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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

“Pick A Card, Any Card”: Learning To Deceive And Conceal – With Care, Brian Rappert Jan 2021

“Pick A Card, Any Card”: Learning To Deceive And Conceal – With Care, Brian Rappert

Secrecy and Society

Because of the asymmetries in knowledge regarding the underlying hidden mechanisms as well as because of the importance of intentional deception, entertainment magic is often presented as an exercise in power, manipulation, and control. This article challenges such portrayals and through doing so common presumptions about how secrets are kept. It does so through recounting the experiences of the author as a beginner learning a craft. Regard for the choices and tensions associated with the accomplishment of mutually recognized deception in entertainment magic are marshalled to consider how it involves ‘reciprocal action’ between the audience and the performer. Attending to …


Keeping Secrets From Ourselves: Understanding Self-Deception Through Theory, Evidence And Application, Mathew J. Creighton Jan 2021

Keeping Secrets From Ourselves: Understanding Self-Deception Through Theory, Evidence And Application, Mathew J. Creighton

Secrecy and Society

Self-deception is a difficult concept to share with students. Although few students find it implausible that they are capable of keeping secrets from themselves, the social theory, application, and practical demonstration of self-deception is far from straightforward. This work offers a three-step approach to teach a theoretically-grounded, evidence-based, and application-reinforced understanding of self-deception. Rooted in work on identity by Mead (1934), the approach outlined here engages with interdisciplinary case studies derived from social psychology (Greenwald, McGhee and Schwartz 1998) and behavioral economics (Ariely 2012). The theory and case studies build toward a peer evaluation that offers students a concrete demonstration …