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Alright.

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I'd like to start
with a small imagination exercise.

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Imagine you're sitting at this table,
facing me right now.

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Now, I'm going to ask you
to push one of these cards towards me.

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So please imagine yourself
pushing one of these cards towards me.

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OK, so take the number
matching the card you pushed

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and remember it --
it's important for later.

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Now, I'm going to flip
through this deck of cards

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and ask you to choose a card
that you will see in the deck.

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Are you ready?

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Alright, now that you have
your card in mind,

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add the value of your card
to your previous number.

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For example, if you chose
the six of clubs, add six,

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if it's an ace, add one,

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and take 11 for any picture cards.

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Have you got your final number in mind?

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Perfect.

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So please take the item
matching your final number.

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Now, here's what's funny.

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There are going to be
a lot of people watching this video,

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and you all have different quirks
with different preferences.

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And yet,

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the vast majority of you right now
is thinking about a kiwi,

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or, if you're left-handed,
probably a corn on the cob.

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Yes, I just tricked you.

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And I used your psychological biases

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to influence both of your decisions.

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I work in the MAGIC Lab

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at Goldsmiths University of London,

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which is not only a place
where we make assistants vanish,

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but where we use magic tricks
to study psychological processes,

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such as attention, perception,
deception and free will.

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I am fascinated by the subtle factors
that influence our choices,

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and how understanding our flaws
can give us back some power.

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Magic tricks provide a powerful tool
to investigate this,

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and our experiments have shown that.

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First, we humans tend to go
for the easiest decisions.

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With the card trick I did,

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most people tend to choose
the card that I want them to choose,

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because I'm presenting it
a bit longer than the others.

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And it becomes the easiest
option for your brain.

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In our case,

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the majority of you probably chose
the ten of hearts, right?

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And a lot of other tricks
are based on this principle

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of easy decision.

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Because magicians are very aware

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that our brain, not to say "we,"
tends to be a bit lazy.

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The exercise we did with the four cards
is also a good example of this.

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It's based on another trick
I investigated,

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where I ask participants
to physically push

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one of the four cards towards me.

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We found that around 60 percent of people
choose the third card from the left,

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and if they were left-handed,

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they typically chose
the second card from the left.

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This is based on the easy-option
principle again,

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because the card that most people choose

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is the most easy to reach
by the dominant hand.

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So, I knew that most of you

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would end up with one
of these two numbers,

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and this allowed me to estimate

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the two most probable things
you would end up with.

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But this is not just about magic.

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It's also about how we are influenced
in our day-to-day lives.

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You know, stories and politicians

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play with your mind as well, all the time,

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because they also know
that we tend to choose and like

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what's easily grabbed or seen.

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For instance, when you are in a store,

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choosing a bottle of wine or a bag of rice

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among many lined up on vertical shelves,

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your first instinct is to look

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only at the ones that are on the shelves
in front of your eyes, right?

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It's easier and requires less effort.

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Did you know that many brands
actually negotiate

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to be at eye-level
on grocery store shelves

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because of that easy-option principle?

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And this is a tactic
that many politicians use.

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When information is right in front
of our eyes on social media,

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it's easily accessible,

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and it absolutely affects
our voting behaviors.

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Political outcomes,
such as the Brexit referendum

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or the American election in 2016,

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were heavily influenced
by targeted advertising,

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making some information,

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which was not necessarily truthful,

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disproportionately easily accessible
and visible to specific audiences

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to influence their votes.

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But here is the good news.

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Some simple factors have an impact
on how influencible we are.

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In an experiment using the trick
with the four cards,

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we found that explicitly
informing participants

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that they have a choice

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can actually lead them to make
more deliberate decisions,

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as opposed to behaving in the way
we are trying to make them behave.

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In other words,

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I either simply asked participants
to push one of the cards,

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or I said,

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"Choose a card, and then push it."

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And when asked to choose a card,

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the percentage of people who impulsively
chose the most reachable one

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dropped from 60 to 35 percent.

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So, it seems that when we are reminded
that we have control over our choices,

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and know that our actions matter,

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as opposed to acting without thinking,

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we can actually make
more personal decisions

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and are less easily influenced.

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Let me show you another trick,

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invented by a British
mentalist Derren Brown,

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to make my point.

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This one uses what's called
"priming" in psychology.

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Priming happens when exposure to something

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influences your thoughts
and behavior later on,

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without you being aware

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that the first thing
is guiding you to a certain extent.

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The trick is usually done
in a more intimate context,

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where I would be directly facing you,

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but we'll give it a try together.

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Just focus on me as best as you can,

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but do not let me influence your choice.

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I'm going to try and mentally transmit
the identity of a playing card

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I'm thinking of.

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Are you ready?

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OK, so first make the color
bright and vivid.

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Imagine a screen in your mind,

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and on the screen, the little numbers,
low down in the corners of the cards,

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and then in the top of the cards.

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And then the things in the middle,

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in the center of the cards,

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the boom, boom, boom, the suits.

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Did you get it?

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OK, so I'm going to bet
that the majority of you

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thought about the three of diamonds,

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but chose another card, right?

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As you might have noticed,

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I heavily tried to influence
your choice with my gestures

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while giving you the instructions.

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By studying this trick,

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we found that around 18 percent of people
choose the three of diamonds,

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and nearly 40 percent choose
the three of any suit,

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while being completely oblivious
of the fact I was manipulating them.

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So what happened here?

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Because you were aware

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that I was trying
to influence your choice,

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you probably paid more attention
to what I was doing.

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And this led the majority of you
to choose more consciously

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than our participants
who have no information

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about who I am, what I'm studying

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or what I'm trying to do with their minds.

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So the thing is,

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in all of our experiments,

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we managed to heavily influence
people's card choices,

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while they report feeling completely free
and in control of their choice.

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And this lack of self-awareness

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makes politicians, companies

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and other people's influence
all the more powerful,

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because we might think we are in control
of our choice and beliefs

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when we are not.

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Politically or in our consumer behaviors,

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if we don't pay attention,

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misleading content or showy ads
can just trick our mind.

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What if, in our day-to-day lives,

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we would stop more often
and consciously choose

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before acting on this impulsive,
reactive beast inside of us?

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We can actually act more consciously

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if we keep in mind

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that we have the capacity
to be influenced.

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Thank you.