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Magic Tricks

There are few forms of lying and deception as harmless and entertaining as magic tricks. From Dedi's animal “resurrections” in Egypt in 2600 b.c.e. to Harry Houdini's escapology and David Copperfield's illusions, magicians have been astonishing audiences for centuries, in a bidirectional relationship of performance and appreciation, entertainment and escapism, in exchange for willing credulity. What differentiates magic tricks from many forms of lying and deception is that deceit is not hidden. It is not malicious and typically not unethical. It is an agreement, part of a game accepted as a given for the sake of innocuous diversion.

Magic Performance as a Form of Social Interaction

A magic performance can be considered a special case of social interaction in which performers and audiences implicitly and willingly agree to be the deceivers and the deceived, respectively. This social agreement defines the difference between what might be considered magic versus a scam or crime. Many illusions, for example, deceive the audience as to the location of an object, such as a coin, or even the magician himself. Such location illusions are likely to be labeled as “magic” when occurring at a Las Vegas showroom but as a “scam” when part of a street game of three-card monte designed to separate an unwitting victim from his money. Similarly, an audience may howl with glee when a stage magician strips a willing volunteer of his money, watch, and other detachables; whereas if a street thief uses exactly the same techniques for the same purpose, it is no longer magic or funny, but rather a crime.

Once the context has been established as a magic performance, the magician must enact his role as master of the seemingly impossible, confronting the audience with unexpected and incomprehensible actions and outcomes to evoke surprise and wonder. Though expecting (and even wanting) to be misled and tricked, audiences nevertheless attempt to unmask the mysteries and uncover the magician's secrets. How, then, have magicians so effectively deceived and entertained (even one another) for hundreds of years?

Magic as a Cognitive Process

Master magicians have, for centuries, intuitively grasped at least six fundamental principles of perception and cognition that modern neuroscience has only belatedly come to understand. First, some things, though directly in a person's line of sight, are not perceptible at all. Second, people do not consciously perceive everything that can be perceived. Third, what is consciously perceived depends upon attention. Individuals will fail to see even what is in their direct line of sight or fail to feel an easily perceptible touch if their attention is elsewhere. Fourth, people sometimes misinterpret what they perceive. Fifth, individuals' memories fail in ways that permit changes to occur before their eyes that they do not consciously perceive. Sixth, these failures can be regularly and lawfully produced by specific manipulations of individuals' perceptual and sensory systems. Magicians use these basic principles of perception and cognition to determine what the audience does and (does not) perceive and how this perception is interpreted, employing manipulations of mind and objects to blur and misrepresent reality with literal and figurative “smoke and mirrors.”

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