12 MIND-BLOWING Mind Tricks To Fool Your Friends
12.
Scary Visions- This trick can be a bit scary, so pick a friend who is brave enough to take
on this mind-blowing illusion!
In a dark room, have your friend stand about twenty inches away from a large mirror and
hold a candle directly behind them.
Have your friend gaze at their reflection in the mirror, and after a minute they will
start to see their face become horribly distorted.
Italian psychologist Giovanni Caputo set up this trick and tested it out on fifty people.
Twenty-eight percent of those people saw images of an old woman, child or ancestor in the
mirror and some people even saw animal faces like a cat, pig or a lion.
All fifty participants experienced some form of this dissociative identity effect, at least
for some apparition of strange faces and often reported strong emotional responses like they
were being watched; mostly attributed as a result of the brain failing to combine all
the facial elements into a single image.
11.
Mary’s Mother- Read this sentence correctly.
Mary’s mom had four children: April, May, June and blank.
If you replied with July, then you’re wrong.
The correct answer is Mary.
National Geographic’s Brain Games host Jason Silva, says your brain is wired to be efficient
and looks for a pattern in everything.
Even though the answer lies at the beginning of the sentence, your brain automatically
blurts out July because that’s the next month that follows in that order.
This mind trick showcases how your automatic or system one brain process works.
This way also utilizes shortcuts as an attempt to save energy in the brain to do other tasks
like running the body or keeping yourself alive.
10.
Leg control?- Have your friend sit down and tell that with the power of your mind, that
you can monitor their leg and anything they do with their arm, you will command their
leg to do.
First, tell them to raise their left foot and make clockwise circles with their leg.
Now tell them to make counterclockwise circles with their left arm.
Now bring the attention that her leg is now doing the same!
Instruct your pal to get their leg going clockwise again with the left hand in a still motion.
Then tell her to draw a stickman in the air, and their foot will start drawing as well.
When you are trying to do difficult multitasks with limbs on the same side of your body,
the way your nerves get indications results in the natural dominance of your hands and
arms over legs and feet.
But your friend doesn’t have to know the real reason why just make them think you’re
some sort of psychic or magician.
9.
Money Grab- Here’s an easy game you can play with a friend.
Hold out any dollar bill to your pal and have them place their index finger and thumb a
few inches away from the bill, ready to grab it.
Prepare to drop the bill.
However, your friend isn’t allowed to move their whole arm.
They can only use their fingers.
Then let go of the money.
Your friend won’t be able to catch the money no matter how hard they try because it all
has to do with mental processing speed and time.
Everything you see happens one-tenth of a second before it records in the brain, which
is the amount of time required to assess the information that comes in through the eyes
and your senses.
Besides watching the dollar bill drop, your brain also has to tell your fingers to move
to catch the bill.
So by the time this happens, the money is out of reach.
So it’s actually interesting to wonder how quickly our brains can function, but we tend
to overestimate our reaction time.
8.
Guess the Object- This trick involves a bit of active deception, but what trick doesn’t?!
This can easily be performed in a group of friends, and you will also need a “volunteer/friend”
to help you.
You will choose ahead of time which item your friend will point to before whatever object
your other friends pick.
For example, this will be a black object, any object that your friend points to after
the black one will the object selected by your audience of friends.
You start off by leaving the room, and your assistant will be the one left in the room.
Go back to the room and tell your friends that you will need to have your assistant
point to several objects in the room.
You will utilize your “psychic abilities” to figure out which object they have chosen.
During this time, your volunteer will point to three or four objects then to an object
that is black.
It's even better if you add some creative gestures to this.
For each object, carefully inspect it, put your hands on it, look as though you are concentrating,
and then shake your head in disgust.
For one or two of the objects, you can start to say "yes," but then put it back down.
Engage your group of your friends, and when you finally pick the correct object, your
friends will be in shock!
This trick is actually called the Ganzfeld procedure and is used on the subject of parapsychology
to test ESP.
7.
Priming does the Trick!- Here is a fun little trick you can play on your friend that will
be sure to bring loads of laughter.
Ask your buddy what “S-H-O-P” spells, they will say shop.
Then immediately ask them what do you do when you come to a green light.
Their next answer will most likely be wrong because they’ll say stop!
But obviously, when you come to a green light, you’re going to go.
This is all part of priming, which is a memory effect that influences one response to another
stimulus.
6.
Pick a Finger- Ask a friend to hold up their hand and to choose a finger in their mind
without revealing it to you.
Then after a few seconds, gently push down each finger, one by one with on your own fingers.
They will unconsciously resist when try to push down the finger they have chosen and
will counter the pressure.
To make this trick a bit more convincing, you can also throw in some magic words for
fun or some meaningless gestures like having them hold their palm on top of your forehead.
This is to deflect from your actual technique of determination, and it works every time,
leaving people to be amazed!
5.
Memory Chunking- For this ploy, you will prove that although most people won’t be able
to remember more than five or nine letters, your friend will be able to remember fourteen.
Ask your buddy to remember these letters “B, Z, T and K.” When you say the letters, say
them at the rate of about one word per second and lower after the letter k.
Your friend should be able to remember all of these.
Then “D, J, R, N, Q and P,” which they might forget and then “M, T, X, H, V, L,
F, C, S and V,” which they definitely won’t remember.
Afterward, stop and reflect on how they couldn’t remember ten letter but now tell that you’re
going to show them that they can remember fourteen.
Finally say, “F, R, O, G, B, A, T, P, I, G, D, U, C, K” which they should remember
since it spells frog, bat, pig, and duck!
This is all thanks to memory chunking which allows us to expand memories past our brain
limits by grouping the information between five to nine items.
4.
Hands-Free- If you and your friend are at the mall, hanging out and you’re carrying
loads of bags that you want to pass off, here is a simple trick.
Plus this also works with any object, not just bags.
All you have to do is continue talking to your friend in an engaging conversation, and
during the time you guys are talk, hand them the item or bag.
Most of the time, people will be distracted and will take the object automatically without
thinking.
But sometimes during this trick, some people will notice and will just become confused!
Hey, nobody said it was foolproof okay!
3.
A Timing Trick- If you and your friend, are in an elevator, then you can easily do this
trick.
Just be sure that you guys are alone while riding on this elevator as it takes some time
to do this.
Press the button to any floor, and a few milliseconds later, you’ll hear a beep.
Do this a few times, and you will adjust to it, and the delay will become less apparent.
Now after adapting to the delay, remove the delay.
Press the button again, and the beep happens in an instant.
But this time the timing adjustment in your head will genuinely make you believe that
beep happened before you pressed the button.
This is because our mind like to adjust to timing errors and latency.
2.
A Sinking Feeling- Alright, here’s a trick that requires some physical work if your friend
is up to the task.
Have your pal lie down on their stomach with their arms stretched over their heads, as
if they’re copying Superman in flight, but face down.
Now have them close their eyes and tell them to keep their eyes closed the entire time.
Then grab their waist and raise their upper body up to a 45-degree angle, like in some
strange assisted yoga position.
Now hold them in that posture for about two minutes.
Then very, very slowly and gently lower them down back down until their arms are flat on
the floor again.
This produces the feeling of your body not stopping when it reaches the floor and begins
to sink into the ground.
The brain believes the body has leveled again before it really is on the ground and interprets
the continuous movement as moving past where it started.
1.
The Behavior Shaping Trick- This is a fun trick that you can do if you're out with a
big group of friends.
Tease one of your friends that you can trick them to do whatever it is you want without
giving them any directions or instructions.
Now you train them to do a task, but keep in mind that this should involve something
silly and clean, so nothing x-rated!
So decide ahead of time and have a prop ready, like a hat, pen or umbrella but whatever you
choose, make sure it’s sitting casually nearby, so it doesn’t raise suspicion.
Now pick a friend to participate in the trick and ask them to step outside of the room for
a moment.
When they left, explain to the rest of your friends what you will have them do; like riding
a bicycle across the room.
They will do this by clapping as that person gets closer to each desired step in a sequence.
First, your pal will have to look at the bicycle.
Then he will have to walk over to it, and so on until he actually rides the bike.
Your group of friends should look at you so that you can cue them when to start and stop
clapping.
After your friend performs the feat, the clapping should stop and should not start again until
the next higher level in the act is reached.
They may need a little guidance at first but only use hand gestures if the clapping doesn't
work at first.
Eventually, your friend will realize what rt4 you want him to do and will perform the
behavior, much to everyone's amusement.
This is all thanks to the principle of shaping created by B.F.
Skinner.