Well, JS was getting help here on a poetry matter so I’m joining the party.
I’m working on a poem about the “ideomotor effect” and related phenomena. I’m trying to remember the details of a trick I’ve seen people do at parties. Here’s what I remember. A person is seated and four people arrange themselves around the seated person. First, they try to lift him out of the chair and are unable. Then there’s some kind of ritual they are instructed to do. Can’t remember–it’s like arranging their hands in the air in a certain way and then they quickly all put the index fingers of both hands together. The four people then are able to lift the person, but I can’t remember how–it seems to me that they just use their index fingers or something.
Can anyone remember the details?
This is more a group suggestibility exercise than the ideomotor effect, but it still could be relevant to this piece.
I only remember the old slumber party routine which generally involved 5 or 6 pre-adolescents who would lose their concentration, scream, and drop her when the volunteer/victim was about 5 feet above the carpet.
I can’t get on youtube (too slow) so I don’t know what you may have found there. We used to do a thing where two people would push down on the top of someone’s head who is seated. Then the two people would stand on each side of the seated person and both slide two fingers under him and lift. It was as easy as lifting a feather. The two could carry the person around the room like that with no trouble. The person being carried weighed at least 150 pounds, and the two lifting were not especially muscular.