December 25, 2023

# 369 - Tips to stop yourself being influenced against your will - Dr Alice Pailhes

23 minutes

Dr Alice Pailhès, Ph.D. is an Associate Lecturer in Psychology at

Goldsmiths, University of London. Dr Pailhes has a partticular

fascination in magic and the psychology behind magic tricks. I'm talking about how magicians use psychology to manipulate, influence, force, redirect, misdirect and distract us in order to bamboozle us with their magic skills.

Dr Pailhes' research focuses on the use of magic tricks to study the illusory sense of agency or control. She specialises in studying the subtle factors that influence our decisions without our awareness.

In this episode we learn that magic is a conflict between our rational mind, our beliefs and our emotions. We see a trick performed, and rationally it doesnt make sense but there it is before our eyes and so we are left stunned, scratching our heads searching for answers.

We also learn that the brain often seeks out the simplest most energy efficient option which causes us to adhere to habits or patterns of behaviour, essentially the brain operates on autopilot which is when we are most vulnerable to being controlled or influenced.

We hear about different techniques that magicians use to influence or force a person to do or believe something in order that they fall for the magic trick.

Expect to learn about restriction and compliance and how they feature in a magicians act.

We hear that its exceptionally easily to influence people even when the person being influenced knows they are being influenced or controlled.

The good news is we can take the psychological lessons learned in the arena of magic and apply them in the real world so that we can reduce our liklihood of being influenced.

This is an interesting discussion about how our minds work and how we are so very easily influenced by external forces aswell as internal forces and biases, while Dr Pailhes uses the subject of magic to illustrate how the mind operates in terms of it being easily influenced, her observations on psychology apply to everyday life.

Indeed we are constantly being influenced by advertising, media and by friends and family. The key is to be aware of when we are being influenced so that we can own gatekeeper to that influence.

https://www.dralicepailhes.com/

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By Mathieu Norry

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