How Stage Magic Perpetuates Magical Beliefs

Abstract

As social beings, humans try to control and predict each other’s thoughts and behaviours. Stage magicians are particularly experienced at controlling observers’ perception and reality. Indeed, magicians frequently pretend to read your mind or predict your thoughts and behaviour. To understand if, and how observers accept such deceptive information, we reviewed empirical studies that tested the psychological impact of such mind reading demonstrations (mind-over-mind magic). Based on this review, we report on the following major observations. First, observers experience mind reading routines as being of genuine paranormal nature when endorsing such beliefs already ahead of such demonstrations (confirmation bias). Moreover, information on the demonstration will likely be i) dismissed if inconsistent with one’s beliefs, and ii) overridden when the demonstration is of attention- and affect-grabbing potential. Finally, people’s beliefs in what they experienced might increase, but only when beliefs are very close to the actual experience.