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Study turns over cards and minds to understand illusions

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By Alison Roach

SFU masters student looks at the psychology behind card tricks

When someone asks you to choose a playing card, you have a completely free choice in which of the 52 you pick, right? According to SFU psychology graduate student and teaching assistant Jay Olson, you might have less choice in the matter than you think. Olson has recently co-authored a study called “Perceptual and Cognitive Characteristics of Common Playing Cards” that investigates the relationship between psychology and magic.

The study itself focused on a seemingly simple brand of magic: tricks using playing cards. Specifically, it analyzes how one psychologically perceives individual playing cards. “We were trying to look at how card tricks work in the mind. There are some tricks that we don’t understand how they work in the mind, as magicians and as psychologists,” said Olson. He revealed that there are card tricks that magicians don’t completely understand themselves, or the reason why magicians think that they work happens to be incorrect. This means that there are psychological processes going on that aren’t completely understood, or even recognized.

The study looked at psychological characteristics of cards to better understand how people treat them. Four specific factors were examined: “visibility,” how well people can perceive specific playing cards; “memorability,” how memorable certain cards are; “likeability,” how much people liked certain cards; and “accessibility,” how easy it is to access specific cards when asked to name one. Looking at cards through these lenses, the study distinguished several large differences in how specific cards are treated. For example, when asked to name a card instead of being asked to visualize it, people will choose different types of cards.

Some cards are more “likeable” than others, and this might depend largely on the audience’s past associations with them. For example, the research showed that women liked lower valued cards more, while men tended to favour higher valued cards.

“We’re not sure why . . . but maybe men associate cards more with card games; say, poker. If more men play poker, then maybe they associate those kinds of values more than women do,” Olson speculated. It was found that people’s perceptions of cards were strongly linked to their favourite card games. For example, players of “Big Two” liked twos much more than those who didn’t, since twos are highly valued in the game.

There were some universals, however. Most notably, the study found that when people were asked to name a playing card, most people chose from the queen or king of hearts or the ace of spades. Women were found to choose the king of hearts more than men did, and men chose the queen of hearts more often than women. These findings suggest that there are inherent cultural, social, or psychological values that certain cards possess.

Olson has been personally practicing and performing magic since he was five years old, but had never really considered the psychological implications of his tricks until four years ago, when he saw a story in the Vancouver Sun featuring Alym Amlani, a UBC psychology major and instructor at Kwantlen, and Dr. Ronald Rensink, a professor at UBC. Olson contacted the two and they became a group, going on to co-author the paper in Perception together. “We started out specifically studying how magicians influence people’s choices,” said Olson.

The research has brought out not only some insight into the minds of the participants, but into the minds of the magicians themselves. There is one specific trick the team computerized, in which a person is shown each card in a deck and is then asked to choose a card. The person will think that they have a completely free choice in this, but in reality the magician knows 99% of the time which card they will choose. When this trick was automated, it was found that the reason magicians thought this trick worked was actually partially or completely wrong. In the experiment the computer shows 16 packs of playing cards to the viewer, flipping through the first while trying to make the person choose a specific card, then a second pack to make the person choose a different card, and so on. When Olson had the magician who initially taught him this trick sit down to participate in the experiment, his friend was skeptical, and claimed there was no way his choice could be influenced in more than one of 16 trials. In the end, the computer had actually gotten him to choose 5 of the target cards. To this day, four years later, Olson’s friend still doesn’t believe these results. “It just shows that someone who knows it’s a trick, who knows what the trick is, still feels he has a completely free choice of the card he wanted. It shows how strongly people want to have a free uninfluenced choice, when in reality they don’t,” said Olson.

Virtual Cupid: Dating in the Internet Age

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EIC
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By Esther Tung

I’m not a middle-aged man crawling out of a painful divorce. I shower and floss every day, and the very nature of my job has me in intimate contact with strangers on a weekly basis. I don’t shave my legs, or know how to walk in heels, and the most private thing I’ll admit is that I forget to wear deodorant a little too often, but I can still look the part of a debutante on a good night. I’m even casually seeing someone I met in real life. Despite falling short of the litmus test for an online dater, I’ve been active on OKCupid for over a month, and it’s never been a secret among my real-life friends.

The underlying stigma of dating online is that if you use it, you’re likely desperate, boring, a bigot, or otherwise harbor some other fundamental personality flaw. But this perception likely stems from self-selection bias. Horror stories about creeps, pervs, and sociopaths naturally stick around the rumour mill longer and stronger, and are the ones we’re likelier to hear about. Among the 150 or so men who have messaged me so far, only a small percentage raise warning flags in their messages, whether it’s by calling me stupid and then asking me to call them anyway, or outright admitting to their flaws. As for the majority of users on OKCupid, some have social lives that are more conducive to platonic relationships than romance, but many people are new in town (read: cute European exchange students) and are looking for someone to hang out with and show them the underbelly of the city.

I chose OKCupid over the better-known Plentyoffish largely because I knew people who already had a profile. A man with whom I’ve been in a quasi-relationship for two years set up accounts with his best friend before he met me. Encouraged by both of them being legitimately charismatic, intelligent, creative types, I set up my profile. After spending a couple of weeks browsing matches, rating photos, and answering messages indiscriminately, I unearthed even more people that I knew in real life, from sweet-faced band members that I’d interviewed to distant colleagues from rival school papers. I knew they’d be able to see that I’d viewed their profile, but that initial mortification quickly melted into curiosity. Through the answers to their OKCupid questions (which are done to help the site come up with better matches for you), I was now privy to details that would never come up in actual conversation — whether they’d be horrified or turned on by getting slapped on the face during sex, whether they would teach their kids to believe in Santa, how often they masturbated — but even the novelty of that quickly wears off.

Quick gleaning of profiles showed that most men responded often to messages, while women replied either selectively, or very selectively. Granted, women get messages from at least a couple men a day, but I resisted feeling jaded about the whole experience, and replied to all messages as long as they were polite, regardless of the person’s photos or profile. Everybody’s got a great story if you’ll let them tell it. A married man once approached me for coffee. With his permission and input, his wife wanted to see another woman outside of the marriage. I declined, but mentioned that I had read The Ethical Slut, which led to a grand-scale discussion on polyamory and swinger culture. Eventually, some conversations stood out more than others, and meetings were proposed.

Over the span of a month, I met four men, and my only criterion for accepting an invitation to drinks was that we had kept up smart, sincere conversation over at least three or four exchanges. Even at this juncture, I put physical attraction on the backburner, and took it as an exercise in cultivating connections with people. It might have been an unusual approach to take in online dating, but in retrospect, such indiscrimination was central to how much I got out of the whole experience.

My first date lasted three and a half hours; my most recent one drew late into the night and clocked in at eight. I kissed one on the first date, and I have yet to even break the touch barrier with another even after third-date brunch. I’ve showed up underdressed and overdressed, too early, and too late. I’ve revealed insecurities, argued politics, and been uncool. I’m in the middle of what Cosmo calls a “boy binge”. Maybe being approached by a seemingly endless supply of good matches is what emboldened me to break pretty much every dating rule ever published under self-help, but this has serendipitously made dating the most fun it’s ever been. When you break all these rules, you realize that nobody actually knew they were rules in the first place.

B.C. Liberals must adapt faster to win the next election

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EIC
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By Benedict Reiners

As of last week, we are officially less than one year away from the next provincial election, with the date already set for May 14, 2013. At this point, all evidence indicates the next legislature will have a radically different make up. As it generally does in such cases, the bulk of the responsibility belongs to the governing party. No, they could not stop the advent of the B.C. Conservative Party, nor could the current leadership wipe their record clean on the HST, but they could have handled those and other events far better, or at least more strategically.

The Conservative Party in B.C. has come into prominence on the basis of the claim that there was no true right-wing option for B.C. voters, and in previous years, that claim held legitimacy. The B.C. Liberals have decided to take out the Tories by invalidating that claim. How? By producing what is now another legitimate choice for right-leaning voters. This disregards one of their now-past strengths: the fact that they were a centrist party that could draw support, both from those who did not consider themselves left enough to vote for the NDP, and those not right enough to vote for the Conservatives. The Liberals are effectively opening up the votes for the centre and the entire left to the NDP, while splitting the right with the Tories. Sure, this means that John Cummins probably won’t be B.C.’s next premier, but it also lowers the odds of Christy Clark holding that same honour.

To address this problem, the Liberals need to move back to the centre. To get there, they’ll likely need to send an olive branch or two to the left-leaning voters. Perhaps the most effective way to do this would be to take a firm stance against the proposed Enbridge pipeline, instead of simply describing their government as “pro-economic development” at every possible opportunity. This would take some of the environmentalist vote from the NDP, and would show any voter deciding between the NDP and the Liberals that the Liberals can be a solid choice for those left of centre.

While they have not taken a firm stance on the proposed pipeline, the Liberals are clear on at least one issue: the HST, as legislation was finally pooled to transition back to the mixed PST/GST. However, even if the Liberals had opposed it with more conviction in the lead up to its demise, they would still have faced an uphill battle. The NDP vehemently opposed the HST, and if the Liberals were to defend their handling of the HST, the fact would remain that they brought it in in the first place. As such, it is bizarre that they chose that very issue as one of the few that they are taking a firm stand on.

All told, the B.C. Liberals have not handled the last political year with much grace, as they appear to be facing something of an identity crisis. We have seen the advent of the Conservative Party in B.C., and that has thrown the traditional practices of the two leading parties into question. For years, both the NDP and the Liberals have defined themselves simply as “not the other,” but with three parties, this no longer works. The NDP has been adapting well. The Liberals have not.

The Daily Snooze: Introductions

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EIC
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By Jacob Samuel at The Daily Snooze

Ski Ninjas: High Standards

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EIC
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By Kyle Lees at Ski Ninjas

Reciprocal oral is good for couples

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EIC
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By Ms. X

“My boyfriend always asks for blowjobs before we have sex, but I never know if he wants me to get him off or if he is just looking for a warm up. He has never initiated going down on me, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want to. If he does climax, then is it OK for me to ask him to reciprocate?”

Blowjobs are a pretty hot topic amongst students, along with oral in general. But is oral foreplay or a replacement for sex? There are times when the oral component to sex can just be foreplay, and other times when all you need is a little head before bed. It can save time and mess to keep things strictly oral, but there really is no single answer.

To answer the second part of your question, if your boyfriend is only looking for some head, it’s completely okay to ask that the favour be returned. In the end, you deserve to be just as satisfied as your partner. Rumours have always persisted that men don’t like to go down on girls, but that’s no excuse to let him get away with it. Making you orgasm may give him some satisfaction and perhaps change his mind about venturing down there.

One easy way to introduce your man to eating you out and get him excited about doing it is to propose the 69 position. Pleasing each other at the same time will ensure you both leave the bedroom satisfied.

If you want to let him know what you want, being direct with it will definitely get your point across. To tell him straight up that it’s only fair for him to equalize your oral adventures is not asking too much. However, it can be a vulnerable time when you’re already in the bedroom, so if you are worried about asking him then, find a time to bring up the conversation elsewhere. If you think he may pick up on hints, making small comments about wanting him to take the dive may send the right message.

It is also entirely possible that your man may be unsure or unconfident about his skills. It is important that you make the situation comfortable not only for yourself, but for him too. When he does go down on you, make sure he knows he’s doing a good job. Vocal reassurance is important for him so that he will continue to do it in the future. Feel free to give direction, as he will likely appreciate the advice, and the fact that you know what you want may even serve as a turn-on for him.

The next time the two of you start fooling around, don’t worry about the expectations he has for your oral fun to turn into sex. There doesn’t need to be a clear definition of the expectations for every intimate session. But please, don’t let him get away any longer without doing his fair share. Whatever way you are comfortable doing it, you are more than entitled to introduce your boyfriend into the world of muff diving. Little does he know, contrary to the rumours, pleasing you may be pleasing for him as well.

Freaks and Geeks: A look at Fan Expo Vancouver and fan culture

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EIC
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By Alison Roach

Within 10 minutes of walking into the Vancouver Convention Centre, I’d seen Batman, Jack Sparrow (complete with swagger), a girl in a wig and fishnets (and not much else), an inhabitant of Avatar’s foreign planet, and Iron Man blasting his theme from a boom box. When I’d first been invited to attend Fan Expo Vancouver, I expected it to be all about comic books and shows set in space, but it quickly became clear that this was something much larger than that. This was a day for fandom.
In late April, Fan Expo came to Vancouver, proclaiming itself “Vancouver’s first major comicon.” Though Fan Expo has graced Toronto since 1995, it hadn’t made it to the west coast until now, and the waiting audience responded eagerly. By the time the doors to the convention opened at 10 a.m. the line was already curling around the waiting area, with dozens of people joining every minute. By noon, the line extended outside, covering the sidewalk all the way down to Canada Place, half a city block. Half an hour later, the line was cut; the centre had taken in all the fans it possibly could.
What lay inside was a carnival. After braving the line, attendees descended down the rabbit hole into the bowels of the Convention Centre, diving into a world of storytelling and fantasy. The core of the expo was a huge space, jam-packed with merchandise booths, signing areas, photo op and gaming spaces, and an authentic Batmobile at the centre of it all. It was an enormous jumble of $1 comic books, fan t-shirts, and attractions (most of these in costume). Looking around, you could spot homages to everything from Labyrinth, to Star Wars, to Portal, to Ghostbusters. This was a fan’s paradise, and it extended way beyond comic books: it was a celebration of pop culture.

The headliners of the convention included Lou Ferrigno (the original Hulk), Kevin Sorbo (yeah, he was Hercules), John DeLancie (of Star Trek fame), and Kristin Bauer (foul-mouthed Pam of True Blood). And of course, Adam West and Burt Ward, the original Batman and Robin. The guests weren’t confined to a single genre either; guest Alan Ruck is still recognizable as Ferris’ best friend Cameron in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Tom Felton, the sneering blonde from Harry Potter, was supposed to appear as well, but, in a typical Malfoy move, cancelled at the last minute. Odds are that these names ring a bell and you would recognize these actors, even if their faces don’t materialize to you right away. Or maybe you’ve loved them as a part of what made your favourite show great. I know I was pretty fucking excited when I realized that I was going to be in the same room as Nicholas Brendon — Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Xander. I had only seen every single episode, twice. No big deal.

The convention was like a festival; like Halloween. There was a feeling that you could be anyone or do anything without judgment. For an entire hour I sat beside a man that dressed up as Dr. Evil, and he didn’t break character once. When another fan beside us mentioned that he was going to school to become a lawyer, the doctor looked at him slyly; signature pinky up , and remarked, “Oh, so you’re on your way to becoming . . . evil.” At Fan Expo, no costume was too outlandish, no reference too obscure. This was the antithesis of hipsters: instead of not caring at all, they did care. A lot. They cared about special effects, character arcs, mythologies, and on-set happenings. It didn’t seem to matter how long ago these actors and creators had put their work out into the world, these industry conversations were still important to those having them.

Fan Expo was not only a chance to become the characters that you love and admire the most, it was a chance to interact with them. Throughout the day, actors were available for autograph signings, photo ops, scheduled panels and Q&A sessions. The panels for newer shows were a bit more formal, but the sessions with veteran actors whose characters have been revered for years were easygoing conversations. At the open John de Lancie Q&A panel, Zack Mead, a nervous fan, came up to the microphone to ask the former Star Trek: The Next Generation actor a question. Mead pointed his camera at de Lancie to capture the answer. De Lancie, amused, quickly pulled out his own cell phone and, mirroring the fan, pointed it at Mead before urging him to ask his question. The crowd laughed with Mead, and cheered as he asked de Lancie a question about his cult role in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Afterwards, Mead said that he had come mainly for de Lancie. “He’s a phenomenon.”

This was the case for other appearances. Nicholas Brendan of Buffy fame joked comfortably with the audience, acknowledging his tendency to use higher than PG-13 language: “So if you’re 12 and under, go fuck yourself.” He did his signature Snoopy dance and sang a snippet from the fan-favourite episode, “Once More with Feeling.” When asked what was the most interesting thing he’d ever received from a fan, he answered, “Gonorrhea, probably.”

Adam West and Burt Ward took things to a whole new level. 50 years of being cultural institutions, and friends, made the pair of them something to behold. Throughout the day I asked dozens of people what they most wanted to see, and the most popular answer by far was Adam West. The original Batman series aired between 1966-1968, but the men who played the original Batman and Robin are still legends. The room was packed, and on the stage the pair was relaxed and cavalier. They reminisced about on-set shenanigans (“Remember that time I ad-libbed that line about the Batgirl statue Burt? ‘Don’t touch that golden pussy!’”), and reflected on the show’s satire and controversies. West, whose booming drawl has made Family Guy’s mayor of Quahog famous, even shared a line from the latest episode: “I need to see your penis!” The hour ended sensationally, when a leather-clad Catwoman purred an indecent proposal to West about meeting up later. West and Ward left to an enormous wave of applause.

There was also a significant and recurring reference to the city that ran throughout the day: two new shows that were being promoted and discussed in panels — Continuum and Primeval — both shot in Vancouver. The idea of the city as ‘Hollywood North’ is nothing new, but these two shows are doing something different: Stanley Park is acknowledged as Stanley Park, street signs are shown, and local haunts are features. As one of the producers of Primeval pointed out, one phrase can sum up the reason behind Vancouver’s sudden attraction: the Olympics. The world knows our city now, and Vancouver can be shown as itself. The director of Continuum remarked, “I’m proud of my city, and I want to show it off.” Sure, these two shows deal with the revival of dinosaurs and time travel, respectively, but those dinosaurs are destroying Vancouver, not Vancouver masquerading as Seattle. This trend seems to signify a welcome shift in the perception of this city. One attendee asked the panel of Continuum cheekily: “In 2077, why haven’t you done anything about the Lions Gate Bridge?”

Fan Expo was an event where costumed fans were able to go up and talk to one another without hesitation. The environment was open and easy to navigate because everyone was there for the same reason: they loved entertainment culture. Approaching someone in costume was easy, because they weren’t themselves; they were the character you recognized from that movie, or TV show, or video game. A man in a full Iron Man costume and another in an equally decked-out Halo soldier getup stood and posed for pictures with people for the entire day. Their enthusiasm made it seem as if they were being paid to do it, but when I asked them what their role in the convention was, Iron Man answered with surprise, “We’re just here as fans.” I’m sure that every single other person at Fan Expo would have said the same thing, star guests included. Everyone was there to pay tribute to pop culture, to show how much they cared about these shows, their characters, and their stories. They were all there to be fans.

Heathy, able-bodied woman refused to give up bus seat to man in wheelchair

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EIC
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By Brad McLeod

SEATTLE— A Seattle woman has been arrested today for disregarding national and state law when she refused to give up her priority front-row bus seat to a man in a wheelchair.
Jane Cartwright, a 40-year-old activist from Kirkland, Washington and self-proclaimed Rosa Parks of her generation was fined $50 yesterday for refusing to obey the common public transportation courtesy that states “the elderly and disabled” have priority in the front seats of the bus in order to accommodate easy entry and exiting.
Although the general consensus from fellow passengers and onlookers was that the woman was simply acting like a “massive jerk” when she refused to move from her seat to allow the man, who is paralyzed with a spinal cord injury, to board, Ms. Cartwright has described the events as a crime of passion against a prejudiced, antiquated law.
“I was tired; I had been on my feet all day working, so I took a seat at the front,” Cartwright told the media shortly after being released from county jail. “And then I’m just supposed to give it up because some entitled handicapped person who’s been sitting on his ass all day is too lazy to roll his way to the back?”
Despite being clearly at fault both legally and ethically, Cartwright believes the way society has treated able-bodied citizens such as herself is highly discriminatory and needs to come to an end.
“Why should I have to suffer?” she sputtered, grasping at straws, “I didn’t ask to be not-handicapped, why should they get all the breaks? Bus seats, parking spots, and . . . uh . . . wheelchair basketball. I mean, what do normal people have that’s even close that?”
As of yet, no one has supported Cartwright in her fight against people suffering with crippling physical disabilities, but experts in the field of activism have warned to not rush to judgment too quickly.
“It’s tough these days, when you’re in the activist game, to find what’s going to be that ‘next big movement,’” said Dr. Hugh Maclean, a radical ‘60s protestor turned stuffy professor, “Ms. Cartwright is at a huge disadvantage being a white, heterosexual, financially stable woman — there aren’t a lot of real problems for her; it was either this or a war on Frappuccino prices”.
Although a stand against a Starbucks novelty drink surely would have garnered more support, Cartwright is now stuck fighting a battle that will never become a national cause, nor warrant a coloured ribbon.
Nevertheless, she vows to keep her protest going until bus seats at the front are reserved for only the pushiest, laziest people in the world, or as she described it, “What Rosa Parks dreamed of.” Reporters have yet to confirm whether Mrs. Parks, or the wheelchair she rode later in life, were in fact spinning in her grave.

Join the Club: The Urban Hunter-Gatherers’ Club!

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EIC
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New to SFU? Missed clubs day? Finding it hard to make friends? Tired of sitting alone on Friday nights alphabetizing your tablespoons of the world collection? Well I’ll bet there’s a club that’ll help you cope with your crippling social phobias! “Join The Club” is a feature that showcases some of SFU’s lesser known clubs!

 

This week we highlight . . . The Urban Hunter-Gatherers’ Club!

 

Are you a Katniss wannabe? Are you a fan of eating locally? Are you tired of being shackled to the oppressive totalitarian structure known as Nesters? The Urban Hunter-Gatherers’ Club is. Come out to one of our weekly meetings, where we’ll teach you how to live off the fatta the lan’, or more accurately, the fatta the dumpster behind Walgreens. We can show you how to hunt local wildlife (rabbits, squirrels, house pets, stray children, etc.) and which plants to avoid when foraging. (Hint: It’s the ones that start with “poison;” ivy, sumac, etc.) We guarantee that once you’ve killed something, and eaten it raw and bleeding, you’ll never go back.

— Paul Hurst

Petter Watch: May 21st

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EIC
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Petter reading box over breakfast; wonders if he’s getting enough thiamine.

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Simon Fraser University’s independent student newspaper since 1965.

Contact us: [email protected]

© The Peak Publications Society 1965-2024

Simon Fraser University’s independent student newspaper since 1965.

Contact us:
[email protected]

© The Peak Publications Society 1965-2024