Understanding how we as human beings perceive can help us as magicians to become better performers.This "psychology of perception" can be best demonstrated through a simple experiment with young children:
> Go up to a child between the ages of 2 to 3 years and take a playing card and make it vanish by way of a back-palm. What is the child's reaction? The child will simply reach up and grab the card from behind your hand.
> Now, go up to a child between the ages of 4 to 5+ and do the same effect. What's the older child's reaction ? The child will look amazed while scanning space trying to find the card.
What's the difference between the younger child's reaction and the older child's ? The younger child perceives "raw reality" and sees the card go behind your hand. Whereas, the older child perceives "conditioned-socially taught reality" and sees it vanish magically. The older child has been taught the concepts of: "to disappear, to vanish, to go bye-bye". Child Psychologist most likely have a name for this stage of development. If you know it, drop me an e-mail.
This explaination of the "psychology of perception" is what most magicians mean when they talk about spectator's reactions: "Yea, I take them down this familiar road and then ... bam ! I take a detour with their minds". Now this is a little bit of bragging, because I don't think any performer can take someone with "raw perception" and lead them down a road that's not familar.
Stage Illusions in general are a good example of how we as spectators misperceive with our eyes. How about an example with the "mind's-eyes": I never liked doing the 21 Cent trick because of the handling with locking the coins -- it seemed a bit awkard to cup your hand (for cover of turning over and locking the coins) when just moments ago you displayed them so openly. I learned that if you asked a simple question, the mind's-eyes causes the physical eyes to go blind / blank. Here's the patter of the question: " I have 21 cents, now ... if you take a nickle away from 21 cents, how much do you have remaining ?" At this moment the spectator's eyes will shift upwards to the right, mentally scanning for the answer. During this processing the spectator's inner eyes cause the outer eyes to be put-on-hold. This is the moment to lock the coins openly vs cupping the hands to hide the action.
Of course, I'm using overlapping terms here. Whether you call it misdirection, direction of attention, or concept-conditioning, or just social brainwashing -- it all falls under the loose term of the "pyschology of perception".
Learning to understand human nature is a true Tool of Magic.
Last Edited Shawn Evans on 25-Apr-2005 3:22 AM
