Magician’s Backstage from the point of view from cognitive neuroscience

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  • Matsuzaki Asaki
    Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Tsukuba

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  • 認知神経科学からみたマジックの舞台裏
  • 専門講演 認知神経科学からみたマジックの舞台裏
  • センモン コウエン ニンチ シンケイ カガク カラ ミタ マジック ノ ブタイウラ

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Abstract

Magicians actually perform no miracles, but make audience believe in them with many psychological techniques.　To perform magic tricks, magicians need to inhibit optical information about their secrets to prevent audiences from producing information to recognize impossible phenomenon.　With the theory of gestalt perception, audiences may understand parts of a trick but not the whole.　Usually the sum of each part almost equals the whole, but magicians make gaps between each part.　The magician’s emotion will influence the audience’s emotion, which they use to deflect audience attention.　The audience cannot look at everything all the time.　Presented with questions people will search for an answer.　When they think they have got the answer, they stop thinking about possible questions.　This economizes cognitive resources.　Therefore, magicians give audiences false “secrets” in the form of tasks – checking objects or remembering a card – so they will not spend cognitive resources noticing the “real” secrets of a trick.　Audiences focus on the moving objects or objects the magician looks at, and magicians use these to attract people’s attention and to avoid them understanding the secret behind the “miracles”.

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