IN FRONT of you are three inverted cups. Under the one on the left is a lemon. You know this for sure; you saw the magician place it there before he gently shuffled the vessels around. With confidence, you point to it. It is empty. Hmm鈥aybe your tracking skills are not so good after all. You nod to the one on the right 鈥� only to find that it too contains nothing but thin air. In frustration you gesture to the last remaining cup, which the magician allows you to turn over yourself, to reveal鈥ot a lemon but an orange.
You know that what you have just seen is nothing more than professional trickery, but nevertheless, your basic concept of reality has been turned on its head. Perhaps more than in any other sphere, magic is the practice of deception elevated to a fine art. Many of magicians鈥� key skills are physical ones: subtle and dextrous manipulations of coins, cards or other props. But magic is also heavily dependent on psychological techniques that guide people鈥檚 attention to points of space and time of the magician鈥檚 choosing. And recently psychologists have reached some startling conclusions about just how vulnerable the human brain is to such manipulation. 鈥淯ltimately, an illusion only takes place in the minds of the audience,鈥� says master illusion designer Jim Steinmeyer.
Many important magical techniques have been known and used for centuries. Sometimes tricks were performed for entertainment 鈥� seemingly impossible feats were in every court jester鈥檚 repertoire of amusements 鈥� but more often they were a means of parting the gullible from their money. All this changed in the late 1800s, the start of the golden age of magic, when stagecraft and technical innovation were combined to transform magical performance into a highly popular art form.
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Science was instrumental in bringing about this theatrical revolution. Complex mechanical devices and ingenious use of optical principles became an integral part of a stage magician鈥檚 repertoire. In 1862, for example, visitors to the Royal Polytechnic Institute, a popular science centre in London, were treated to the sight of a ghost appearing on stage. The audience saw a transparent figure tread the boards and pass through solid objects, before finally disappearing. Even renowned physicist Michael Faraday was taken in, until his host, John Henry Pepper, a lecturer at the institute, pointed out to him the carefully angled plate of glass through which the audience viewed the stage performance. Thanks to cunning lighting, the glass was made to reflect the image of an actor performing in the wings.
The potential of Pepper鈥檚 Ghost, as this illusion came to be known, was not lost on the magic community, and strategically placed mirrors swiftly became an integral part of a magician鈥檚 box of tricks. 鈥淲e鈥檝e benefited from modern materials and applications, but these classical optical secrets are still of use,鈥� says Steinmeyer. 鈥淭he same tricks that fool us today are the tricks that fooled your grandparents and their grandparents.鈥�
By combining such technologies with manual dexterity and psychological techniques, magicians can deceive and bamboozle in a huge variety of ways: rabbits popping out of hats, assistants sawn in half, props vanishing, appearing and even levitating. But, perhaps surprisingly, all are reducible to just a handful of general strategies. David Devant, the first president of the Magic Circle in 1905 and arguably the greatest British stage magician ever, once replied to a novice who claimed to know some 300 tricks: 鈥淎ctually, I know about eight myself.鈥�
Creating the illusion
So what are these all-important strategies? In the dissection of magic tricks, it is necessary to distinguish the 鈥渆ffect鈥� from the 鈥渕ethod鈥�. The effect is the illusion the audience perceives, the apparent manifestation of magic itself; the method, on the other hand, is the procedure that creates that illusion. There is much debate in magical circles over the categorisation of effects and methods, but it is widely agreed that there are only a handful of each. (And at the most basic level, there is essentially only one method: to do things without the audience realising.)
One of the most commonly used effects, for example, is the vanish. Whether it involves a coin, a rabbit or the Statue of Liberty. There are in principle three methods: simulation (the object was never there; it only appeared to be), concealment (the object is still there, but is now hidden) and smuggling (the object has secretly been removed).
An appearance effect is really just a vanish in reverse, and the same collection of strategies can be used to realise it. Combine the two effects, and you can perform a transposition, or even a transformation 鈥� and so a lemon becomes an orange. For other effects and methods, see 鈥淧ractical Magic鈥�, below.
But for a successful performance, a magician needs more than just proficiency with the physical mechanics of an illusion. As Devant once put it, a good magician 鈥渁ppreciates the difference between knowing how a trick is done and knowing how to do it鈥�. The performer needs to control the audience鈥檚 expectations throughout, using the art of misdirection.
Perhaps the most familiar forms of magical misdirection are physical, directing where and when the spectator focuses their attention. The aim here is simple: to create areas of space and moments in time of primary interest, and to maximise spectators鈥� concentration on the effect while minimising their attention at the method鈥檚 point of application. An example would be a loud noise offstage that distracts the observer as some crucial conjuring is performed. But physical misdirection can also be more subtle, involving a well-timed gesture, comment or glance.
There are psychological forms of misdirection as well, aimed at influencing what the spectators think about what they are witnessing. For example, a magician might announce: 鈥淚 have in my hands an ordinary brown paper bag.鈥� 鈥淎ha!鈥� thinks the audience, 鈥淚 bet it鈥檚 not really an ordinary bag.鈥� So primed, they focus their attention on trying to work out the bag鈥檚 trick properties. Meanwhile, the other prop the magician is wielding goes unremarked鈥�
Many of these strategies exploit some surprising properties of the human visual system. Our visual experience of the outside world is normally one of smooth, continuous change: A is followed by B, which is followed by C, in an ever-shifting causal flow. In fact we assimilate information in fits and starts, as our eyes and attention flit from one object to the next. The process is driven by a variety of external cues 鈥� visual, auditory and tactile 鈥� that, together with our expectations, build up a consistent picture. Psychologists now realise that, as a consequence of these mental shortcuts, we can be made to miss the blindingly obvious, or be fooled into believing we have witnessed events that did not happen.
Consider the gorilla. In 1999, a team at Harvard University led by psychologist Daniel Simons produced a stunning demonstration of 鈥渋nattentional blindness鈥�. He showed volunteers a short film in which a group of people 鈥� half in white T-shirts, the rest in black 鈥� passed basketballs among themselves. The watchers were asked to count the number of passes made by the white-shirted players only, a tricky task demanding intense concentration. At the end of the film, the volunteers were asked whether they had spotted a gorilla walk on stage during the clip. About half said no: indeed they refused to believe a gorilla could have made even the most fleeting appearance. But as a replaying of the film revealed, midway through the piece a person in a gorilla costume brazenly walked centre-stage to join the basketball players, faced the camera and even beat their chest, before sauntering off into the wings. 鈥淚nattentional blindness suggests that looking and consciously seeing are quite different,鈥� says Simons, now at the University of Illinois. 鈥淭his might explain why people in automobile accidents often claim that they never saw the other car.鈥� (To see the gorilla video and similar demonstrations, go to ).
Of course, a magician would never take a chance with something as blatant as the gorilla effect. Although its success rate is surprising considering how obvious it is, half the audience is not fooled, too high a failure rate for a magical performance. But the phenomenon that it illustrates can be applied in much more subtle ways.
For example, it has inspired two amateur magicians to create a new magic trick. Richard Wiseman, a psychologist from the University of Hertfordshire, UK, and historian Peter Lamont of the University of Edinburgh, also UK, devised a simple illusion in which a pack of playing cards appears to change colour in front of someone鈥檚 eyes (see 鈥淐ard Sharp鈥�).
What we hear can be just as effective at influencing how we think. Wiseman has illustrated this with an impressive display of the power of suggestion, published earlier this year (British Journal of Psychology, vol 96, p 165). Two groups of volunteers were asked to watch a film of an apparent demonstration of telekinesis 鈥� a supposed psychic seemed to bend a key using the power of his mind; in reality a subtle sleight of hand was responsible. At the end of the demonstration, the actor placed the now-crooked key on the table in full view of the camera. In one version of the film, the psychic made the final statement: 鈥淚t鈥檚 still bending,鈥� although this was not in fact the case. When questioned later, 40 per cent of the group who saw this version of the film said that they had seen the key continue to bend when it was on the table. In the group whose film lacked the final statement only 5 per cent said so. 鈥淢agicians use verbal suggestion all of the time and this experiment demonstrates just how powerful such effects can be,鈥� says Wiseman.
鈥淎s a consequence of these mental shortcuts, we can be made to miss the blindingly obvious鈥�
In some respects magic is unlike any other form of deception: the audience knows from the outset that the performer is going to try to outwit them, and will strive to figure out the mechanics of the illusion. They see the event as posing an intellectual challenge, a brain-teaser of sorts. On the other hand, many will not be too disappointed if they fail to spot the trick: no one likes to see a job done badly. The audience almost enters into a contract with the magician, the hoped-for reward being amazement. 鈥淭he magician鈥檚 job,鈥� says Steinmeyer, 鈥渋s to lead them through this path of amusement, fantasy and suspicion, to a surprising and entertaining reward.鈥�
Psychologists such as Wiseman would like to start mining the rich seam of psychological knowledge that magicians possess. 鈥淧eople are starting to realise that these are big, powerful effects,鈥� he says, 鈥淎nd they are surprised by how much magicians know.鈥� Simons agrees: 鈥淧sychologists could certainly tap this knowledge base for research on attention and perception.鈥�
This week Wiseman will carry out magical research with some of the world鈥檚 top illusionists at an event staged at the London Science Museum鈥檚 Dana Centre. 鈥淲hat I really hope,鈥� he says, 鈥渋s that we uncover a few more gorillas along the way.鈥�
