The Anything Blog
When people refer to misdirection, they are usually referring to the act of diverting one's attention to perform some sort of secret action. Magicians use this skill to cover up methods to their effects. There are two types of misdirection: overt and covert.
Overt misdirection is drawing the spectator's gaze away from the secret action, such as asking them to look at a different object. Covert misdirection is playing with the spectator's attention. For example, when a magician asks the spectator to recall his actions, he is moving their attention from the effect to a different place, thereby giving him the opportunity to perform the method.
A large reason why magic is able to fool many people is that can't reconstruct the effect in their heads. This is due to something called change blindness, where people can't tell what has changed in a scene from before. Since they must compare the scenes in their heads, they often forget many details. Thus, people can't recall the events they remember. For example, a study in 1979 directed people to point out the correct penny amongst a group of pennies that were incorrect. About a quarter of the pennies was just as likely to be correct as the real penny. Since there is no reason an average person needs to remember the details of a penny, when they are asked to recall the penny, they often fail.
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