Do You Believe In Magic?

Magicians are masters at leveraging the brain’s default setting to filter out much of the sensory information that constantly bombards us. By understanding focus, attention, and memory; distractions and optical illusions are often involved in making the magic seem, well…magical! I recently happened upon the very end of a documentary on magic - not really my jam, but I was intrigued by the experiment they were about to do. They were going to show how magic could be used not just for entertainment, but also to help people see their biases and better understand their perceptions. 

For the experiment, they hit the streets and asked people to fill out a questionnaire regarding their views on various political and often polarizing topics. The participants were told to place an “x”  on a visual analog scale from 0 to 10, to show how much they agreed or disagreed with the statements. Some examples included privatization of health care, wire tapping phones and government agendas. While the participant filled out their answers, a magician was watching and also secretly filling out a second copy - but would alter many of the answers. Then, using sleight of hand, he switched his version of the questionnaire with the participants and then proceeded to have them look it over “one last time” to ensure they were happy with their answers. Once they reviewed it, he then asked them to explain why they placed the mark where they did for each response. 

Wouldn’t you know it, most people seemed to have no trouble at all explaining why they answered the way they did - even though their answers had been changed. On this swapped out version, a few answers were left the same, some moved a few spots either up or down, and some were changed drastically - even swapping out a 7 for a 1 - that’s nearly a complete swing to the other end of the spectrum than their original response! After the participants finished explaining their answers, the magician then asked each one if they thought that they would notice if someone had changed them. Most were very confident that they would notice as they felt strongly about their opinions. Only then did the magician advise them that it would appear that in fact they didn’t notice, as it had just happened!

We all hold strong views and opinions on some things but this shows us that perhaps we have the potential to be a bit more open minded than we thought possible. In this experiment, people were (unknowingly) able to rationalize an opinion that was not necessarily their own. After going through this altered version of the questionnaire, they were asked many times if they were happy with their responses or if they wanted to change any, and each person carefully reviewed it as if it was their own and said they were happy with it. It would appear that we are capable of seeing the other side - or at the very least we have a bit more wiggle room in our own opinions. I think there is much to learn from this experiment and we can apply it not only to our beliefs on current events, politics, and our ability to appreciate differing opinions of others, but also when faced with the challenge of illness and injury.  

When facing these adversities, mindset has such an impact on not only our current experience, but also on our pain and disability levels and outlook for the future. Pain after all, is a perception, it is not a linear cause-and-effect pathway. We’ve talked a lot about mindset in healing, but it’s so important that it’s worth revisiting from many different angles. In healthcare, we very often use questionnaires or visual analog scales (where you make a mark somewhere on a line that shows a continuum from feeling terrible to amazing, or ranking your pain from nothing to severe). These tools are meant to help us and our patients evaluate progress over time. While they can be useful, they don’t always capture the full story as mindset and mood that day can have the power to change our perspective on pain or function quite drastically. But maybe we can harness this and use it in a beneficial way. After all, thinking you are feeling better and believing you are functioning well sets the tone for healing in much more positive way than thinking the contrary. I wonder if after we gave our pain a score out of 10, we then challenged ourselves to slide that number over jussst a bit towards the “better” side of the scale. Could we rationalize why we might be there? And if we can rationalize it, might we be able to get ourselves there? I’m not sure we need someone to “trick” us, we just need to force ourselves to look at things differently sometimes. As we’ve discussed before, some days the good things are just a bit harder to find, but it’s important to always be on the look out for them - especially during difficult days. You never know, you might just be able to be your own magician and convince yourself that things look a little bit brighter after all - and the only side effect of that, is making your healing journey just a little bit smoother!