Gustav Kuhn | Goldsmiths, University of London (original) (raw)

Papers by Gustav Kuhn

Science & Technology Studies

This issue is dedicated to friend and colleague Dan Allman who passed away of the 27 January 2022... more This issue is dedicated to friend and colleague Dan Allman who passed away of the 27 January 2022. Dan had a paper in the special issue that he did not get a chance to complete; we have included a Tribute to his work that summarises his ideas. May he rest in peace.

Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2021

A new research program has recently emerged that investigates magicians' mind control tricks, als... more A new research program has recently emerged that investigates magicians' mind control tricks, also called forces. This research highlights the psychological processes that underpin decisionmaking, illustrates the ease by which our decisions can be covertly influenced, and helps answer questions about our sense of freewill and agency over choices.

Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 2020

Feature-based attention allocates resources to particular stimulus features and reduces processin... more Feature-based attention allocates resources to particular stimulus features and reduces processing and retention of unattended features. We performed four experiments using self-paced video games to investigate whether sustained attentional selection of features could be created without a distractor task requiring continuous processing. Experiments 1 and 2 compared two versions of the gameTwo Dots, each containing a sequence of images. For the more immersive game post-game recognition of images was very low, but for the less immersive game it was significantly higher. Experiments 3 and 4 found that post-game image recognition was very low if the images were irrelevant to the game task but significantly higher if the images were relevant to the task. We conclude that games create sustained attentional selection away from task-irrelevant features, even if they are in full view, which leads to reduced retention. This reduced retention is due to differences in attentional set rather tha...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021

Cognitive Science, 2011

Magic tricks offer powerful tools to manipulate people’s attention and conscious experience. Usin... more Magic tricks offer powerful tools to manipulate people’s attention and conscious experience. Using realworld eyetracking we can investigate how different misdirection cues drive people’s eye movements. Moreover, by measuring people’s susceptibility to the trick, we can evaluate how these cues influence people’s conscious experience. We used a magic trick to explore the way in which spoken questions and gaze cues influence eye movements and awareness. The trick involved a fully visible colour change as a probe of whether participants displayed change blindness due to social misdirection. Our results show that the question misdirected attention towards the magician’s face and prevented people from perceiving the colour change. In this paper we discuss how linguistic misdirection is modulated by gaze cues. The misdirection of attention by visual and social cues is of interest to understanding visual and social cognition.

Now You See It, Now You Dont: Social Attention in a Magic Trick, Live and On Video Robert Teszka ... more Now You See It, Now You Dont: Social Attention in a Magic Trick, Live and On Video Robert Teszka University of British Columbia Evan Risko University of British Columbia Gustav Kuhn Brunel Alan Kingstone University of British Columbia Abstract: Research in social attention assumes that the way individuals attend to images of people accurately reflects how individuals attend to real live people. We examined whether this assumption is valid by studying how verbal cues affect where people look. In previous work using a live performance of a magic trick, verbal cues by the magician were shown to affect shifts in gaze. We extended this work by recording a similar trick in HD video and having observers watch the video while wearing an eye-tracker in order to investigate the effects of presentation medium (live vs. video) on social attention. While we discovered several key similarities across presentation mediums (e.g., verbal cues affected social attention), there were also some remarkab...

<p>These figures display timelines of each of the magic videos used in our misdirection res... more <p>These figures display timelines of each of the magic videos used in our misdirection research. They are drawn from stills and illustrated by Allison Friebertshauser.</p

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2021

Forcing techniques allow magicians to subtly influence spectators' choices and the outcome of the... more Forcing techniques allow magicians to subtly influence spectators' choices and the outcome of their actions, and they provide powerful tools to study decision-making and the illusory sense of agency and freedom over choices we make. We investigate the Equivoque force, a technique that exploits semantic ambiguities and people's failure to notice inconsistencies, to ensure that a spectator ends up with a predetermined outcome. Similarly to choice blindness paradigms, the Equivoque forces participants to end up with an item they did not choose in the first place. However, here, the subterfuge is accomplished in full view. In three experiments, we showed that the Equivoque is highly effective in providing participants an illusory sense of agency over the outcome of their actions, even after two repetitions of the trick (experiment 2), and using items for which pre-existing preferences can be present (experiment 3). Across all experiments, participants were oblivious to inconsistencies in the procedure used to guide their decisions, and they were genuinely surprised by the experimenter's matching prediction. Contrary to our prediction, the Equivoque force did not significantly change participants' preference for the chosen item. We discuss the results with regards to other illusions of agency (e.g. forcing, choice blindness), failures in noticing semantic inconsistencies (e.g Moses illusion), and issues surrounding choice-induced-preference literature.

i-Perception, 2021

This study explored the interaction between visual metacognitive judgments about others and cues ... more This study explored the interaction between visual metacognitive judgments about others and cues related to the workings of System 1 and System 2. We examined how intrinsic cues (i.e., saliency of a visual change) and experience cues (i.e., detection/blindness) affect people’s predictions about others’ change detection abilities. In Experiment 1, 60 participants were instructed to notice a subtle and a salient visual change in a magic trick that exploits change blindness, after which they estimated the probability that others would detect the change. In Experiment 2, 80 participants watched either the subtle or the salient version of the trick and they were asked to provide predictions for the experienced change. In Experiment 1, participants predicted that others would detect the salient change more easily than the subtle change, which was consistent with the actual detection reported in Experiment 2. In Experiment 2, participants’ personal experience (i.e., whether they detected t...

Professions and Professionalism, 2017

We examined how the emerging digital culture has affected magicians’ careers, the development of ... more We examined how the emerging digital culture has affected magicians’ careers, the development of their expertise and the general practices of their professions. We used social network analysis (n=120) to identify Finland’s most highly regarded magicians (n=16) representing different generations. The participants were theme interviewed and also collected self-report questionnaire data. The results revealed that digital transformations have strongly affected the magical profession in terms of changing their career paths and entry into the profession. Magic used to be a secretive culture, where access to advanced knowledge was controlled by highly regarded gatekeepers who shared their knowledge with a selected group of committed newcomers as a function of their extended efforts. Openly sharing magical knowledge on the Internet has diminished the traditionally strong role of these gatekeepers. Although online tutorials have made magical know-how more accessible to newcomers, professiona...

Psychological Reports, 2020

Paranormal beliefs (PBs) are common in adults. There are numerous psychological correlates of PBs... more Paranormal beliefs (PBs) are common in adults. There are numerous psychological correlates of PBs and associated theories, yet, we do not know whether such correlates reinforce or result from PBs. To understand causality, we developed an experimental design in which participants experience supposedly paranormal events. Thus, we can test an event’s impact on PBs and PB-associated correlates. Here, 419 naïve students saw a performer making contact with a confederate’s deceased kin. We tested participants’ opinions and feelings about this performance, and whether these predicted how participants explain the performance. We assessed participants’ PBs and repetition avoidance (PB related cognitive correlate) before and after the performance. Afterwards, participants rated explanations of the event and described their opinions and feelings (open-ended question). Overall, 65% of participants reported having witnessed a genuine paranormal event. The open-ended question revealed distinct opi...

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2020

We often fall victim of an illusory sense of control and agency over our thoughts and actions. Ma... more We often fall victim of an illusory sense of control and agency over our thoughts and actions. Magicians are masters at exploiting these illusions, and forcing techniques provide a powerful way to study apparent action causation—the illusion that our action caused the outcome we get. In this article, we used the Criss-Cross force to study whether people can tell the difference between an action which had an impact on the outcome they get and one which has no impact. In the Criss-Cross force, participants are asked to cut to a card, and while they are genuinely free to cut the cards at any position, the cut does not affect the card they are given (i.e., they always get the top card). We investigate the psychological processes that underpin the success of this force. Experiment 1 ( N = 60) showed that participants cannot tell the difference between a forced and a controlled outcome. Experiment 2 ( N = 90) showed that contrary to common magicians’ knowledge, misdirection does not play ...

Psychological Research, 2020

Magicians’ forcing techniques allow them to covertly influence spectators’ choices. We used a typ... more Magicians’ forcing techniques allow them to covertly influence spectators’ choices. We used a type of force (Position Force) to investigate whether explicitly informing people that they are making a decision results in more deliberate decisions. The magician placed four face-down cards on the table in a horizontal row, after which the spectator was asked to select a card by pushing it forward. According to magicians and position effects literature, people should be more likely to choose a card in the third position from their left, because it can be easily reached. We manipulated whether participants were reminded that they were making a decision (explicit choice) or not (implicit choice) when asked to select one of the cards. Two experiments confirmed the efficiency of the Position Force—52% of participants chose the target card. Explicitly informing participants of the decision impairs the success of the force, leading to a more deliberate choice. A range of awareness measures ill...

British Journal of Psychology, 2018

When faced with a difficult question, people sometimes work out an answer to a related, easier qu... more When faced with a difficult question, people sometimes work out an answer to a related, easier question without realizing that a substitution has taken place (e.g., Kahneman, 2011, Thinking, fast and slow. New York, Farrar, Strauss, Giroux). In two experiments, we investigated whether this attribute substitution effect can also affect the interpretation of a simple visual event sequence. We used a magic trick called the ‘Flushtration Count Illusion’, which involves a technique used by magicians to give the illusion of having seen multiple cards with identical backs, when in fact only the back of one card (the bottom card) is repeatedly shown. In Experiment 1, we demonstrated that most participants are susceptible to the illusion, even if they have the visual and analytical reasoning capacity to correctly process the sequence. In Experiment 2, we demonstrated that participants construct a biased and simplified representation of the Flushtration Count by substituting some attributes o...

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2018

Internal spatial body configurations are crucial to successfully interact with the environment an... more Internal spatial body configurations are crucial to successfully interact with the environment and to experience our body as a three-dimensional volumetric entity. These representations are highly malleable and are modulated by a multitude of afferent and motor information. Despite some studies reporting the impact of sensory and motor modulation on body representations, the long-term relationship between sensory information and mental representation of own body parts is still unclear. We investigated hand representation in a group of expert sleight-of-hand magicians and in a group of age-matched adults naïve to magic (controls). Participants were asked to localise landmarks of their fingers when their hand position was congruent with the mental representation (Experiment 1) and when proprioceptive information was “misleading” (Experiment 2). Magicians outperformed controls in both experiments, suggesting that extensive training in sleight of hand has a profound effect in refining h...

Cognition, 2018

A number of authors have suggested that the computation of another person's visual perspective oc... more A number of authors have suggested that the computation of another person's visual perspective occurs automatically. In the current work we examined whether perspective-taking is indeed automatic or more likely to be due to mechanisms associated with conscious control. Participants viewed everyday scenes in which a single human model looked towards a target object. Importantly, the model's view of the object was either visible or occluded by a physical barrier (e.g., briefcase). Results showed that when observers were given five seconds to freely view the scenes, eye movements were faster to fixate the object when the model could see it compared to when it was occluded. By contrast, when observers were required to rapidly discriminate a target superimposed upon the same object no such visibility effect occurred. We also employed the barrier procedure together with the most recent method (i.e., the ambiguous number paradigm) to have been employed in assessing the perspective-taking theory. Results showed that the model's gaze facilitated responses even when this agent could not see the critical stimuli. We argue that although humans do take into account the perspective of other people this does not occur automatically.

Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 2018

Beliefs in supernatural entities are integral parts of both our culturally embedded religions and... more Beliefs in supernatural entities are integral parts of both our culturally embedded religions and more individualized magical belief systems (e.g., paranormal beliefs, spirituality). Scholars regularly link the occurrence of beliefs to individuals' cognitive and affective ways of information processing. For magical beliefs in particular, we expect children to endorse them. When reaching adulthood, however, individuals should have abandoned magical beliefs, and become pragmatic, sceptical, critical and rational thinkers. The reality is, a large proportion of the adult population can be described as magical thinkers, or report having had magical experiences, even in the recent past. Moreover, psychological research in adults shows a large range of magical beliefs, which correlate with particular psychological processing biases (e.g., repetition avoidance, seeing signal in noise). Unfortunately, these correlational studies do not tell us whether such psychological processing biases precede magical beliefs or whether they result from these magical beliefs. Knowing the direction of such relationships is key to understand which psychological biases might contribute to adult belief formation (or the persistence of beliefs from childhood). To test such causal relationships, we started to systematically apply an experimental approach in which people are exposed to anomalous events. Such a central event allows before-after comparisons of psychological biases. First empirical results confirmed that the use of magic performances, particularly when of paranormal nature, results in an important amount of paranormal explanations. Pre-existing beliefs enhanced this explanation bias. These results show how easily naïve observers can be Btricked^into unsubstantiated beliefs.

Frontiers in Psychology, 2018

Paranormal beliefs (PBs), such as the belief in the soul, or in extrasensory perception, are comm... more Paranormal beliefs (PBs), such as the belief in the soul, or in extrasensory perception, are common in the general population. While there is information regarding what these beliefs correlate with (e.g., cognitive biases, personality styles), there is little information regarding the causal direction between these beliefs and their correlates. To investigate the formation of beliefs, we use an experimental design, in which PBs and belief-associated cognitive biases are assessed before and after a central event: a magic performance (see also Mohr et al., 2018). In the current paper, we report a series of studies investigating the "paranormal potential" of magic performances (Study 1, N = 49; Study 2, N = 89; Study 3, N = 123). We investigated (i) which magic performances resulted in paranormal explanations, and (ii) whether PBs and a belief-associated cognitive bias (i.e., repetition avoidance) became enhanced after the performance. Repetition avoidance was assessed using a random number generation task. After the performance, participants rated to what extent the magic performance could be explained in psychic (paranormal), conjuring, or religious terms. We found that conjuring explanations were negatively associated with religious and psychic explanations, whereas religious and psychic explanations were positively associated. Enhanced repetition avoidance correlated with higher PBs ahead of the performance. We also observed a significant increase in psychic explanations and a drop in conjuring explanations when performances involved powerful psychic routines (e.g., the performer contacted the dead). While the experimentally induced enhancement of psychic explanations is promising, future studies should account for potential variables that might explain absent framing and before-after effects (e.g., emotion, attention). Such effects are essential to understand the formation and manipulation of belief.

European Psychologist, 2016

An important development in cognitive psychology in the past decade has been the examination of v... more An important development in cognitive psychology in the past decade has been the examination of visual attention during real social interaction. This contrasts traditional laboratory studies of attention, including 'social attention', in which observers perform tasks alone. In this review we show that although the lone-observer method has been central to attention research, real-person interaction paradigms have not only uncovered the processes that occur during 'joint attention' but have also revealed attentional processes previously thought not to occur. Furthermore, the examination of some visual attention processes almost invariably requires the use of real-person paradigms. Whilst we do not argue for an increase in 'ecological validity' for its own sake, we do suggest that research using real person interaction has greatly benefited the development of visual attention theories.