Magicians and perception
An article today in the Boston Globe titled How Magicians Control Your Mind discusses what we can learn about perception and the workings of the mind by looking at how magicians can short-circuit our perceptual system to make us see things that are not there or miss things that are there.
It is difficult to explain to a jury how a person can convincingly and confidently testify as to what they saw, and yet be wrong. The problems with eyewitness identification are far enough from the ordinary knowledge and experience of jurors that it requires an expert to adequately explain it. Scientific research has demonstrated that we do not always see what is actually there; rather we see some of what is there and our minds manufacture the rest, based on our prior experiences and what our mind expects to see. For example,
Daniel Simons, a psychologist at the University of Illinois, did a series of now-famous studies in the late 1990s that showed the extent of this cognitive blindness. In one, people were approached by someone asking them for directions, only to have, in the middle of the conversation, that person replaced by another. Only half noticed the change.
Magic may be a way to illustrate the inherent problems of eyewitness identifications in a way that jurors can understand. Everyone has seen a magician perform tricks that could not be explained, and wondered "how did he do that?" In the same way that an eyewitness may believe he saw the person that he expected to see, or the eyewitness may believe he saw that person that a detective has shown him after the incident, magicians use the gaps in human perception to make us see and believe things that were not there. For example,
The vanishing ball illusion is one of the most basic tricks a magician can learn: a ball is thrown repeatedly into the air and caught. Then, on the final throw, it disappears in midair. In fact, the magician has merely mimed the last throw, following the ball's imagined upward trajectory with his eyes while keeping it hidden in his hand.
Because the mind expects to see the ball rising in the air, and the magician's eye is following the trajectory of the ball, our mind sees a ball rising in the air. After the trick is done, we know that something is not right, because the ball has disappeared; however, when a person's mind similarly fills in the gaps in perception following an eyewitness event, the belief that a particular person or thing was seen is reinforced by law enforcement, a photo array, the subsequent appearance of the person seen in the photo in the courtroom (sitting at the defense table), and the witness then testifies convincingly in his belief that he saw what his mind tells him he saw.
Comments
Great post. You are on fire this weekend!
Posted by: Mark Bennett | August 3, 2008 5:37 PM
Thanks Mark. Was a fascinating article, puts things into perspective.
Posted by: Bfrederick | August 3, 2008 10:06 PM
There was a lawyer in NY, Mel Sachs, who was also an amateur magician. He tried a fair number of cases, and often used the ball trick in summation to make the point.
The jury would always enjoy Mel's summation. Unfortunately, Mel lost most of his trials.
The problem was that the jury understood the idea that observation was fallible, but was unpersuaded that there was anything amiss with the observation in the particular case. Connecting the issue to the facts tends to be the sticking point.
Posted by: shg | August 6, 2008 1:49 PM