1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910810758703321

Autore

Huggins Mike

Titolo

Horseracing and the British, 1919-39 / / Mike Huggins

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Manchester, England ; ; New York, New York : , : Manchester University Press, , 2003

©2003

ISBN

1-78170-166-0

1-280-73448-5

9786610734481

1-84779-079-8

1-4237-0651-X

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (249 p.)

Collana

Studies in Popular Culture

Disciplina

798.4/00941

798.400941

Soggetti

Horse racing - Great Britain - History

Great Britain Social life and customs 20th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Contents; Tables; General editor's foreword; Preface; Price conversion index; Introduction; 1 The racing business between the wars; 2 Horseracing, the media and British leisure culture, 1918-39; 3 Off-course betting, bookmaking and the British; 4 Declining opposition to betting on racing; 5 Racing culture: the racecourse and racecourse life; 6 Jockeys, trainers and the micro-world of the stable; 7 Breeders and owners; Conclusion; Select bibliography; Index

Sommario/riassunto

From the prize-winning author of Flat Racing and British Society 1780-1914, this is the first book to provide a detailed consideration of the history of racing in British culture and society and to explore the cultural world of racing during the inter-war



2.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910261146203321

Autore

Raz Amir

Titolo

The Psychology of Magic and the Magic of Psychology

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Frontiers Media SA, 2016

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (175 p.)

Collana

Frontiers Research Topics

Soggetti

Psychology

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Sommario/riassunto

Magicians have dazzled audiences for many centuries; however, few researchers have studied how, let alone why, most tricks work. The psychology of magic is a nascent field of research that examines the underlying mechanisms that conjurers use to achieve enchanting phenomena, including sensory illusions, misdirection of attention, and the appearance of mind-control and nuanced persuasion. Most studies to date have focused on either the psychological principles involved in watching and performing magic or "neuromagic" - the neural correlates of such phenomena. Whereas performers sometimes question the contributions that modern science may offer to the advancement of the magical arts, the history of magic reveals that scientific discovery often charts new territories for magicians. In this research topic we sketch out the symbiotic relationship between psychological science and the art of magic. On the one hand, magic can inform psychology, with particular benefits for the cognitive, social, developmental, and transcultural components of behavioural science. Magicians have a large and robust set of effects that most researchers rarely exploit. Incorporating these effects into existing experimental, even clinical, paradigms paves the road to innovative trajectories in the study of human behaviour. For example, magic provides an elegant way to study the behaviour of participants who may believe they had made choices that they actually did not make. Moreover, magic fosters a more ecological approach to experimentation whereby scientists can probe



participants in more natural environments compared to the traditional lab-based settings. Examining how magicians consistently influence spectators, for example, can elucidate important aspects in the study of persuasion, trust, decision-making, and even processes spanning authorship and agency. Magic thus offers a largely underused armamentarium for the behavioural scientist and clinician. On the other hand, psychological science can advance the art of magic. The psychology of deception, a relatively understudied field, explores the intentional creation of false beliefs and how people often go wrong. Understanding how to methodically exploit the tenuous twilight zone of human vulnerabilities - perceptual, logical, emotional, and temporal - becomes all the more revealing when top-down influences, including expectation, symbolic thinking, and framing, join the fray. Over the years, science has permitted magicians to concoct increasingly effective routines and to elicit heightened feelings of wonder from audiences. Furthermore, on occasion science leads to the creation of novel effects, or the refinement of existing ones, based on systematic methods. For example, by simulating a specific card routine using a series of computer stimuli, researchers have decomposed the effect to assess its essential elements. Other magic effects depend on meaningful psychological knowledge, such as which type of information is difficult to retain or what changes capture attention. Behavioural scientists measure and study these factors. By combining analytical findings with performer intuitions, psychological science begets effective magic. Whereas science strives on parsimony and independent replication of results, magic thrives on reproducing the same effect with multiple methods to obscure parsimony and minimise detection. This Research Topic explores the seemingly orthogonal approaches of scientists and magicians by highlighting the crosstalk as well as rapprochement between psychological science and the art of deception.