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The art of magic relies on deception and illusions to create human experiences that appear impossible. Misdirection lies at the heart of this deceptive art, and yet there is little consensus as to what this concept aims to describe. The concept of misdirection is not limited to magic, and its principles are applied to wide aspects of our lives (e.g., politics, public health, marketing). In recent years, scientists have started to examine the psychological mechanisms that underpin misdirection and new theoretical frameworks have been developed to help understand the concept itself. This paper provides two different perspectives on misdirection. In the first section we will discuss its use in magic and examine some of the key features involved in using misdirection to create magical illusions. This section will examine some common misconceptions of misdirection. The second section will provide
a psychological perspective that discusses the key psychological mechanisms that are involved in misdirection (perception, memory, reasoning). The third section examines the uses of misdirection in other domains. This paper aims to provide a clearer understanding of how misdirection is used in
magic which can serve as the basis for its use in other domains, such as public health.

The ‘‘Too Perfect Theory’’ states that if a trick is too perfect, it might paradoxically become less impressive, or give away its secret method. This theory suggests that an increased impossibility results in a less magical effect. The Too Perfect Theory is often applied to magic effects, but it conflicts with recent scientific investigations showing that participants’ level of enjoyment of a magic performance is positively related to their perceived impossibility of the trick. The current article investigated whether an imperfect magic performance is more impressive than a perfect one. Across two experiments, we studied whether participants enjoy a performance more if the effect is not perfect. We also examined the different types of explanations people give to
these two types of performances. The results showed that participants enjoyed a perfect performance more than an imperfect one. However, consistently with the Too Perfect Theory, participants watching the perfect performance also discovered the correct method behind the magic trick more frequently and believed the performance was staged more often. Moreover, participants’ method explanation significantly impacted their reports about the performance.

Magicians’ forcing techniques allow them to covertly influence spectators’ choices. We used a type of force (Position Force) to investigate whether explicitly informing people that they are making a decision results in more deliberate decisions. The magician placed four face-down cards on the table in a horizontal row, after which the spectator was asked to select a card by pushing it forward. According to magicians and position effects literature, people should be more likely to choose a card in the third position from their left, because it can be easily reached. We manipulated whether participants were reminded that they were making a decision (explicit choice) or not (implicit choice) when asked to select one of the cards. Two experiments confirmed the efficiency of the Position Force—52% of participants chose the target card. Explicitly informing participants of the decision impairs the success of the force, leading to a more deliberate choice. A range of awareness measures illustrates that participants were unaware of their stereotypical behaviours. Participants who chose the target card significantly underestimated the number of people who would have chosen the same card, and felt as free as the participants who chose another card. Finally, we tested an embodied-cognition idea, but our data suggest that different ways of holding an object do not affect the level of self-control they have over their actions. Results are discussed in terms of theoretical implications regarding free will, Wegner’s apparent mental causation, choice blindness and reachability effects.

This study explored the interaction between visual metacognitive judgments about others and cues related to the workings of System 1 and System 2. We examined how intrinsic cues (i.e., saliency of a visual change) and experience cues (i.e., detection/blindness) affect people’s predictions about others’ change detection abilities. In Experiment 1, 60 participants were instructed to notice a subtle and a salient visual change in a magic trick that exploits change blindness, after which they estimated the probability that others would detect the change. In Experiment 2, 80 participants watched either the subtle or the salient version of the trick and they were asked to provide predictions for the experienced change. In Experiment 1, participants predicted that others would detect the salient change more easily than the subtle change, which was consistent with the actual detection reported in Experiment 2. In Experiment 2, participants’ personal experience (i.e., whether they detected the change) biased their predictions. Moreover, there was a significant difference between their predictions and offline predictions from Experiment 1. Interestingly, change blindness led to lower predictions. These findings point to joint contributions of experience and information cues on metacognitive judgments about other people’s change detection abilities.

Past research demonstrates that unconscious primes can affectpeople’s decisions. However, these free choice priming paradigmspresent participants with very few alternatives. Magicians’forcingtechniques provide a powerful tool to investigate how naturalimplicit primes can unconsciously influence decisions with multiplealternatives. We used video and live performances of the mentalpriming force. This technique uses subtle nonverbal and verbalconversational primes to influence spectators to choose the threeof diamonds. Our results show that a large number of participantschose the target card while reporting feeling free and in control oftheir choice. Even when they were influenced by the primes, par-ticipants typically failed to give the reason for their choice. Theseresults show that naturally embedding primes within a person’sspeech and gestures effectively influenced people’s decision mak-ing. This raises the possibility that this form of mind control couldbe used to effectively manipulate other mental processes.

Magicians and scientists have begun collaborating to gain insight into various psychological functions. However, one underexplored area is the use of magic tricks to enhance health and well-being. Several magic programmes currently use magic tricks to enhance cognitive, emotional, social, and physical well-being. The applications of these magic programmes range from physical and psychological therapies to gang prevention, hospitals and classrooms. A few programmes have been empirically investigated and there is now a growing number of empirical studies that explore the wellbeing value of magic. Therefore, we conducted an up-to-date summary review of magic, health, and well-being. These studies are reviewed in light of a proposed hierarchical model based on how the magic was applied. Overall, methodologies could be improved but distinctions between levels of the
hierarchy are observed and discussed. Furthermore, the positive effects on well-being can also be organized into interrelated physical, cognitive, social,
and affective components that reflect existing theoretical frameworks on well-being. To conclude, we discuss possible mechanisms and theoretical
frameworks based on more established psychological theories to help guide future research.

Magic and dining have long been popular forms of entertainment. What is more, both involve some kind of transformation, and yet while the more theatrical aspects of dining have grown in popularity in recent decades, there is a surprising paucity of magical food and beverage experiences out there. In this article, we trace the historical appearance of food and drink and culinary items in the performance of magic. We also review some of the more magical elements of food design that have appeared on menus in bars and restaurants in recent years. We introduce the edible lightbulb dish from the menu at Kitchen Theory Chef’s Table and link it to the stage magic of Derren Brown. We also discuss some of the reasons as to why magical food experiences might be rare in the context of dining. In so doing, our hope is to highlight an intriguing area for future research and innovation. Along the way, we identify some possible candidate approaches for the introduction of edible magic onto the menu in the context of modernist cuisine.

We often fall victim of an illusory sense of control and agency over our thoughts and actions. Magicians are masters at exploiting these illusions, and forcing techniques provide a powerful way to study apparent action causation—the illusion that our action caused the outcome we get. In this article, we used the Criss-Cross force to study whether people can tell the difference between an action which had an impact on the outcome they get and one which has no impact. In the Criss-Cross force, participants are asked to cut to a card, and while they are genuinely free to cut the cards at any position, the cut does not affect the card they are given (i.e., they always get the top card). We investigate the psychological processes that underpin the success of this force. Experiment 1 (N = 60) showed that participants cannot tell the difference between a forced and a controlled outcome. Experiment 2 (N = 90) showed that contrary to common magicians’ knowledge, misdirection does not play a role in the success of the force. Finally, Experiment 3 (N = 60) suggests that rather than misdirection, an attribute substitution error explains why people fail to understand that their action does not have an impact on the outcome they get. Debriefing also shows the importance of participants’ expectations in the perception of the trick, as well as the role of prediction of the outcome in participants’ sense of agency over the events.

We present two experiments investigating the effect of the perceived gender of a magician on the perception of the quality of magic tricks. In Experiment 1, tricks performed by an allegedly female magician were considered worse than those by an allegedly male magician. In Experiment 2, participants had to generate possible solutions to how the tricks were done. Under these conditions, male participants were better at explaining the tricks, but the gender effect found in Experiment 1 disappeared. We discuss the gender bias in Experiment 1 and the lack of bias in Experiment 2 in terms of specific social and cognitive mechanisms (e.g., cognitive dissonance).

: In recent years, magicians and scientists have begun collaborating to gain insight into various psychological functions. However, one underexplored area is the use of magic tricks to enhance wellbeing. Several past and current magic programs have been used to enhance cognitive, emotional, social, and physical wellbeing. The application of these wellbeing-focused magic programs ranges from physical and psychological therapies to gang prevention, hospitals and classrooms. A few have been empirically investigated and additional studies have also explored the wellbeing value of magic. These studies are reviewed in light of a proposed hierarchical model based on how magic was applied. Overall, methodologies need improvement
but distinctions between levels of the hierarchy can still be observed and are discussed. Furthermore, the positive effects on wellbeing can also be organised into interrelated physical, cognitive, social, and affective components that reflect existing theoretical frameworks on wellbeing. To conclude, possible mechanisms and theoretical frameworks based on more established psychological theories are discussed in order to help guide future research.

Internal spatial body configurations are crucial to successfully interact with the environment and to experience our body as a three-dimensional volumetric entity. These representations are highly malleable and are modulated by a multitude of afferent and motor information. Despite some studies reporting the impact of sensory and motor modulation on body representations, the long-term relationship between sensory information and mental representation of own body parts is still unclear. We investigated hand representation in a group of expert sleight-of-hand magicians and in a group of age-matched adults naïve to magic (controls). Participants were asked to localise landmarks of their fingers when their hand position was congruent with the mental representation (Experiment 1) and when proprioceptive information was “misleading” (Experiment 2). Magicians outperformed controls in both experiments, suggesting that extensive training in sleight of hand has a profound effect in refining hand representation. Moreover, the impact of training seems to have a high body-part specificity, with a maximum impact for those body sections used more prominently during the training. Interestingly, it seems that sleight-of-hand training can lead to a specific improvement of hand mental representation, which relies less on proprioceptive information.

Paranormal beliefs (PBs), such as the belief in the soul, or in extrasensory perception, are common in the general population. While there is information regarding what these beliefs correlate with (e.g., cognitive biases, personality styles), there is little information regarding the causal direction between these beliefs and their correlates. To investigate the formation of beliefs, we use an experimental design, in which PBs and belief-associated cognitive biases are assessed before and after a central event: a magic performance (see also Mohr et al., 2018). In the current paper, we report a series of studies investigating the “paranormal potential” of magic performances (Study 1, N = 49; Study 2, N = 89; Study 3, N = 123). We investigated (i) which magic performances resulted in paranormal explanations, and (ii) whether PBs and a belief-associated cognitive bias (i.e., repetition avoidance) became enhanced after the performance. Repetition avoidance was assessed using a random number generation task. After the performance, participants rated to what extent the magic performance could be explained in psychic (paranormal), conjuring, or religious terms. We found that conjuring explanations were negatively associated with religious and psychic explanations, whereas religious and psychic explanations were positively associated. Enhanced repetition avoidance correlated with higher PBs ahead of the performance. We also observed a significant increase in psychic explanations and a drop in
conjuring explanations when performances involved powerful psychic routines (e.g., the performer contacted the dead). While the experimentally induced enhancement of psychic explanations is promising, future studies should account for potential variables that might explain absent framing and before–after effects (e.g., emotion, attention). Such effects are essential to understand the formation and manipulation of belief.

Beliefs in supernatural entities are integral parts of both our culturally embedded religions and more individualized magical belief systems (e.g., paranormal beliefs, spirituality). Scholars regularly link the occurrence of beliefs to individuals’ cognitive and affective ways of information processing. For magical beliefs in particular, we expect children to endorse them. When reaching adulthood, however, individuals should have abandoned magical beliefs, and become pragmatic, sceptical, critical and rational thinkers. The reality is, a large proportion of the adult population can be described as magical thinkers, or report having had magical experiences, even in the recent past. Moreover, psychological research in adults shows a large range of magical beliefs, which correlate with particular psychological processing biases (e.g., repetition avoidance, seeing signal in noise). Unfortunately, these correlational studies do not tell us whether such psychological processing biases precede magical beliefs or whether they result from these magical beliefs. Knowing the direction of such relationships is key to understand which psychological biases might contribute to adult belief formation (or the persistence of beliefs from childhood). To test such causal relationships, we started to systematically apply an experimental approach in which people are exposed to anomalous events. Such a central event allows before-after comparisons of psychological biases. First empirical results confirmed that the use of magic performances, particularly when of paranormal nature, results in an important amount of paranormal explanations. Pre-existing beliefs enhanced this explanation bias. These results show how easily naïve observers can be Btricked^ into unsubstantiated beliefs.

Magicians use deception to create effects that allow us to experience the impossible. More recently, magicians have started to contextualize these tricks in psychological demonstrations. We investigated whether witnessing a magic demonstration alters people’s beliefs in these pseudo-psychological principles. In the classroom, a magician claimed to use psychological skills to read a volunteer’s thoughts. After this demonstration, participants reported
higher beliefs that an individual can 1) read a person’s mind by evaluating micro expressions, psychological profiles and muscle activities, and 2) effectively prime a person’s behaviour through subtle suggestions. Whether he was presented as a magician or psychologist did not influence people’s beliefs about how the demonstration was achieved, nor did it influence their beliefs in pseudo-psychological principles. Our results demonstrate that
pseudo-psychological demonstrations can have a significant impact on perpetuating false beliefs in scientific principles and raise important questions about the wider impact of scientific misinformation.

When confronted with an insight problem, some factors limit our capacity to discover the optimal solution. Previous research on problem solving has shown that the first idea that comes to participants’ minds can inhibit them from finding better alternative solutions. We used a magic trick to demonstrate that this mind fixing effect is more general than previously thought: a solution that participants knew to be incorrect and impossible inhibited the discovery of an easy alternative. We show that a simple exposure to an obvious false solution (e.g., the magician hides the card in the palm of his hand to secretly transfer it to his back pocket) can inhibit participants from finding the real secret of the trick (e.g., he used a duplicate card), even if the magician proves that this false solution is impossible (e.g., he shows his hand is empty). We discuss the psychological processes underlying this robust fixing effect.