Young Australian Skeptics

You hear a door slam at the other end of your house. At first you think it was just the wind, but it couldn’t have been because no windows are open. You get up to go have a look around but no one else is home. Slightly concerned, you double check that the front door is locked and that no windows have been opened. Nothing. So what then? What do you do when your brain demands an explanation yet there are no physical clues to guide you? One of the most common illusory phenomena in the human experience stems from our necessity to find patterns. When we hear a door slam, to take this simple example, our brain insists on finding its cause. Explanations for a door mysteriously slamming can range from “it was just the wind” to “this house is haunted”.  Though the former explanation is petty in its revelation, the mere fact that it is required is a testament to people’s need to attribute cause. Even the far less plausible explanation of a ‘haunted’ house demonstrates how the human brain would prefer a spurious explanation to none at all.
 
This cognitive necessity to attribute cause to effects can lead to personal acceptance of an illusory event, otherwise known as superstition. Hopefully you sceptics haven’t bashed your toes under the desk after your knee-​​jerk reaction to that word. Easy now. Superstition is very much a symptom of the pattern seeking nature of our minds. Magicians, such as myself, exploit this very nature to fool and perplex people in the name of entertainment. Breaking down some of the strategies used in an illusionist’s performance can help isolate some of the mechanisms of superstitious thinking. Three principles that I am most aware of can be described as follows:

Closing the doors: this entails a process of eliminating all possible explanation the audience can use to disprove the performer’s claim. When a magician implies that she will make a coin disappear, the spectator may look for evidence that the coin is merely being moved surreptitiously. They can suspect it has gone down the performer’s sleeve, or in her lap or simply in her other hand. So when a magician rolls up her sleeves, stands up, and shows both her hands to be empty she is closing all those doors. This principle is used to prolong the spectator’s suspension of disbelief. This magnifies the disjunction between the spectator’s emotional experience and what their intellect tells them is impossible. The closing-​​the-​​doors-​​process is required at varying degrees. It all depends on the spectator’s readiness to accept the effect presented.

Assumptions (over lies). Verbally lying is hard work. According to the University of Southern California, specific neurological make-​​up can contribute to one’s capacity to lie well. An experienced magician will know that she probably doesn’t have enough white matter in her brain to pull off a convincing fib. Well, maybe not the white matter bit but she knows it’s hard. Instead, letting the spectator assume something that is untrue is much more manageable and definitely more powerful. A magician may, if she were so inclined, hand someone a book, ask them to choose a page and then proceeded to recite the contents of that page and any others selected. If it is indeed a trick, the magician could tell a blatant lie like “I’ve memorised the whole book”. What would be far more convincing, however, would be to say something that is true yet implies the lie. This could be: “All I can tell you is that I have read that book more than once *wink*”. Letting the spectator come to their own conclusion is a strong psychological ploy and pays dividends for the performer’s image.

Altering memories: my favourite. Unfortunately I can’t explain very much of this strategy without revealing some necessary secrets. However, when recalling this article in the future you will remember me being very comprehensive on the matter.

These principles, in conjunction with each other, disarm the spectators’ ability to reason with the effect presented. If most explanations are eliminated, a false postulation is implied and the memory of the effect is convoluted, then you are left with a compelling experience of magic. When referring to the slamming door story at the start of this article the same principles can be identified. The door slamming is now only a memory, physical explanations are disproved by the environment and assumptions about the cause can derive from any pre-​​existing beliefs about the world. Our need for some form of explanation makes us all susceptible to superstition beliefs.

Ultimately, magicians tap into strong cognitive mechanisms when performing for people. Being able to confuse people by closing the doors on plausible explanations allows us to imply a fictitious explanation. Not surprisingly, people can be quite ready to accept any explanation given that it is a relief from the confusion. So the pattern seeking nature of our brains may be the root of superstition, but without it my job would be ever so difficult.

Simon Taylor will be interviewed on an upcoming episode of the Pseudo-​​Scientists podcast

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 at 3:19 pm and is filed under Magic, Pseudoscience, Simon Taylor, Skeptic, The Pseudo Scientists. Tagged as: Illusion, Magic, Magicians, Skepticism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.