Spoiler Alert!

Hidden Brain : Spoiler Alert!  Image
Hidden Brain : Spoiler Alert!  Image

Spoiler Alert!

WBEZ brings you fact-based news and information. Sign up for our newsletters to stay up to date on the stories that matter.
Why do we fall for surprise endings? It turns out that our capacity to be easily fooled in books and movies is made possible by a handful of predictable mental shortcuts. In this 2018 conversation, we talked with Vera Tobin, one of the world’s first cognitive scientists to study plot twists. She says storytellers have been exploiting narrative twists and turns for millennia — and that studying these sleights of hand can give us a better understanding of the contours of the mind.