Magic and the Human Mind

Have you ever wondered why human beings are intrigued by magic? What do we find this ancient art so captivating? While we know that magic involves tricks, yet somehow, it deeply engages us.

Nowadays, a significant amount of research is being conducted to gain insight into the effect of magic on the human mind. In fact, renowned magicians Apollo Robbins and Eric Mead discussed the connection between magic and neuroscience at Neuroscience 2009. Both of them even performed tricks to support their examples.

Different types of magicians, such as close up magicians, street magicians, make magic look effortless. But the reality is that these professionals are passionate about their craft and take it seriously. They study extensive literature, and apart from that, discover new methods through research. In other words, they put in a lot of blood, sweat and tears to master their craft.

The foundation of magic lies precisely in understanding people, their minds and behaviour. And a great magician has the ability to execute an illusion by understanding people’s expectation and perception. Professional magicians use their topnotch skills to capture an audience’s attention, distract them and to accept false information by providing assumptions.

Magic is an exciting and engaging experience. Similar to a new adventure, our mind cannot help but notice this exhilarating form of art.  It is a given fact that the human brain will always be attracted to unpredictable, new events. This is mainly because of the ‘exogenous attentional capture’.  Magicians are thus well aware of this phenomenon, and use thrilling tricks to entice their audiences.

Similarly, due to cognitive dissonance (contradictory ideas, attitudes, beliefs and behaviours) the human tries to rationalize events. This also includes events or circumstances that do not meet our expectations.  In a way, magicians manipulate the mind by presenting a situation that does not meet the reality that our brain is used to seeing. Our brain justifies an event after it occurs, whereas magicians create a situation that cannot exist, and thereby results in astonishment.

In addition, as stated by the moving spotlight theory, our attention is like a spotlight. Since the human brain is wired to focus on one task at a time, magicians take full advantage of this tendency. As long as something else is drawing our attention, magicians use their tricks to shock us.

Finally, magicians use humour in their shows to not only entertain people, but divert their attention too. Laughter stimulates oxytocin – the feel-good hormones – that makes a person pay less attention to important detail.

There is no doubt that magic has a profound impact on brain research. The tricks used by magicians can boost research in the field of neuroscience, which in itself presents an exciting opportunity to both magicians and scientists.

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