ArticleScientific reports2026
Assessing the role of magician patter on deception in the Three-Card Monte.
Article in Scientific reports, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Magic and cognition: a scoping review of empirical evidence on cognitive and neural processes.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Pooled it
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Magicians’ speech flow, called “patter,” is considered part of their toolkit to direct audiences’ attention away from the secret method and towards the magical effect. Here, we set out to determine whether patter helps induce inattentional blindness during the Three-Card Monte. As a magic act, the Three-Card Monte features a performer that shuffles three cards and challenges spectators to track the red card, using sleight-of-hand to ensure they fail at this task. Participants viewed a recorded magic performance of the Three-Card Monte. Videos were accompanied by a congruent audio narrative, an incongruent audio narrative, or no sound. Crucially, the red card had a subtle but visible water stain mark: any participants who noticed the mark had a foolproof strategy to always know the red card’s location. We found no differences across conditions (congruent, incongruent, or silent) in how many participants noticed the mark, or how long it took them to notice it. Our results suggest that patter does not significantly misdirect audiences’ attention in the Three-Card Monte, and possibly neither does it in some other close-up magic routines. Despite this, magic patter may intensify the audience’s emotional engagement, strengthen rapport between spectators and performer, and increase the show’s entertainment value.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.