Magic.  We have all been awed and inspired by magic at some point in our lives.  From childhood to adulthood, our imaginations have been fascinated and mesmerized by this entity called magic.  I can still remember watching David Copperfield on the television and thinking to myself how awesome he was to be able to perform such acts.  A single blink of the eye and intrigue becomes the question of how did he do that?  With magic, we are left wondering what happened or did we miss something?   Does magic involve special powers or is it a simple game of attention?

Attention is our ability to focus on a particular object or task.  In truth, magic tricks have everything to do with how well people pay attention.  Macknik et al. (2008) confirms “magicians have explored the techniques that most effectively divert attention or exploit the shortcomings of human vision and awareness.” (para. 1) Magicians prey on the idea that people cannot simultaneously focus their attention on multiple tasks, which is what makes magic so amazing!

google images/ magic

When we are shown a trick, we pay we pay attention to the hands of the magician in an attempt to try and catch what he is doing.  When we do this we are utilizing our selective attention. We are not focused on what else may be happening around us, but only on what we select to focus our attention on.   This could also lead us into many other visual flaws in our attention, such as inattentional or change blindness. Let us say a magician shows us a deck of cards, all with red backs and tells us there is something different on one of the cards and we fail to find it we have experienced change blindness.  Likewise in the same case, the magician shows us a deck of cards, all with red backs, but does not tell us there is something different on one of the cards, although there is. While looking through the cards our attention is focused on everyone else looking through their cards and we miss the card that was different, we have experienced inattentional blindness.  Jensen et al. (2011) adds “Change blindness and inattentional blindness both document a surprising failure to notice something that occurred right before our eyes” (p. 13).  These and other visual attention errors provide magicians with great springboards to create magic tricks.

To conclude, magic does not involve special powers, but is in fact is a game of attention. Audiences around the world attend the shows of David Copperfield, Penn and Teller and Chris Angel.  But are these magicians really good at what they do or are we just really bad at paying attention?  Collectively, this is the idea we know as magic.

References

Jensen, Melinda S., Yao, Richard., Street, Whitney., Simmons , Daniel J. (Mar 01 2011) Change blindness and inattentional blindness. COGNITIVE SCIENCE. 2(5). doi: 10.1002/wcs.130

Macknik, Stephen L., King, Mac., Randi, James., Robbins, Apollo., Teller, John., Martinez-Conde,  Thompson, Susana., (November 2008) Attention and awareness in stage magic: turning tricks into magic.  Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 9, 871-879. doi:10.1038/nrn2473