Brain Bonus: Magic Brain

[0] Hey Shankar Vedantam here.

[1] Thanks so much for listening to my podcast.

[2] I want to bring you a special Hidden Brain bonus episode for your weekend.

[3] One idea that intrigues me is the intersection of magic and psychology.

[4] It just so happens that longtime NPR producer Barry Gordimer is also a talented magician.

[5] So we teamed up to bring you a new segment we're going to call Magic Brain.

[6] I'm joined in the studio now by Melissa Melnicki.

[7] She's NPR's talent relations manager, but the real reason she's here with me right now is that she is an unsuspecting volunteer for an experiment that we're about to run on her.

[8] Melissa, hello.

[9] Hi, Shankar.

[10] How are you?

[11] I'm doing great.

[12] I'm not sure you're doing so great, and you might not be doing so great after I introduce you to our other visitor, who is in the studio with us.

[13] Barry Gordimer is a producer at Morning Edition, but the reason he's here is that for 15 years, Barry used to be a professional magician.

[14] My stage name was The Sort of Amazing Barry.

[15] of amazing because I wasn't quite as good as the other magicians out there.

[16] Barry, I think you're going to show Melissa something.

[17] I have a deck of cards in my hand.

[18] You can see they're all different.

[19] I'm going to spread them out in my hands face down.

[20] Please take a card.

[21] Any card.

[22] All right.

[23] Melissa, Melissa, careful now.

[24] Whatever you think you're going to pick first, don't pick that card and pick a completely different card.

[25] Or not.

[26] Any card.

[27] Okay.

[28] Here we go.

[29] Picking a card and not being.

[30] manipulated all right so Melissa has extracted a card take a look at that card I'm going to cut the deck in the middle please drop your card in there very good Sharper why you take a card all right I'm going to do the same thing I'm going to think of a card and I'm going to change the card that I pick right now and pick a different card all right I have looked at my card put it in the deck there and okay on the count of three I would like for you to say the name of your card out Lild.

[31] One, two, three.

[32] Queen of hearts.

[33] What?

[34] Are you kidding me?

[35] How, that, no, that blew my mind.

[36] How in the world did you do that, Barry?

[37] As magicians like to say, very well.

[38] Clearly you did this very well.

[39] This is astonishing, Barry.

[40] How did you know what I was going to pick?

[41] This was an exercise in the manipulation of choice.

[42] I forced you to take the same card.

[43] You did not.

[44] I made a free choice.

[45] to pick the card that I picked, Barry.

[46] Thank you for saying that.

[47] That's what I wanted you to think.

[48] But I...

[49] And the key to it, the key to it is you felt you had the freedom to do it.

[50] So this is fascinating because, of course, there's a whole body of social science research, Barry, that looks at this idea that you can actually nunch people into doing certain things while making them feel like they have freedom of choice.

[51] And, you know, marketers have obviously been using these techniques on us for many years, nudging us to buy this brand of soap rather than that.

[52] brand of soap, but it gets really interesting when you're talking about manipulating really important life decisions.

[53] So researchers have found, for example, that you can influence whether people join a retirement savings plan when they start a new job.

[54] If you make the default option that you're automatically enrolled unless you opt out, more people choose to participate in these savings plans compared to when the default option is you're not automatically signed up and you have to choose to sign up.

[55] People tend to feel like they have a free choice when, in fact, they actually tend to choose the default option no matter what that option is.

[56] The key point in that is people can't be aware initially that you are trying to influence them because that influences the choice.

[57] Now, in this context, Shankar, you knew I was going to pull a trick, so you tried to influence what I was doing and influence what Melissa was doing.

[58] And funny enough, as a professional magician's, I always found it easier to get someone to pick the card I wanted them to pick when they were trying to mess me up.

[59] So in other words, when they were trying to figure out what you were doing to manipulate them, you found it easier to manipulate them?

[60] Yes, I did.

[61] And one of the reasons I think is because people are always laughing when this goes on.

[62] And it's difficult to do critical thinking while you're laughing.

[63] I think I'm going to blame Melissa here because I think she did most of the laughing.

[64] Yes, I did laugh quite a bit.

[65] All right.

[66] Next time, we will do the same trick without Melissa in the studio.

[67] And I'm sure, Barry Gordamor, you will not fool me. I'll take that challenge.

[68] Barry Gordamor, I want to thank you for making some time for us today.

[69] Thank you.

[70] I enjoy getting in your head.

[71] Melissa Melnicki, thank you so much for coming in.

[72] Absolutely.

[73] Thanks for having me. This is Hidden Brain.