Physical contact influences how much people pay at celebrity auctions.

Contagion is a form of magical thinking in which people believe that a person's immaterial qualities or essence can be transferred to an object through physical contact. Here we investigate how a belief in contagion influences the sale of celebrity memorabilia. Using data from three high-profile estate auctions, we find that people's expectations about the amount of physical contact between the object and the celebrity positively predicts the final bids for items that belonged to well-liked individuals (e.g., John F. Kennedy) and negatively predicts final bids for items that belonged to disliked individuals (e.g., Bernard Madoff). A follow-up experiment further suggests that these effects are driven by contagion beliefs: when asked to bid on a sweater owned by a well-liked celebrity, participants report that they would pay substantially less if it was sterilized before they received it. However, sterilization increases the amount they would pay for a sweater owned by a disliked celebrity. These studies suggest that magical thinking may still have effects in contemporary Western societies and they provide some unique demonstrations of contagion effects on real-world purchase decisions.

Magic as a therapeutic intervention to promote coping in hospitalized pediatric patients.

Magic as a therapeutic intervention is used in an innovative, hospital-based program to address the psychosocial issues children and adolescents often experience as a result of illness and hospitalization. A child life specialist and a magician with an MBA collaborated, blending clinical expertise with business acumen and professional-level magic skills to create the program. The program has two distinct components: (1) magicians using interactive, close-up magic and humor as a technique to promote socialization, enhance self-esteem, and increase opportunities for choice and control, and (2) magicians providing the personal instruction and materials that enable chronically ill and long-term patients to learn and perform magic to promote a sense of empowerment and feelings of mastery. Positive responses from patients, families, and staff to the program at one hospital led to the creation of Open Heart Magic, a non-profit children's foundation that maintains and staffs bedside, interactive therapeutic magic programs in five hospitals in the Chicago metropolitan area.

"The Root is Hidden and the Material Uncertain": the challenges of prosecuting witchcraft in early modern Venice.

The rich archival records of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Venice have yielded much information about early modern society and culture. The transcripts of witchcraft trials held before the Inquisition reveal the complexities of early modern conceptions of natural and supernatural. The tribunal found itself entirely unable to convict individuals charged with performing harmful magic, or maleficio, as different worldviews clashed in the courtroom. Physicians, exorcists, and inquisitors all had different approaches to distinguishing natural phenomena from supernatural, and without a consensus guilty verdicts could not be obtained.

Can magical intervention affect subjective experiences? Adults' reactions to magical suggestion.

In three experiments, undergraduates' subjective experiences were affected by positive magical intervention. A large number of participants accepted the offer of magical help, yet the outcomes they reported were contrary to the aims of the magical intervention. In Experiment 1, participants were offered magical help that aimed to improve their practical skills. However, in the magical-suggestion condition, they reported no improvement significantly more frequently than in the control no-suggestion condition. In Experiment 2, participants who accepted the offer of magical help aimed at improving their general life satisfaction reported a significant decrease in this satisfaction. Those who declined the offer of magical help reported a significant increase in satisfaction. In Experiment 3, in the magical-suggestion condition, participants experienced bad dreams significantly more frequently than in the control condition. In conclusion, the data suggest that adult participants protect their subjective experiences against magical intervention.

[The Paduan doctor Alessandro Pellati, his library and the first edition of De medicorum astrologia]. / Il dottore padovano Alessandro Pellati, la sua biblioteca e l'editio princeps del De medicorum astrologia.

The article prints the text of a document in the Archivio di Stato, Venice, comprising a list of books intended for auction, with an estimate of their value. THey constitute the private library of Alessandro Pellati (d. 1487), a Paduan doctor about whom nothing is known, except his name appears in the colophon of the first edition of a short treatise attributed to Hippocrates, the De medicorum astrologia seu de esse aegrorum, translated into Latin and published in Padua in 1483. The considerable number of astrological works in his library show that Pellati was keenly interested in the subject which, under the title of "natural magic", had assumed a significant place in medical studies at that time, particularly in Padua.