magicians have a few tricks up their sleeves. One of the big ones is called "salience forcing," and it's pretty straightforward. The idea is that by making the target object more visible, they make someone more likely to choose it. So, magicians sometimes train for hundreds of hours to learn how to flip through a deck and show one card just a fraction of a second longer than the others. And it works. In a 2015 study with 105 participants, a magician used this method to influence people to choose a certain card 98% of the time.


 Placement Forcing (1:34)



But magicians don't always have to work so hard. Sometimes, they can use placement forcing, which plays upon your natural inclination to select objects in certain positions more than others. Say a magician places four cards face down on a table and asks you to choose one. If that choice were truly random, each card would have a 25% chance of being chosen. But in a 2020 study of 60 people, participants chose the third card 60% of the time.

And that seems to be the result of two different biases playing tug-of-war. Number one: people have a natural tendency to make the physically easiest choice. Because most people are right handed, most are drawn toward the card on the right. But people also have a middle bias, or a preference for things in the center of our visual field. And in the end, we unconsciously compromise and choose the second card from the right.


 Middle Bias (2:25)



The thing is, none of these biases are unique to cards. Like, salience forcing could potentially influence our purchasing behavior. Our middle bias shows up in lots of places. For instance, studies have shown that if test-takers are stumped by a multiple choice question with four options, they will pick B or C 80% of the time, which isn't a bad idea, as it turns out, because when people design tests, they put the correct answer in the middle 70-80% of the time too.

People also tend to choose the middle product on a store shelf and the middle toilets in a public restroom, which means those stalls are the dirtiest and least likely to have toilet paper, for the record.


 Choice Blindness (3:03)



The clincher is that people have no idea these biases are steering their decisions. And there's a name for that too. It's called "choice blindness." Basically, we're programmed to think we are making our choices independently, even when we're being unconsciously influenced.

So let's go back to that study where the magician used salience forcing to get 98% of people to choose a certain card. Of those people, 91% said they chose the card freely and had not been influenced by the magician. Many of them even fabricated explanations for their choices, like "I picked the queen of hearts because it was a brighter color!" No it wasn't! We're just not wired to recognize how much our biases influence us, and magicians know that.


 Inattentional Blindness (3:48)



Magicians don't just trick us into making specific choices, though. They can also manipulate our whole perception of an event so that we only see what they want us to. To do this, they take advantage of something called "inattentional blindness." That's what happens when you don't notice something because you're paying attention to something else.

The most famous instance of inattentional blindness was an experiment in which psychologists showed participants a video of people playing basketball and asked them to count how many times the players wearing white passed the ball. Participants were so focused on this task that half of them, including me the first time I did this, completely missed a woman in a gorilla suit walking between the basketball players and thumping on her chest. Now, when I watch this video, I can't imagine missing the gorilla woman.


 Misdirection (4:35)



The point is, we often cannot see things we're not paying attention to, and so magicians are master distractors. Like they might reach into a pocket to pull out a handkerchief and drop a coin in there while you're distracted. By performing an action with one apparent purpose, they can distract you from its real purpose.

This method of distraction is called "misdirection," and magicians are not the only ones with these tricks. Scientists have noticed that politicians often use the same strategy. They might use a ridiculous stunt to deflect peoples' attention, or they might pretend they're performing some showy action for one reason when really they have an entirely different motivation.


 Ending (5:12)



It can be frustrating to realize that human nature makes us easy targets for tricks like these, but luckily there's good news. Unlike with many cognitive biases, knowing about cognitive forcing and misdirection does help prevent you from falling for them.

So now that you know about some of these magical methods, you can take a second to think. Then, hopefully, you can recognize some of your biases and make better decisions in life, including choosing a cleaner bathroom stall.


 Sponsor (5:40)



If you want to learn more about the hidden ways our subconscious minds influence every part of our lives, you might like the book The Hidden Brain, which is available on Blinkist. Blinkist is an app that highlights the most important insights and need-to-know information from non-fiction books and condenses them down so that you can read or or listen to them in just 15 minutes. If you've always wished you could do more reading but can't find enough time, Blinkist can help you keep developing yourself while you keep up with your work life, your social life, and all your personal goals. Whether you're interested in science, history, self-help, or business, there's something for you in the thousands of titles in Blinkist's library. If you'd like to try it out, you can get unlimited access for free for a week. If you're one of the first 100 people to sign up at Blinkist.com/SciShowPsych, you'll also get 25% off if you decide to get a full membership.

So, if you're interested, check it out, and as always, thank you for watching SciShow
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