Interesting articles on False Solutions

[erdnasephile]

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... vious_ones (Scroll down for the full text)

and a later article, which I like better:

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... vious_ones

I came across the above studies, which I think are interesting. They try to objectively look at a concept related to Tamariz' Theory of False Solutions from "The Magic Way".

The studies have flaws (what study doesn't?), but I do appreciate the question they are asking and found their conclusions thought provoking, even if I personally do not agree with 100% of them (please don't shoot the messenger!).

In any event, they may be fun to read and discuss.

[MagicbyAlfred]

In the second article, it is stated that: "Although many misdirection principles involve manipulating spectators’ attentional and perceptual strategies, some of the most effective techniques involve manipulating reasoning, i.e., how the spectators subsequently interpret what they have just seen." I could not possibly agree with this more, and I use this principle often in devising methods and presentations. It is very powerful. The psychological aspect of magic is one that I find endlessly fascinating and fun.

[Joe Mckay]

On a related topic - you may enjoy this. It is the best book of magic theory I have ever read:

https://www.michaelclose.com/products/the-tom-epiphany-ebook-download

It gets my highest recommendation. I am still digesting the contents - there is just so much to absorb.

[performer]

I have read a lot of books on magic theory. I used to believe every word in them. Now I tend not to. I find them in the main to be a load of hogwash. I did like the Strong Magic book by Darwin Ortiz but it seems that others found that to be hogwash instead of me. I still say that the best advice I have ever read on theory is that contained in the back section of Expert Card Technique but nobody ever mentions that source except for me.

Still, some of us are born to lead and some of us are born to follow..................

[Jack Shalom]

Really interesting, thanks.

"Although many misdirection principles involve manipulating spectators’ attentional and perceptual strategies, some of the most effective techniques involve manipulating reasoning, i.e., how the spectators subsequently interpret what they have just seen."

What's interesting to me is that in both studies the false solution was "debunked" before the magical result. While that wasn't the intention of either study, I think for magicians that is very important. Debunking a solution (that is, "manipulating reasoning") after the result, in my opinion is very much weaker ("See, there were only four Aces in the deck") for two reasons:

1) If there seems to be an obvious solution--even if that obvious solution is disproved after the result--the spec's experience of magic has been aborted. No amount of later disproving can re-create what might have been an experience of magic at the time. S/he will only be left with an intellectual experience.

2) Later disproving leads to easy rationalizations by the spec ("Well, s/he switched out the cards when I wasn't looking.")

Of course, this is just opinion (though strongly held!) I would like to see someone test that in some scientific way.

[Jonathan Townsend]

...in the back section of Expert Card Technique...

Gonna guess it's the part about performing and audiences around page 300. Yes?

Here's a relatively new addition to our vocabulary, Imaginary Audience. That's been a notion in their research for a generation now. It likely applies to effect descriptions.

[Jonathan Townsend]

Here's a little from that linked paper:

The Imaginary Audience and the Personal Fable: Early Conceptualization and Research Internal to adolescent egocentrism is the idea of the Imaginary Audience. Due to the self-consciousness of adolescents during this age, children anticipate the reactions of others on themselves (Elkind, 1967). Therefore,adolescents continually act and react to this contrived Imaginary Audience. It is important to note, though, that this is not always a critical audience; it can be admiring as well. The construction of this audience accounts for a number of actions during adolescence

the word contrived was italicized by yours truly

[performer]

...in the back section of Expert Card Technique...

Gonna guess it's the part about performing and audiences around page 300. Yes?

Here's a relatively new addition to our vocabulary, Imaginary Audience. That's been a notion in their research for a generation now. It likely applies to effect descriptions.

In my own book it starts at page 430. The section about presentation particularly the first few pages. And it contains the most important sentence ever written on magic. It describes the most important attribute that great magicians have:

"It is not the tricks they perform that are important but the illusion they create about themselves"

[Zig Zagger]

Really interesting, thanks.

"Although many misdirection principles involve manipulating spectators’ attentional and perceptual strategies, some of the most effective techniques involve manipulating reasoning, i.e., how the spectators subsequently interpret what they have just seen."

What's interesting to me is that in both studies the false solution was "debunked" before the magical result. While that wasn't the intention of either study, I think for magicians that is very important. Debunking a solution (that is, "manipulating reasoning") after the result, in my opinion is very much weaker ("See, there were only four Aces in the deck") for two reasons:

1) If there seems to be an obvious solution--even if that obvious solution is disproved after the result--the spec's experience of magic has been aborted. No amount of later disproving can re-create what might have been an experience of magic at the time. S/he will only be left with an intellectual experience.

2) Later disproving leads to easy rationalizations by the spec ("Well, s/he switched out the cards when I wasn't looking.")

Of course, this is just opinion (though strongly held!) I would like to see someone test that in some scientific way.

A good read and some interesting thoughts! Thank you for sharing, erdnasephile and Jack.

Incidentally, lybrary.com has just republished two very early pieces of research on the psychology of magic, by Joseph Jastrow (1888!) and Max Dessoir (1893), see https://www.lybrary.com/magic-theory-ar ... 21_52.html.

[Bill Mullins]

Incidentally, lybrary.com has just republished two very early pieces of research on the psychology of magic, by Joseph Jastrow (1888!) and Max Dessoir (1893), see https://www.lybrary.com/magic-theory-ar ... 21_52.html.

These articles are both available online for free.

Jastrow

Dessoir

Also of possible interest:
"Psychological Notes Upon Sleight-of-Hand Experts" by Jastrow

"The Psychology of Conjuring Deceptions" by Norman Triplett

"Psychology of Prestidigitation" by Alfred Binet

A modern review of Binet


The misdirected quest
Peter Lamont on how early psychologists turned to the grand wizards in an effort to transform illusions into a reality

More by Lamont (some may be behind paywalls)

[performer]

The trouble with many of these people is that they are psychologists. I find that psychologists are the least qualified people to talk about psychology especially where magic is concerned. It always seems to be non performers who talk about psychology in magic. The REAL psychologists in magic (and they are few and far between) are the ones who perform frequently and concentrate on the people rather than the tricks.

[Jonathan Townsend]

@performer - one problem is learning the difference between real and imaginary audiences. Time performing before real audiences is educational.

[Zig Zagger]

Bill, thank you for the addtional links. Some good stuff to be found there, too!

[Jonathan Townsend]

...The REAL psychologists in magic (and they are few and far between) are the ones who perform frequently and concentrate on the people rather than the tricks.

Real versus imaginary audiences.
This text from Expert Card Technique?

IN CONJURING there is but one real magic, and that is the presentation of magic, which will make an apparently unpretentious trick a minor miracle to those who see it. It is presentation which lifts the card trick from the level of the commonplace puzzle to the status of an unforgettable and inexplicable mystery; it is presentation, more important, which raises the conjurer in the esteem of his audiences, which prompts them to remember him when they have forgotten the tricks he performed.

[Jonathan Townsend]

Directly on topic: what do you think of showing people a magnetic pea when doing the three shell game?

[performer]

What do I think of it? A daft and unnecessary idea!
However, I do think your quoted piece from Expert Technique to be vitally important. They SHOULD remember the magician when they have forgotten his tricks. Mind you, having said that I recently came across some laymen on Facebook who remembered both me and the tricks I did nearly 60 years ago. Same tricks I am doing now come to think of it!

[Jonathan Townsend]

What do I think of it? A daft and unnecessary idea!

Agreed, magnetism is a false solution to the trick of how the pea is not under the expected shell.

[MagicbyAlfred]

Along the lines of using psychology as a form of misdirection, the psychological manipulation can come into play not only in the form of a false solution(s), but by instilling a false premise before the effect occurs.

An example of this would be to "fail" to find the spectator's card (let's say spectator's card is the Ace of Spades) instead revealing an incorrect card (e.g. the Queen of Hearts). Then announce, "I will do a better trick." You place the apparent wrong card (Queen of Hearts), but really the right card (the Ace of Spades) face-down in the spectator's hand, instructing them to place the other hand on top so you "cannot remove the Queen."

Now you propose that, because the hand is quicker than the eye, you will remove the Queen from their hands without them feeling it happen. Now, all heat is off, as they have no reason to suspect that you put anything other than the Queen in their hands. Why? Because you have manipulated their paradigm away from a trick that is based on the value or identity of a card, or on finding a selected card, and into a feat that will be purely physical - i.e., the magical removal of an object, where the value of the card is irrelevant.

You can then very cleanly take the top card of the deck (the actual Queen of Hearts) and, holding it face down, say "I will use this card to distract you." After some by-play, snap the the face-down Queen on their top hand and say, "Got it!" Turn it over to show the Queen. They will be blown away. Then, pointing at their hands, say, "And just to prove I was in there, I left something behind." They will open their hands and turn the card over, seeing it is their Ace of Spades. Be prepared for them to then start a religion around you, and to have t-shirts with your likeness on them printed up.

If you can control a card to the top and do a convincing double lift, you can do this trick. Try it - you won't be disappointed...

[Jonathan Townsend]

The later article about a card trick using a duplicate card... it feels strange to read a mix of magic shop effect/secret jargon in a laboratory procedure. Also I don't get the feeling that the basic trick stands as effective magic. Are folks measuring deception as time between effect performance and the audience directly telling the performer how it was done?

Do folks know about this book -> https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Show-Anne-Benkovitz Beautifully produced with working tricks. The prediction item where they move a card up to the top of the page and then find the prediction after turning the page might work well.

I wonder if an indifferent person looking at a video of the performance and asked if they know how the trick was done would tell you that they expect the performer had an extra card. Brother John Hamman used to talk about doing sleight of hand tricks up close with a regular pack then using the gaffs after the audience was sure he was just using regular cards.