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Magic is all about convincing others that the impossible has just happened. And that deception is achieved with a high degree of skill and showmanship.
"We're starting to realise that magicians have a lot of implicit knowledge about how we perceive the world around us because they have to deceive us in terms of controlling attention, exploiting the assumptions we make when we do and don't notice a change in our environment," says Wiseman. "There is an enormous amount of really detailed instruction on how to perform magic. People are always blown away by how detailed a description you'll have."
A card trick that lasts four or five minutes, for example, might have 20 pages of detailed text to describe exactly where to look, what to say, what to do and so on. And a lot of the understanding of a trick has to be from the perspective of the audience.
While the magician's dexterity is important, the audience is also a vital participant in the deception. After all, it is in their minds that the illusion is created. "Magicians seem to be able to carry out secret actions in front of their audience without being spotted. I'm interested in why people don't perceive those actions," says Gustav Kuhn, a psychologist at Durham University.
A simple example of misdirection is used in the coin drop trick. "What you're doing there is pretending to take the coin from one hand to the other but, in fact, leaving it in the original hand," says Wiseman. "What's important is that you're looking where you want the audience to look. You're not looking at the coin, you're looking at the empty hand. In terms of movement, you're moving the hand that doesn't contain the coin to attract people's attention over to that hand."
Another trick, where a magician pretends to throw a ball up in the air, takes the misdirection a step further. "People often experience the ball moving up in the air even though there is no ball present," says Kuhn. They claim to see a ball moving but obviously it's not there so it must be in their mind."
Psychologists can use these tricks to catch a glimpse into how our minds interpret the world around us.