Derren Brown The Heist
Under the guise of a motivational seminar and follow up documentary, Derren tried to convince four responsible middle-management businessmen and women to steal £100,000.
[SPOILER WARNING: If you plan on watching this show, don’t read this, as it details what happened.]
Obviously Derren set the odds in his favour. He chose people who are suggestible, and would respond to an authoritative person. Then out of the group of people that he lead through the first stage 2 stages he picked 4 people who he would try to convince to actually carry out the heist.
In the first section he met up with everyone for his fake motivational seminar. He taught them some real techniques such as the link system, anchoring and other techniques, and he imbedded subtle commands which would affect them later. One of these was the colour green and the song Can You Feel It? by The Jackson 5 . These were associated (or anchored) to highly emotional motivating states.
He ended the seminar by giving them a blank CD (which was supposed to be a motivational CD) and a toy gun which he said symbolised them taking back their power. He also said it will become important later.
After the seminar he asked them to perform a petty crime (to steal some sweets from a local store). The owner of the shop knew about the experiment, but the shop assistance did not. Needless to say, they were a little miffed when one by one a smart looking individual in a suit would enter the shop, pocket some sweets and leave. A couple of them did not succeed, but only one flatly refused to do it.
‘It won’t cause any long-term damage’The next section supposedly had nothing to do with the show. They thought it was a completely independent psychological experiment and they did not know they were being filmed. In actual fact Derren wanted to see how they would react to the Milgrim experiment.
The Milgrim experiment was a controversial experiment performed by Stanley Milgrim in the early 1960s. He wanted to see how willing subjects were to subject innocent victims to an electric shock of up to 450 volts simply because a scientific authority figure told them to. In reality the victim was just an actor, but the subjects genuinely believed they were giving painful electric shocks to investigate the effect of pain on memory. Milgrim found that 65% of his subjects were willing to give the shocks when pressed to do so.
Derren’s results mirrored Milgrim’s; about half of all the participants set the voltage to the maximum. One participant even suggested that they should have been more switches so they could up the voltage even more!
Derren Brown observed these individuals and then selected four people for the final con. Derren took these four people and set some more powerful aggressive anchors and he also taught them a technique of grounding an opponent using the power of Chi. This trick was completely psychological, but it gave the participants the belief that they could overpower someone.
Then he set the trap...
The HeistHe cornered off a section of London which would act as his stage, and set up hidden cameras. He told the participants that they were meeting up again for some more motivational work. They were told to bring their toy guns.
Then he dropped the 4 participants, one by one, at the start of their route. As they walked along the path they subconsciously picked up subtle cues that were strategically placed to trigger responses that Derren had previously imbedded. One of these was the colour green and another was a passing car that was playing the Jackson 5 song. This would lead them into a highly charged motivational state, coupled with aggression, and the awareness that they had a realistic toy gun in their pockets. Then they approached an empty street where a security guard appeared carrying two cases of money. This particular security guard was dressed in a green uniform which matched a uniform of a particularly annoying security guard that interrogated the participants earlier in the show.
After having all these triggers set off, the participants should have been in a highly emotional motivated and aggressive state with a fake gun in their pockets and a sudden opportunity to steal two cases full of £100,000.
Out of the 4 trials of this experiment, 3 of them committed the heist.
They approached the van, stopped him, pulled out their toy gun and told the man to get face down on the ground. Then they took the boxes and ran.
At this point about a hundred people from the TV show came pouring out of the surrounding buildings and stopped the show’s participant. Derren then arrived, comforted them, and lead them away to a tent where he would collapse all the hidden suggestions.
All the participants later said they were happy to have taken part in the show.
Could Derren make you commit a crime?Derren Brown The Heist highlighted a disturbing truth. Obviously the trick involved a lot of work in the selection of the participants, the setting up of the participants and the staging of the event. If someone was trying to convince you to do this in real life, they wouldn’t be able to set up the stage this easily.
However, it highlights how much is possible. If a person can be convinced to perform a spontaneous armed robbery, smaller manipulations would be a lot easier. It’s going to be easier to convince someone to try drugs or (as was demonstrated in this show) commit a petty shop lifting crime. The worry is that these first slips can begin a downward slope where a person gradually goes a little further. Most criminals start petty. Most big lies start with a small one.
So what makes the difference between the three that committed the heist and the one that didn’t? And what made the difference between the participants that shoplifted (or attempted to shoplift) some sweets and the man that flatly refused? What makes some people more susceptible to inflicting pain on a test subject just because a man in a white coat said it was okay? And what makes so many people change their mind about an answer they were sure of, just because everyone else disagrees with them?
The answer is wisdom.
And the more power you have the more wisdom becomes important. The more intelligent you are the more you are able to do with that intelligence and the more you need your wisdom to guide you. It involves making the right decisions and then having the presence of mind to follow through with those right decisions.
And wisdom is something that must be cultivated and trained. This is what this section of the website is all about.
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