People's perceptions of magic tricks and why they are effective are often in direct contrast to how magicians feel their performances are being received by their audiences, new research has suggested.
Through a series of experiments, experts in the psychology of magic tested a series of magicians' long-held beliefs to see if conjurors truly understood why some of their tricks worked.
Performing magic tricks in front of live audiences has given magicians deep insights into human perception and attention, and yet this research shows that they often misunderstood why audiences responded the way they did to their performances.
The study, published in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity & the Arts, is among the first to empirically test a number of commonly held assumptions about magic tricks.
Dr Gustav Kuhn, the study's senior author, is Associate Professor in Psychology at the University of Plymouth as well as being a Member of the Magic Circle and the Science of Magic Association.
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