Gustav Kuhn
Biographic Data
| ID | 3659259 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Gustav Kuhn |
| GIVEN NAMES | Gustav |
| FAMILY NAME | Kuhn |
| SIGNATURE | KUHN G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Goldsmiths University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2888-914X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 16 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1966 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
A folk taxonomy of magic
Magic tricks provide a uniquely powerful window onto the boundaries of what people consider possible, and the ways in which those boundaries can be challenged. Although there exists an effectively infinite variety of magic tricks, relatively little is known about how different magical effects relate to one another at a psychological level. Previous attempts to classify magic have largely relied on the judgments of a small number of expert magicia…
Challenging magicians’ intuitive insights
Magic is a performance art that relies on tricking the spectator’s mind into experiencing things that seem impossible. Experience in performing these tricks in front of live audiences provides magicians valuable insights into how spectators experience such tricks. However, most of these assumptions have not been empirically tested. Three widely held assumptions were selected: active participation increases the sense of wonder that participants ex…
Misdirection – Magic, Psychology and its Application
The art of magic relies on deception and illusions to create human experiences that appear impossible. Misdirection lies at the heart of this deceptive art, and yet there is little consensus as to what this concept aims to describe. The concept of misdirection is not limited to magic, and its principles are applied to wide aspects of our lives (e.g., politics, public health, marketing). In recent years, scientists have started to examine the psyc…
Misdirection in Global Health
Subtly encouraging more deliberate decisions
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 literatur…
Forcing you to experience wonder
A psychologically based taxonomy of Magicians’ forcing Techniques
Talking to the Dead in the Classroom
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 …
Magical Potential
Exploiting failures in metacognition through magic
The Flushtration Count Illusion
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 Illus…
How Has the Emergence of Digital Culture Affected Professional Magic
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 strongl…
Rare” emotive faces and attentional orienting
The behavioral urgency hypothesis suggests that stimuli signaling potential danger will receive attentional priority. However, results from the gaze cueing paradigm have failed to consistently show that emotional expression modulates gaze following. One possible explanation for these null results is that participants are repeatedly exposed to the same emotional expressions during the typical gaze cueing procedure. We employed a relatively novel g…
Misdirected by the gap
Der Rose Pilgerfahrt
Die Grenzen des Irak. Historische und rechtliche Aspekte des irakischen Anspruchs auf Kuweit und des irakisch-persischen Streites um den Schatt al-Arab
No prominent works on this page.
Die Grenzen des Irak. Historische und rechtliche Aspekte des irakischen Anspruchs auf Kuweit und des irakisch-persischen Streites um den Schatt al-Arab
Der Rose Pilgerfahrt
Misdirected by the gap
Rare” emotive faces and attentional orienting
The behavioral urgency hypothesis suggests that stimuli signaling potential danger will receive attentional priority. However, results from the gaze cueing paradigm have failed to consistently show that emotional expression modulates gaze following. One possible explanation for these null results is that participants are repeatedly exposed to the same emotional expressions during the typical gaze cueing procedure. We employed a relatively novel g…
How Has the Emergence of Digital Culture Affected Professional Magic
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 strongl…
Exploiting failures in metacognition through magic
The Flushtration Count Illusion
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 Illus…
Magical Potential
Forcing you to experience wonder
A psychologically based taxonomy of Magicians’ forcing Techniques
Talking to the Dead in the Classroom
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 …
Subtly encouraging more deliberate decisions
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 literatur…
Misdirection – Magic, Psychology and its Application
The art of magic relies on deception and illusions to create human experiences that appear impossible. Misdirection lies at the heart of this deceptive art, and yet there is little consensus as to what this concept aims to describe. The concept of misdirection is not limited to magic, and its principles are applied to wide aspects of our lives (e.g., politics, public health, marketing). In recent years, scientists have started to examine the psyc…
Misdirection in Global Health
Challenging magicians’ intuitive insights
Magic is a performance art that relies on tricking the spectator’s mind into experiencing things that seem impossible. Experience in performing these tricks in front of live audiences provides magicians valuable insights into how spectators experience such tricks. However, most of these assumptions have not been empirically tested. Three widely held assumptions were selected: active participation increases the sense of wonder that participants ex…
A folk taxonomy of magic
Magic tricks provide a uniquely powerful window onto the boundaries of what people consider possible, and the ways in which those boundaries can be challenged. Although there exists an effectively infinite variety of magic tricks, relatively little is known about how different magical effects relate to one another at a psychological level. Previous attempts to classify magic have largely relied on the judgments of a small number of expert magicia…
Psychology (12 works) · Cognitive psychology (10 works) · Paranormal Experiences and Beliefs (10 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · Cognition (5 works) · Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion (5 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · Perception (4 works) · Art (3 works) · Cognitive science (3 works)