Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

From children’s parties to acts in Las Vegas, magic is one of the world’s most timeless forms of entertainment.Current psychological research on magic has started to focus on how magicians are best able to elicit the observer reactionsassociated with their craft, such as what methods are most successful, as well as what cognitive mechanisms are specificallydriving the observers’ reactions. However, while research examining the practice of magic from a psychological perspectivehas been expanding, few studies have looked at how cognitive individual differences influence an observer’s magic perceptionsand experiences. In a collaboration with award-winning magician, Joshua Jay, we examined the impacts of Need for Cognition(NFC) and Need for Cognitive Closure (NFCC) on magic perceptions. Results showed that NFC and NFCC had opposite effectson engagement (i.e., rewatching and solution generation) and that frustration levels were behavior drivers for participants withhigh NFC or low NFCC.