Who Hates Magic?:Exploring the Loathing of Legerdemain

Magic is an ancient, universal, diverse, and wide-ranging domain of artistic performance. Despite its worldwide popularity, however, any working magician will tell you that some people really hate magic. They seem to see every illusion as a challenge to be solved and every performance as an insult to their intelligence. A distinctive feature of magic is that it seeks to create emotions through deception—practitioners create the illusion of the impossible, which can provoke intense curiosity and uncertainty, but will not explain the method—so disliking magic could stem from a few factors: (1) low propensity for curiosity, awe, and wonder; (2) high needs for certainty and cognitive structure, which make a person averse to uncertainty and to events that violate one’s mental models of the world; and (3) high needs for social status and dominance, which make a person averse to being manipulated. The present research explored people’s attitudes toward magic with a brief Loathing of Legerdemain (LOL) scale. In a multinational sample of 1599 adults, people who hated magic were marked by (1) lower Openness to Experience and lower awe-proneness; (2) higher dogmatism, intolerance of uncertainty, and personal need for structure; and (3) higher socially aversive traits, such as lower Agreeableness, greater interpersonal dominance, and higher psychopathy. We suggest that magic is an interesting case for researchers interested in audience and visitor studies and that the psychology of art would benefit from a richer understanding of negative audience attitudes more generally

Attitude face au choix vocationnel chez des adolescents maghrébins: Dynamique conflictuelle à travers T.A.T. et Rorschach

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Interindividual Variability of Exogenous and Endogenous Auditory Evoked Potentials in a Condition of Voluntary Attention

The use of P300 in psychopathology raises the important problem of the constitution of reference normative data and of the high variability of auditive ERP's in controls. To handle better this problem, we recorded 86 control subjects, using an auditory oddball paradigm with motor response. We analyzed the successive components of the ERP's evoked by target and standard stimuli (N1, P2, N2, P3a, P3b and slow wave negativity). Our results underlined the role of age, sex and psychological factors on the ERP's interindividual variability: P3 amplitude decreased and its latency increased with age, while its topography was more frontal in the older than in the younger subjects. The P300 occurrence after standard stimuli and P3 amplitude after target stimuli were different according to sex. Moreover, P300 amplitude, latency and topography were related to the subject's anxiety level. Finally, our results also propose new description modes of ERP's relying on P3a and P3b relative peak amplitude (P300 with prominent P3a or P3b), topographical predominance (frontal or parietal P300) and duration of the late positive complex (brief or long-lasting P300). These data will improve the clinical use of P300

Interindividual Variability of Contingent Negative Variation

The use of CNV in clinical practice requires the choice of a standardised protocol, the constitution of reference normative data and the consideration of intra- and interindividual variability. For this purpose, we recorded CNV in 86 control subjects (44 men and 42 women, 18 to 62 years old (mean age = 34 +/- 13 years) during a reaction time paradigm with a warning signal and a 1-second S1-S2 interval. Moreover, the role of inter-stimulation interval was analysed in a group of 12 subjects through the comparison of recordings made with 1- and 3-second intervals. The CNV amplitude, its morphology and topographic distribution as well as its resolution mode and evolution through the recording were studied. The subjects' performances and their interactions with electroencephalographic data were also included in the analyses. Our results underscore the contribution of age and gender and psychological factors to CNV variability. CNV amplitude (both M1 and M2) increased and changed topographic distribution toward more central sites in older. Men had faster reaction times than women and lower post-S1 P300. Moreover, the life events-related stress and the subject's current anxiety level were accompanied by a decreased CNV amplitude