The eyes of others

Human brains have developed a magic trick for responding at lightning speed to threats.

- Marc Wilson

As I stand here writing this column, I'm also mentally pacing my office working through the lecture I'm going to give in two hours. Heart racing. I really should have written this last night.

Like any "performer", I have a set of canned shows I can pull out of the bag if I need to. One of these readymade talks is about magic, and I take the audience through some of the psychological mechanisms that allow conjurers such as Derrin Brown to mess with our minds.

For instance, the old coin vanish. I'm rubbish at it, but you know what I'm talking about: I hold up a coin in my left hand, appear to take it with my right, then follow my right hand with my eyes as I move it up and away from my body to reveal that there's in fact no coin there - I palmed it in my left.

This is a great demonstration because even if I tell the audience I'm going to palm the coin in my left hand, most people can't suppress following my (empty) right hand - unless I keep my own eyes on my left (coin-filled) hand. This shows how important other people's gaze is.