Influencing choice without awareness
Jay Olson
Alym A Amlani
Amir Raz
Ronald A Rensink
Consciousness and Cognition, 37: 225-236: doi:10.1016/j.concog.2015.01.004. [web]
Forcing occurs when a magician
influences the audience’s decisions without their awareness. To investigate the
mechanisms behind this effect, we examined several stimulus and personality
predictors. In Study 1, a magician flipped through a deck of playing cards
while participants were asked to choose one. Although the magician could
influence the choice almost every time (98%), relatively few (9%) noticed this
influence. In Study 2, participants observed rapid series of cards on a
computer, with one target card shown longer than the rest. We expected people
would tend to choose this card without noticing that it was shown longest. Both
stimulus and personality factors predicted the choice of card, depending on
whether the influence was noticed. These results show that combining real-world
and laboratory research can be a powerful way to study magic and can provide
new methods to study the feeling of free will.