You didn’t miss the trick – your brain deleted it. In 1999, two Harvard psychologists asked people to count basketball passes in a video. Halfway through, a person in a gorilla suit walked into the middle of the frame, beat their chest, and walked off. Half of the viewers never saw it. The finding – inattentional blindness – is the …
Being Fooled Well is a Gift
There is a paradox at the heart of what I do. The sharper the audience, the more they tend to enjoy being fooled. It runs against intuition slightly, so it is worth explaining! The human brain is a prediction machine. We spend our days quietly forecasting what comes next and feeling a small satisfaction each time we are right. Have …
What Do Magic and High Performance Have in Common?
What do Premier League football, Grand Slam tennis, boardroom leadership and close-up magic all have in common? Pressure. Perception. And performance when it matters most. Over the past 30 years, I’ve been privileged to work as a performance psychologist with elite athletes, world champions and senior leadership teams. At the same time, I’ve built a parallel career as a mind-reading …