Fake science: The impact of pseudo-psychological demonstrations on people’s beliefs in psychological principles

Yuxuan Lan, Christine Mohr, Xiaomeng Hu and Gustav Kuhn

PLOS ONE, 2018, vol. 13, issue 11, 1-10

Abstract: Magicians use deception to create effects that allow us to experience the impossible. More recently, magicians have started to contextualize these tricks in psychological demonstrations. We investigated whether witnessing a magic demonstration alters people’s beliefs in these pseudo-psychological principles. In the classroom, a magician claimed to use psychological skills to read a volunteer’s thoughts. After this demonstration, participants reported higher beliefs that an individual can 1) read a person’s mind by evaluating micro expressions, psychological profiles and muscle activities, and 2) effectively prime a person’s behaviour through subtle suggestions. Whether he was presented as a magician or psychologist did not influence people’s beliefs about how the demonstration was achieved, nor did it influence their beliefs in pseudo-psychological principles. Our results demonstrate that pseudo-psychological demonstrations can have a significant impact on perpetuating false beliefs in scientific principles and raise important questions about the wider impact of scientific misinformation.

Date: 2018
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0207629

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0207629

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