The Lock and Key Library: The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations: Real Life
Science
The Lock and Key Library: The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations: Real Life
Detective and mystery stories; Fiction; Parapsychology
Another fact that must be borne in mind is that, when once a
spectator has seen a movement made two or three times in the same
manner, he frequently "sees" the performer make that movement on
another occasion, when the performer had, in reality, only STARTED
to make the movement, and suggested the rest. Thus, if the
performer throws a ball up into the air two or three times in
succession, and on the fourth occasion merely pretends to throw it
up, really retaining it in the other hand, the great majority of
the spectators will really "see" the ball ascend into the air on
the fourth occasion, and will so state, on being asked. We here
depend upon association and habit.[1]
[1] A very similar illusion is mentioned by Professor Hyslop, v.
Borderland of Psychical Research, Pp. 228-9, in which pellets were
apparently placed in a box, really being palmed in the medium's
hand.
Professor Jastrow summed up this portion of the psychology of
deception very well when he said:[1]
[1] Fact and Fable in Psychology, pp. 124-5.
"He (the conjurer) must dissociate the natural factors of his
habits, actually attending to one thing while seemingly attending
to another; at the same time his eyes and his gestures and his
'patter' misdirect the attention to what is apparently the
essential field of operation, but really only a blind to distract
attention away from the true scene of action. The conjurer directs
your attention to what he does not do; he does not do what he
pretends to do; and to what he actually does, he is careful neither
to appear to direct his own attention nor to arouse yours."
Prof. Max Dessoir, in a very fine article on "The Psychology of
Conjuring," writes as follows: "By awakening interest in some
unimportant detail, the conjurer concentrates that attention on
some false point, or negatively, diverts it from the main object,
and we all know the senses of an inattentive person are pretty
dull. . . . When causing the disappearance of some object, the
conjurer counts one, two, three; the object must really disappear
before three, not at three, because, the attention of the public
being diverted to three, they do not notice what happens at one and
two. . . . A specially successful method of diversion is founded
on the human craze for imitation. . . . The conjurer counts on
this in many cases. He always looks in the direction where he
wants the attention of the public, and does everything himself
which he wants the public to do. . . . If the trick is in the left
hand, the conjurer turns sharply to the person to his right,
presuming correctly that the spectators will make the same
movement, and will not notice what is going on in the left hand. . . .
Every sharp, short remark will, for a moment, at least, divert
the eyes from the hands and direct them to the mouth, according to
the above-mentioned law of imitation."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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