Magic has been part of safety and health education for nearly 20 years. But using trickery to understand psychology is even older, with Alfred Binet studying this area in the 1890s.
IOSH magazine spoke to Dr Gustav Kuhn, Ivor Smith and Rubens Filho, magicians with different backgrounds. All have something to share that can benefit OSH professionals. Kuhn has been involved with the Wellcome Collection exhibition "Smoke and Mirrors: the psychology of magic" (a free exhibition in London that runs until 15 September 2019), which provided valuable material for this article.

Joint safety inspections are intended to bring more eyes, ears and minds to the process, but if all the eyes are looking the same way because of social cueing it is easy to miss something
We see experts in our workplace and don't like to challenge them. If our peers don't question something, why would we?
2. Change blindness (youtu.be/qblOKInU6Ik)
A card trick demonstrates the phenomenon of change blindness. Kuhn shows you six cards (see illustration below) and asks you to think of one of them. He magically throws away one of the cards and then shows you the remaining ones. Everyone looks for the card they thought of -- it's not there. Whichever card you thought of, it's not there. With sleight of hand, the magician has replaced all six cards with five different cards, but with the same range of colours and mix of court and number cards.


Although when looking at an accident the precise circumstances might not be known, by educating ourselves on a broader range of causes for similar accidents, perhaps the tendency to grasp for the easiest explanation can be reduced.
Magic for soft skills Rubens Filho is the director of magic at Abracademy. Trained as a lawyer, his teenage hobby of performing tricks led him to abandon law in favour of soft skills training. He explains the relevance to OSH: "More and more health and safety leaders are understanding the importance of non-technical skills like creativity, curiosity, listening skills, social skills, persuasion, influence and empathy. These are skills where magicians rule." Abracademy uses magic as a tool for learning and development. "We can stretch professionals outside their comfort zones so they can be more effective and take the perception of the health and safety profession to magical heights," Filho says. "With magic, people surrender into the learning journey in a very powerful way. Magic opens their minds and shifts perspectives." Shifting perspectives can be a critical part of moving an organisational culture. "If OSH professionals can be more curious, innovative and confident -- therefore more magical -- they are likely to have a much greater impact in the businesses where they work," Filho adds. |