UC Santa Cruz Professor Emeritus of Psychology Anthony Pratkanis

Magic Is a Performing Art—and a Humanity

UC Santa Cruz Professor Emeritus of Psychology Anthony Pratkanis | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Photo by Aaron Salcido.

Anthony Pratkanis is professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he studied social influence and persuasion. He is co-author, with Elliot Aronson, of Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion and, with Doug Shadel, of Weapons of Fraud: A Source Book for Fraud Fighters. Before joining a Zócalo/UCLA Anderson School of Management event in Los Angeles titled, “Is Propaganda Keeping Americans From Thinking for Themselves?” he visited the green room and spoke about becoming an amateur magician, appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show, and testifying for Judas Priest.

Q:

What’s the best book you’ve read in the past year?


A:

Actually, it was Forgiven. A story of “The PTL Club,” [Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s Christian television program] and I thought it was very fascinating to see the corruption growth of the organization, and the issues start to emerge. Also how Jim Bakker learned how to basically mislead people.


Q:

What was it like appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show?


A:

Well, first of all, the show was about, “Would you get on the bandwagon?” And she had done all kinds of cool little demonstrations of people just lining up at random, purchasing something because it was mentioned to be scarce, that sort of thing. I hadn’t known much about her beforehand. She was extremely talented, she’s very bright, very quick. It was rather intimidating. When I walked out on the stage I got a standing ovation. That’s not happened too many times in my life.


Q:

What do you think is an essential quality of a good teacher?


A:

I can list a bunch of them. Which one’s the most important? I think it’s one that’s hard for the teacher to do, and that’s to give critical feedback to help the student grow. When it comes down to it, the hardest thing to do is to say, “Hey, that’s not right, why don’t you try this approach?”

Actually, I’ve learned that since I retired. I took on magic, and I watched who was learning magic really quickly, who developed and became really great at performing. And I found out that one of the critical things was that they responded to critical feedback. They listened to it, they tried to understand it, and they tried to incorporate it.


Q:

I did read that you are an amateur magician. When and why did you first get into magic?


A:

It happened through three routes. One, is I went to the Magic Castle, and I saw a performer, Pop Haydn, and he did one of the most amazing bar acts I’ve ever seen. And this was about 10 years ago, maybe even longer. So that’s what really whet my appetite.

The second was I was teaching a course called “The Social Psychology of Flim Flam.” And I decided, “I need to spice this up a little bit,” because it debunks psychic phenomena, Bigfoot, things like that. So I pretended that I was the only one with psychic powers, that all the others had fake powers. And so I went to a magic shop, I was like, “Can you get me up to speed on how to do this?” And they equipped me with a few tricks.

And [when] I did one of the tricks, it was a mind-reading trick, I couldn’t believe how well it went. So it was a young woman, and I said, “You gotta thought-project what you’re thinking.” And I said, “Don’t let me go into your mind. Reach in, thought-project it up. If I reach in—oh, wow, you did this last summer?” And her face turned beet red. And I realized that is an impressive demonstration.

And so then I got lucky, I had a friend who said, “Man, you have to join a magic club.” And so I joined a magic club, multiple ones, [including] Magic Garage. [Magic] is a performing art—and a humanity.


Q:

How does one become good at cold reading [a set of techniques used by magicians, psychics, scam artists, and others to make a person think they know more about a person that they actually do]?


A:

You want to have a bunch of stock questions, stock answers, you want to be able to read the person. So if it’s an older male, you talk about finances or start to talk about their back pain. Young women, you’re faced with a dilemma: Society wants you to go one way, you want to go another. Those kind of stock phrases. Once you have those, you start throwing them out, and you watch the person. You see how they respond. And if they smile, you say, “Oh, yeah,” you think that must be a hit, and you continue to go with that.

The one other thing you want to do, you want to make sure the person feels like the cold reading is about them. So, if I tell you some of the stock phrases, and I just sit here, it’s kind of like reading a fortune cookie or a horoscope or something. And you sit there and you say, “Well, obviously I can see through that.” But the minute I make you think it’s about you, because of a test, or your aura, or your signs, or whatever, your palm, whatever I can do, as soon as I make it about you, then your mind starts filling in, starts seeing, “Oh, yeah, there are …”


Q:

What superpower would you most like to have?


A:

I don’t think I’d want one. I actually think we spend a little too much time with superpowers. We’re all human. One of the big propagandas in our culture is the movies always have things about us as superheroes. Some superhero is going to solve our problems, and then everything will be cool at the end of the movie. But that’s not life. That’s actually an escape from freedom. Life is about making choices, learning, growing … If you have a superpower, you’re going to become arrogant.


Q:

What’s the difference between propaganda and advertising?


A:

[Propaganda] is a form of persuasion that appeals to our emotions and prejudice. It’s usually very simple: images, slogans, short phrases, short videos. There was a Nazi propagandist named Fritz Hippler, and he said that his role … was to simplify, make it entertaining, make it agreeable. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

So using that formula, a large percentage of advertisements would fit that: playing on our emotions, making us feel like we look cool with those pair of jeans, whatever. But it doesn’t have to be that way.


Q:

What profession would you like to practice in your next life?


A:

Magician. Although I don’t think I have all the abilities to do it … I’d probably like to do something in intelligence work. Trying to figure out what somebody else is doing, either as an investigator or attorney general’s office or something in foreign affairs.


Q:

Who’s one person, living or dead, you’d most like to meet?


A:

I’d like to meet a Neanderthal and hang out, try to figure out his or her lifestyle. Because if I did that, that would give me an enormous insight into what it means to be a Homo sapien. It’s an interesting species, they have the lowest sexual dimorphism of any primate. Ape, like us. That’s the difference in height between male and female. Humans are second. So I’d like to know, did that play out in their culture?

After that, I would want to go with the big theorists of persuasion of all times, so Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and an Indian theorist, Kautilya. Especially Machiavelli, he would be the most interesting since he wrote two interesting books: how to manipulate people in The Prince, and then how do you keep the prince in check with Discourses on Livy.


Q:

What was it like serving as an expert witness in the Judas Priest subliminal message trial?


A:

That was a long time ago. That was the first time I testified. It was very interesting. I had done some research on subliminals and had done a literature review that showed that they just didn’t work. The attorneys for Judas Priest and CBS Records found that out, and they invited me in to testify. It was the first time I testified, and they had no time to prep me. So I just went up to the stand, “Here’s the questions I would ask me.” And it was an extremely interesting experience.

Whenever you testify like that, there’s a lot of tension. And what I did was I presented our research, and the opposing witness had submitted a study that he thought proved that subliminals worked. And I went through his study to show that it didn’t—in detail.

And that led to probably one of the more dramatic moments of the trial … I had co-authored a paper that the plaintiffs were using to impeach witnesses called “Under What Conditions Does Theory Obstruct Research Progress?” So that if you’re a scientist, you’re biased, you have biases, and that can obstruct how you see the world. And so the judge said, “Well, we’ve had that paper, you wrote it. How do we know that you’re not biased?”

I told the judge I wish I could tell him I wasn’t biased, because as a human being, we all are. And that’s really something important to understand, because if we don’t understand that, we can get taken on propaganda real fast. So I told him that, and I said, “That’s why I presented the data to the court, so he could make up its own mind.” He could see for himself, and he did rule on behalf of Judas Priest and CBS Records with the testimony rendered.