The illusion of absence: how a common feature of magic shows can explain a class of road accidents

Abstract

The purpose of the present note is to draw attention to the potential role of a recently discovered visual illusion in creating traffic accidents. The illusion consists in a compelling and immediate experience that the space behind an occluding object in the foreground is empty. Although the illusion refers to a region of space, which is invisible due to occlusion (a blind spot), there is evidence to suggest that it is nevertheless driven by visual mechanisms and that it can be just as deceptive and powerful as ordinary visual illusions. We suggest that this novel illusion can make situations involving blind spots in a road user's field of view even more dangerous than one would expect based on the lack of visibility by itself. This could be because it erroneously makes the road user feel that (s)he has actually seen everything there is to see, and thus has verified that the blind spot is empty. This hypothesis requires further testing before definitive conclusions can be drawn, but we wish to make researchers and authorities involved in the analysis of traffic accidents and on-the-spot crash investigations aware of its potential role in order to encourage registration of relevant data and facilitate further research.

Fooling System 1 in the field of perception: Failure to intuitively detect attribute substitution in the flushtration count illusion

“…Finally, we may wonder why, on average, about a third of participants are not susceptible to the flushtration count illusion. According to recent studies (Ekroll, 2019; Ekroll et al, 2021; Pailhès & Kuhn, 2020; Thomas et al, 2018; see also Kahneman, 2003), intuitive simplifications may affect the interpretation of a wide range of ambiguous visual sequences to make sense of them. Recently, several studies have focused on a perceptual illusion that also affects around two-thirds of participants: the vanishing ball illusion (Kuhn et al, 2010; Kuhn & Land, 2006; Kuhn & Rensink, 2016; Thomas & Didierjean, 2016a, 2016b).…”

“…To date, attribute substitution has mainly been studied through complex reasoning problems such as the bat-and-ball problem. Following Kahneman (2003), a number of authors (Ekroll, 2019; Ekroll et al, 2021; Pailhès & Kuhn, 2020; Thomas et al, 2018) have recently argued that this intuitive simplification is not limited to the domain of reasoning: it may also affect lower-level functions, such as perceptual processing. As with reasoning, given the complexity of our environment, we need to interpret 1 ambiguous sensory information to make sense of it (see Changizi, 2009).…”

How to Fool Your Robot: Designing Exploitable Sensory Systems

“…Conversely, amodal absence can be exploited: if most of an empty hand is visible, we find it easy to imagine that the entire hand is empty. This effect has already been shown to be a contributor to road accidents [41], suggesting that similar psychological assumptions should not be programmed into self-driving cars or safety-critical applications.…”

Misdirection – Magic, Psychology and its Application

“…There are lots of other areas where principles of misdirection are applied to the real world. For example, Ekroll and colleagues how shown how some of the psychological principles underlying magic tricks may be relevant for understanding traffic accidents (Ekroll et al, 2021). Leathley (2019), has shown how misdirection principles can help us understand health and safety issues more generally.…”