I think I am not alone when I say I love a good magic trick! Whether fascinatingly complicated or wonderfully simple, magic tricks can garner the interest of even the greatest skeptic. Famous magicians throughout time include, Harry Houdini (the master of Escapology), David Copperfield (the Great Storyteller and Illusionist), and David Blaine (the Endurance Artist). Yes, magic and the skilled professionals who practice it have entertained a broad audience of people for centuries and show no sign of slowing down.
Not only are magic tricks timeless, but they are also pervasive in almost every facet of entertainment, including movies (e.g. The Illusionist and Now You See Me), literature (e.g. Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter), television shows (e.g., The Carbonaro Effect), and live shows (think Las Vegas, USA). (Check out these classic tricks.)
Despite knowing that magic tricks are mere illusions of perception, interest in them remains unrestrained by time, entertainment venue, and audience — including cognitive science!
That’s right! Magic tricks (and the Science of Magic) have recently garnered the attention of the cognitive science community. Not simply because cognitive scientists want to be entertained (and they do), not because they love to solve a hard puzzle (again, they do), but because magic tricks are useful for exploring factors that influence cognitive processing – namely epistemic emotions.
Epistemic emotions refer to a class of emotions that have knowledge-generating properties that influence cognitive performance. Examples of epistemic emotions include surprise, curiosity, and interest – all of which can be induced using magic tricks!
As such, in a recent article published in Behavior Research Methods, Hiroki Ozono and colleagues (most pictured below) sought to develop an extensive set of magic tricks called Magic Curiosity Arousing Tricks, a.k.a. MagicCATs, that could be useful for investigations of epistemic emotions. The MagicCATs stimulus set consists of 166 short video clips of magic tricks that aim to induce epistemic emotions at varying degrees.
The types of magic tricks contained in MagicCATs include misdirection, illusion, forcing, and a few other forms. Misdirection involves manipulating the observer away from the true cause of the trick. Illusions involve manipulating what the observer perceives during the trick. Forcing involves manipulating an observer to perform an action that he/she believes is of their own volition. Combined, these different forms of magic tricks allow experimenters to evaluate several factors of cognition, such as attention, susceptibility to perceptual and cognitive illusions, false beliefs, and of course, epistemic emotions.
To assess the variability in epistemic emotions induced by the compiled magic tricks, Ozono and colleagues asked participants to rate the magic tricks on five factors:
- whether they understood the intention of the magic tricks (yes/no)
- how surprising the magic tricks were (on a scale from 1-10)
- how interesting the magic tricks were (on a scale from 1-10)
- how curious participants were about the magic tricks (on a scale from 1-10)
- how confident participants were that they could find the solution (on a scale from 1-10)
The results of the ratings were interesting (see table below). According to the ratings, participants were moderately surprised and interested in the magic tricks (roughly 5.6 and 5.7 out of 10). They were also moderately curious about the magic tricks (roughly 5.7 out of 10). These average ratings suggest that the magic tricks varied in their level of surprise (some surprising and others less surprising) and interest.
In addition, participants reported low levels of confidence that they could find solutions to the tricks. Also, the rating scores varied across the different types of epistemic emotions, varied across participants, and within participants. The variability of the magic tricks across these different factors makes them ideal for future psychological and psychometric investigations of epistemic emotions.
So if you or anyone you know is interested in investigating the role of epistemic emotions in cognitive processing, consider using MagicCATs as your stimulus set. For more information, go to here. Samples of the magic tricks found in MagicCATs are here, here, and here.
Featured Psychonomic Society article:
Ozono, H., Komiya, A., Kuratomi, K., Hatano, A., Fastrich, G., Raw, J.A., Haffey, A., Meliss, S., Lau, J.K.L., & Murayama, K. (2021). Magic Curiosity Arousing Tricks (MagicCATs): A novel stimulus collection to induce epistemic emotions. Behavior Research Methods, DOI 10.3758/s13428-020-01431-2.