Shankar Vedantam: Hey, Shankar Vedantam here. Thanks so much for listening to my podcast. I want to bring you a special Hidden Brain bonus episode for your weekend. One idea that intrigues me is the intersection of magic and psychology. It just so happens that long-time NPR producer, Barry Gordemer, is also a talented magician. So we teamed up to bring you a new segment we're going to call Magic Brain. I'm joined in the studio now by Melissa Hmelnicky. She's NPR's talent relations manager, but the real reason she's here with me right now is that she is an unsuspecting volunteer for an experiment that we're about to run on her. Melissa, hello.
Melissa Hmelnicky: Hi, Shankar. How are you?
Shankar Vedantam: I'm doing great. I'm not sure you're doing so great. And you might not be doing so great after I introduce you to our other visitor who is in the studio with us. Barry Gordemer is a producer at Morning Edition, but the reason he's here is that for 15 years, Barry used to be a professional magician.
Barry Gordemer : My stage name was the Sort of Amazing Barry. Sort of amazing because I wasn't quite as good as the other magicians out there.
Shankar Vedantam: Barry, I think you're going to show Melissa something.
Barry Gordemer : I have the deck of cards in my hand. You can see they're all different. I'm going to spread them out in my hands, face down. Please take a card, any card.
Melissa Hmelnicky: Okay.
Shankar Vedantam: Melissa, careful now. Whatever you think you're going to pick first, don't pick that card, and pick a completely different card.
Barry Gordemer : Or not. Any card.
Melissa Hmelnicky: Okay, here we go. Picking a card and not being manipulated.
Shankar Vedantam: All right. So Melissa has extracted a card.
Barry Gordemer : Take a look at that card.
Melissa Hmelnicky: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Barry Gordemer : I'm going to cut the deck in the middle. Please drop your card in there. Very good. Shankar, why don't you take a card?
Shankar Vedantam: All right. I'm going to do the same thing. I'm going to think of a card and I'm going to change the card that I pick right now, and pick a different card.
Barry Gordemer : All righty.
Shankar Vedantam: All right. I have looked at my card.
Barry Gordemer : Put in the deck there. Okay, on the count of three, I would like for you to say the name of your card out loud. One, two, three.
Shankar Vedantam: Queen of hearts.
Melissa Hmelnicky: Queen of hearts.
Shankar Vedantam: What? Are you kidding me?
Melissa Hmelnicky: What? How? No, that blew my mind.
Shankar Vedantam: How in the world did you do that, Barry?
Barry Gordemer : As magicians like to say, very well.
Shankar Vedantam: Clearly you did this very well. This is astonishing. Barry, how did you know what I was going to pick?
Barry Gordemer : This was an exercise in the manipulation of choice. I forced you to take the same card.
Shankar Vedantam: You did not. I made a free choice to pick the card that I picked, Barry.
Barry Gordemer : Thank you for saying that. That's what I wanted you to think.
Shankar Vedantam: But I... Oh....
Barry Gordemer : Oh, and the key to it, the key to it is you felt you had the freedom to do it.
Shankar Vedantam: So this is fascinating because of course there's a whole body of social science research, Barry, that looks at this idea that you can actually nudge people into doing certain things while making them feel like they have freedom of choice. And marketers have obviously been using these techniques on us for many years, nudging us to buy this brand of soap rather than that brand of soap. But it gets really interesting when you're talking about manipulating really important life decisions. So researchers have found, for example, that you can influence whether people join a retirement savings plan when they start a new job. If you make the default option that you're automatically enrolled unless you opt out, more people choose to participate in these savings plans compared to when the default option is you're not automatically signed up and you have to choose to sign up. People tend to feel like they have a free choice, when in fact, they actually tend to choose the default option, no matter what that option is.
Barry Gordemer : The key point in that is people can't be aware initially that you are trying to influence them, because that influences the choice. Now, in this context, Shankar, you knew I was going to pull a trick so you tried to influence what I was doing and influence what Melissa was doing. And funny enough, as a professional magician, I always found it easier to get someone to pick the card I wanted them to pick when they were trying to mess me up.
Shankar Vedantam: So in other words, when they were trying to figure out what you were doing to manipulate them, you found it easier to manipulate them?
Barry Gordemer : Yes I did. And one of the reasons I think is because people are always laughing when this goes on, and it's difficult to do critical thinking while you're laughing.
Shankar Vedantam: I think I'm going to blame Melissa here because I think she did most of the laughing.
Melissa Hmelnicky: Yes. I laughed quite a bit.
Shankar Vedantam: All right, next time, we will do the same trick without Melissa in the studio. And I'm sure, Barry Gordemer, you will not fool me.
Barry Gordemer : I'll take that challenge.
Shankar Vedantam: Barry Gordemer, I want to thank you for making some time for us today. Thank you.
Barry Gordemer : I enjoyed getting in your head
Shankar Vedantam: Melissa Hmelnicky, thank you so much for coming in.
Melissa Hmelnicky: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
Shankar Vedantam: This is Hidden Brain.