The psychology of magic

“How did you guess I chose the Ace of Spades??!”

Magic has always been surrounded by an aura of mystery. When people go to a magic show, they’re often aware that some sort of trick is going on in the background. Yet they are astounded when the magician guesses their card. More often than not, when members of the audience are asked how they thought the trick was done, they are stumped and speculate inaccurately.

How do magicians manage to make their tricks so effective? Several laboratories are studying this phenomenon, notably the Raz Lab at McGill University. Graduate student J. Olson has co-written three papers on this topic, however only the first will be discussed here.

The study is about how aspects of playing cards used in tricks help “make the magic happen”. Five characteristics were tested.
• Visibility was tested by showing participants a fast series of cards and asking them to detect a particular card; simpler and more distinct cards were detected with more ease than other cards (especially the Ace of Spades, and Aces better than other cards).
• Memorability was tested in a similar way, with a slower sequence of cards followed by asking the participants if they’d seen a particular card; the findings were the same as for the visibility task, and those cards were likely to be misremembered.
• Likeability was evaluated simply by comparing two cards and stating which one was best liked; Aces were overall more preferred (especially the Ace of Spades), faces were preferred over number cards, and Spades/Hearts were over Clubs/Diamonds.
• Verbal accessibility required people to name a playing card; the results were similar to those of the likeability study, with four specific cards chosen in particular: Ace of Spades, Queen of Hearts, Ace of Hearts, and King of Hearts.
• Finally, visual accessibility involved visualizing a card before naming it; the results were once again similar to those of the verbal accessibility study.

These factors seem related to each other. People are biased towards accessible cards, tend to like the same ones, and can even misreport seeing them. The study offers a glimpse into the many mysteries of magic and the intricacy of the relationships involved in performing a successful trick. Magic tricks also involve influencing (or forcing) card choices, using bodily and verbal suggestion, and many more psychological cues. Most importantly, magic tricks result from interpersonal interaction; if either the magician or the audience is missing (be 1 person or 1000 people), there is no magic.

To learn more about psychological aspects of magic, links to all three papers published by J. Olson can be found in the References section.

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References
J. Olson, A. Amlani, R. Rensink “Perceptual and cognitive characteristics of common playing cards” Perception 2012; 41:268–286 Doi:10.1068/p7175 https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21049695/cards.pdf
J. Olson, A. Amlani, A. Raz, R. Rensink “Influence choice without awareness” Consciousness and Cognition 2015
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810015000057
J. Olson, I. Demacheva, A. Raz “Explanations of a magic trick across the lifespan” Frontiers in Psychology 2015 Doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00219
http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00219/full
http://news.nationalpost.com/2015/02/11/the-science-behind-magic-study-reveals-psychology-at-work-during-card-tricks/