Are Women Perceived as Worse Magicians Than Men? Gender Bias When Evaluating Magic Tricks

Gygax, Pascal; Thomas, Cyril; Didierjean, André; Kuhn, Gustav

doi:10.32872/spb.v14i3.33574

Cited by 4 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 34 publications

(55 reference statements)

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“…Second, there were no statistically significant gender differences. Gygax et al ( 2019 ) reported that males are more motivated to discover how tricks are done than females, which is inconsistent with our results for curiosity and confidence in solution. There are some methodological differences (e.g., the participants were asked to report the solution they had guessed in their study) and the future research would be necessary for clarity in what gender differences exists in which contexts.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

“…The face of the magician was obscured as much as possible to avoid potential distraction due to their appearance and facial expressions. This editing also helps minimize potential responses to the gender of the magicians reported by Gygax, Thomas, Didierjean, & Kuhn ( 2019 ). Twenty-one magic tricks out of the 145 tricks were relatively long and included a sequence of more than one tricks.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Magic Curiosity Arousing Tricks (MagicCATs): A novel stimulus collection to induce epistemic emotions

et al. 2020

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There has been considerable interest in empirical research on epistemic emotions, i.e., emotions related to knowledge-generating qualities of cognitive tasks and activities such as curiosity, interest, and surprise. One big challenge when studying epistemic emotions is systematically inducting these emotions in restricted experimental settings. The current study created a novel stimulus set called Magic Curiosity Arousing Tricks (MagicCATs): a collection of 166 short magic trick video clips that aim to induce a variety of epistemic emotions. MagicCATs are freely available for research and can be used in a variety of ways to examine epistemic emotions. Rating data also support that the magic tricks elicit a variety of epistemic emotions with sufficient inter-stimulus variability, demonstrating good psychometric properties for their use in psychological experiments. Keywords intrinsic motivation. epistemic emotions. curiosity. science of magic Recent years have seen a surge of interest in the topic of socalled epistemic emotions. Epistemic emotions refer to a group of emotions which are related to the knowledgegenerating qualities of cognitive tasks and activities (Brun, Doğuoğlu, & Kuenzle, 2008; Muis, Chevrier, & Singh, 2018). These emotions typically include surprise, curiosity and interest. Recent studies have revealed that these epistemic emotions have profound implications for cognitive processing * Hiroki Ozono

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Magic Curiosity Arousing Tricks (MagicCATs): A novel stimulus collection to induce epistemic emotions

et al. 2020

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“…It is worth pointing out that no female illusionists volunteered to participate in our study. This testifies to the strong and most unfortunate gender imbalance in the art of magic (Gygax, Thomas, Didierjean & Kuhn, 2019). Unfortunately, the role of women in the art of magic is often limited to assisting, serving props and being apparently cut in half and the like (Jay, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Magic is male-dominated art, and even some magical organizations did not admit women until certain time (Jay, 2021). Gygax, Thomas, Didierjean and Kuhn (2019) showed that if the woman magician showed a trick, her skills were rated worse than when it was a man (in fact, hands belonged to the same person).…”

Section: Sample and Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self-esteem and emotional reactivity of actors and magicians: a comparative study

Napora,

Ekroll

2024

Polish Psychological Bulletin

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Self-esteem and emotional reactivity may be important personality determinants of human functioning in situations of social exposure. In this study, we compared the levels of these personality variables in a group of professional theater actors and a group of professional illusionists with a control group of participants who were neither actors nor illusionists and had no artistic education. We also examined the correlations between emotional reactivity and self-esteem in the three groups. For emotional reactivity, we found (1) very strong evidence that the level is less for magicians than for controls, (2) substantial evidence that the level is less for magicians than for actors, (3) anecdotal evidence that the level is less for actors than for controls, and (4) decisive evidence that the average score is less for males than for females. For self-esteem, we found (1) anecdotal evidence that the level is higher for magicians than for controls, (2) substantial evidence that there is no difference between actors and magicians, (3) anecdotal evidence against a difference between actors and controls, and (4) anecdotal evidence against a difference between males and females. Based on the entire sample we found a moderate correlation between self-esteem and emotional reactivity (r = -.30, p < 0.001). Our results are compatible with the notion that emotional reactivity – as part of the temperament concept – is a factor influencing the choice of an artistic profession.

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“…The effect size was small, but the size and diversity of the sample imply that it is worth exploring gender further in future work. There could be many reasons for a gender difference in magic attitudes (Gygax et al, 2019). Research on occupational stereotypes has found that people stereotype “magician” as a predominantly male occupation (Misersky et al, 2014).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who hates magic? Exploring the loathing of legerdemain.

Silvia¹,

Greengross²,

Karwowski³

et al. 2023

Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts

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Magic is an ancient, universal, diverse, and wide-ranging domain of artistic performance. Despite its worldwide popularity, however, any working magician will tell you that some people really hate magic. They seem to see every illusion as a challenge to be solved and every performance as an insult to their intelligence. A distinctive feature of magic is that it seeks to create emotions through deception—practitioners create the illusion of the impossible, which can provoke intense curiosity and uncertainty, but will not explain the method—so disliking magic could stem from a few factors: (a) low propensity for curiosity, awe, and wonder; (b) high needs for certainty and cognitive structure, which make a person averse to uncertainty and to events that violate one’s mental models of the world; and (c) high needs for social status and dominance, which make a person averse to being manipulated. The present research explored people’s attitudes toward magic with a brief Loathing of Legerdemain scale. In a multinational sample of 1,599 adults, people who hated magic were marked by (a) lower openness to experience and lower awe-proneness; (b) higher dogmatism, intolerance of uncertainty, and personal need for structure; and (c) higher socially aversive traits, such as lower agreeableness, greater interpersonal dominance, and higher psychopathy. We suggest that magic is an interesting case for researchers interested in audience and visitor studies and that the psychology of art would benefit from a richer understanding of negative audience attitudes more generally.

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Are Women Perceived as Worse Magicians Than Men? Gender Bias When Evaluating Magic Tricks

Cited by 4 publications

References 34 publications

Magic Curiosity Arousing Tricks (MagicCATs): A novel stimulus collection to induce epistemic emotions

Magic Curiosity Arousing Tricks (MagicCATs): A novel stimulus collection to induce epistemic emotions

Self-esteem and emotional reactivity of actors and magicians: a comparative study

Who hates magic? Exploring the loathing of legerdemain.

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