What Magicians Can
Teach Us About The Art Of Manipulation
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When Jay Olson was a
5-year-old living in Vancouver, British Columbia, a magician pulled a coin from
his ear and sparked a lifelong fascination with magic.
Now
a 28-year-old professional magician and a psychiatry graduate student at McGill
University, Olson has recently conducted
experiments using magic tricks to show how people's perceptions and
choices can be manipulated.
"Magicians know
that they can influence people almost every time," Olson told The
Huffington Post. "What I found surprising, though, is that people don't
feel this influence."
In a study published last
month in the journal Consciousness and Cognition, Olson and colleagues looked
to a popular magic trick -- someone is told to "pick a card, any
card" and return it to the deck, only to have the magician identify which
card they selected -- to see to what degree people's choices could be
influenced without their awareness. For the trick to be successful, volunteers
have to feel like they're in control of their pick and not realize that the
magician is actually subtly manipulating them to select a certain card.
For the experiment,
Olson flipped through a deck of cards and asked each volunteer to choose one at
random. He used a well-known magician's trick of presenting one card for a
fraction of a second longer than the others -- which usually influences the
volunteer to choose that card.
Olson was able to
influence the volunteer's card choice 98 percent of the time, just by
ever-so-slightly enhancing the target card's visibility. But only 9 percent of
the volunteers said they thought Olson had influenced their decision.
"People would
come up with these after-the-fact explanations of why they did something, when
the real reason was likely just that I influenced them to choose it,"
Olson said, explaining that a volunteer might say they knew they wanted an ace,
or a hearts card.
Olson
explained that we often feel like we're not being manipulated
even when our choices are in fact being influenced by outside forces.
"The main
conclusion that we can draw from this research... is that this feeling of a
free choice might be more of a feeling that we have and not something that is
directly related to the influences on the decision itself," Olson said.
We're
likely to fall prey to such influences in many other real-world situations.
For example, you probably think you choose a dish at a
restaurant based solely on your personal preference -- but your decision may be
also influenced by the menu's layout. Research has shown that you're most likely to choose either the
first or the last item on the menu because those are the ones that
immediately attract your attention, although you'll likely justify the decision by claiming you
picked the meal you were craving most.
"The options that
are more available to you, the more attention-grabbing ones... are ones that
you choose more often," Olson explained. "Because we eat 1,000 meals
a year, these little influences can really add up in shaping somebody's
health."
Olson hopes the
findings will also be used one day to help people make better health decisions.
Putting healthier food choices in more visible and accessible places in your
kitchen, for instance, might make it easier for you to pick those foods.
"It's a
low-effort way of improving your health by using these findings in
psychology," Olson said.
Being aware of these
little persuasion tactics can also help you to figure out when you're being
duped -- like when a salesman tries to "low-ball" you by offering an
unrealistically low price and raising it later.
"In general, it's
best to separate yourself from a big decision: Don't decide anything right
away, sleep on it and talk to others about it," Olson said. "This
weakens the situational factors that can influence decisions."
Carolyn Gregoire
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/26/how-to-plant-ideas-in-people_n_6938520.html?ir=Healthy%20Living&ncid=newsltushpmg00000003
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