Why Kids Are Better At Figuring Out Magic Tricks..
By Richard Feloni for Business Insider.. Photo:Flickr/PhotoAtelier
If a magician’s life depended on fooling either an audience of adults or an audience of kids, every magician would rather perform for the adults, says Alex Stone, a lifelong magician and author of “Fooling Houdini.”
In “Think Like A Freak,” the new book from “Freakonomics” authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, Stone explains why the average 8-year-old is much better than even the most brilliant adult at seeing through a magician’s illusions.
The theory is based on the idea that kids operate without a lifetime’s understanding of how the world works, “and magic is all about turning your assumptions and expectations against you,” Stone says. “When you’re pretending to shuffle a deck, they don’t even notice you’re shuffling.”