Robert Teszka - The Psychology of Magic

Rob Teszka is a research consultant and performer who helps creative agencies and market researchers apply the psychology of attention and awareness. He is also a magician who regularly performs at the Magic Circle in London, and has contributed to peer-reviewed academic research on the psychology of magic, focusing on using the techniques of conjurors to study how people perceive, make decisions, and and interact with each other. He combines the insights of psychology with the secrets of magic to create a very unique approach to understanding human behaviour. Magicians have the uncanny ability to manipulate how people perceive the world, and this could be the key to understanding how the mind works. The techniques of misdirection provide a useful framework for studying attention and its link to eye movements, while magical methods themselves are a valuable tool in designing research. Magic and illusions were central to the birth of experimental psychology at the turn of the last century, but fell out of fashion until their recent rediscovery with the help of modern research techniques. Magicians have spent hundreds of years developing misdirection to keep audiences from being aware of events happening right in front of them. In this talk, Rob discusses how these effects are studied experimentally, and what the findings of magic research mean for the psychology of attention and awareness. Recorded at the Sunday, November 6, 2016 meeting of the BC Humanist Association in Vancouver. Learn more at www.bchumanist.ca Follow us on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram. Subscribe on SoundCloud, iTunes, Stitcher and Google Play. Intro music: We are all connected instrumental - Symphony of Science www.symphonyofscience.com