For the life of me I can’t remember where I heard about this old, rather obscure book or what prompted me to track it down and buy a used copy on Amazon.com’s Marketplace. But I’m glad I did. One topic that has always interested me and prompted me to study psychology in the first place is how people take advantage of little kinks in the human thought process to further their own ends. This can range from advertising to religion to claims of psychic powers, and it’s obviously this latter topic that’s covered by this book.
One part scientific report on controlled experiments testing for psychic powers and one part script for CSI: Psychic Crimes Unit, the book is a facinating read. The authors, two researchers from New Zealand who are hopeful about psychic powers but still rational enough to demand proof, conduct rigorous scientific studies that could lend evidence to famous psychics’ claims. They fail. The book also follows a couple of these psychics from the 70s (one by the name of “Uri Geller” and one just called “Kreskin”) and systematically debunk their supposed powers using simple magician’s tricks: sleight-of hand, substitution, and good old-fashioned peeking.
The book also focuses on those psychological foibles that magicians and stage psychics capitalize on, including things like subjective validation (finding corraborating evidence for beliefs you already hold and ignoring evidence that conflicts with it) and even more obscure tricks. For example, did you know that if asked to imagine ANY two geometric shapes, one inside the other, that the VAST majority of people will choose “circle inside a triangle?” Take this little bit of knowledge, combine it with a room full of people already predisposed to believe in you, and suddenly you’re a psychic. Great book.
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