Derren Brown - Behind the screen.pdf

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Behind the screen
Powers of suggestion
Each week in
Mind Control
Derren Brown has presented us with mind games
we can play at home. In the first episode, he asked us to think of two shapes,
one inside the other, and to give each a colour, then amazed us by revealing
the very colours and shapes that were in our minds.
This week Derren performs a similar feat when, at his subtle command,
crowds at the Whitgift Shopping Centre in Croydon unwittingly raise their
hands. The bemused shoppers stop and look around, unaware of why their
hands have suddenly shot up in the air. In both instances Derren knows just
what the outcome will be and why any group of people will react almost
exactly as he wants them to.
Conditioned response
Commonly referred to as 'thinking inside the box', this form of mind control
underpins most of the others. Psychologists, hypnotists and mentalists base
their work on the theory that we are conditioned by society to think and act in
certain ways. 'We learn suggestibility from an early age,' says Derren. 'We
have to learn that if we touch a flame, it will burn. We pick up this kind of thing
subconsciously so that next time we know not to touch.'
This theory is the basis of the work of authors Laurie Nadel, Judy Haims and
Robert Stempson who, in their book
The Sixth Sense,
explore the relationship
between intuition and logic. 'From earliest childhood we are praised and
rewarded for performing mental feats involving logic, memory and other
measurable cognitive skills,' they say. 'The entire foundation of our traditional
education system is predicated on the belief that these skills are superior to
other mental abilities such as imagination and intuition. Thus you learn early
on in life to programme your mind to use only a limited part of its ability in
performing tasks.'
Trained to obey
This issue of authority is central to why most of us are inclined to think 'inside
the box'. As Derren points out, 'It's important to learn how to make patterns
and generalise but through it we also learn unquestioning suggestibility and
authority. This leads us to accept what societal figureheads such as parents,
teachers, tutors and doctors say – and even find ourselves offering their
opinions as our own.' It was on this basis, then, that Derren was able to
condition the shoppers in the Whitgift Centre to act outside their own free will.
'I used the tannoy as a subtle form of authority,' says Derren. 'As people are
not really paying much attention to it, their subconscious takes over.'
Authority and imagination
Does 'thinking inside the box' seem to you a perfectly viable go-with-the-flow
option? Or does it bring on the horrifying realisation that you need to get out
more? Whatever your reaction to it, don't switch your TV set off yet. According
to Derren, we should really be hoping for a mixture of both. 'Ingrained patterns
are something we all need to learn for our own safety and development,' says
Derren, 'but they can be limiting so sometimes we need to think
outside
the
box. That way we can learn to be more creative and challenge our limitations.'
Further information
Channel 4 Television is not responsible for the content of third party sites
Books
The Sixth Sense
by Laurie Nadel, Judy Haims and Robert Stempson (Prion
Books, 1996)
Explores how intuition relates to logic and other ways of thinking and includes
interviews with Francis Ford Coppola, Oliver Sacks and Roger Speery and
other celebrities, together with practical exercises for improving intuition.
Buy
this book from
Amazon.
How to Develop your Sixth Sense
by David Lawson (HarperCollins, 2001)
The author argues that we may all have the potential to develop our psychic
and intuitive abilities and offers exercises to develop the powers of your mind.
Buy this book from
Amazon.
Body Language: How to read others' thoughts by their gestures
by Allan
Pease (Sheldon Press, 1997)
What people say is often very different from what they think or feel. Body
language can tell you if someone is lying and give you an insight into what
they're really thinking.
Buy this book from
Amazon.
Reading People: Secret tips that will change your life
by Jo-Ellan Dimitrius
(Vermilion, 1999)
Teaches the reader how to tell a person's sincerity by the tone of their voice,
which character traits are most likely to determine a person's behaviour and
the message you are sending with your hairstyle!
Buy this book from
Amazon.
I Know What You're Thinking
by Lillian Glass (John Wiley & Sons, 2002)
An easy-to-follow guide to reading people, understanding what they are really
thinking and gaining an insight into their personality.
Buy this book from
Amazon.
Obedience to Authority
by Stanley Milgram (Pinter & Martin, 1997)
Milgram's classic 1961 experiment revealed that, if conditioned to obey
authority, as most of us are, we are capable of inhuman behaviour.
Buy this
book from
Amazon.
Websites
Coercive Persuasion and Attitude Change
www.rickross.com/mind_control.html
A warning about how cults brainwash their followers, with sections on how to
deal with leaving a cult.
The Man who Shocked the World
www.psychologytoday.com/htdocs/prod/ ptoarticle/pto-20020301-000037.asp
Describes the classic Stanley Milgram experiment carried out at Yale
University in the early 1960s, which showed that most people will obey
authority to the point of sadism.
Skepdic
www.skepdic.com/mindcont.html
Good article on mind control, brainwashing and the power of suggestion.
Behind the screen
Seeing the future
Clairvoyance is a subject that's guaranteed to generate argument. While
some people ridicule the idea that anyone can look into a crystal ball and see
the future, others tell amazing stories of fortune tellers who knew everything
about them the minute they sat down. Even the cynics can't help being
fascinated by tales of inexplicable insights and predictions. But how can a
stranger know things about us that no one else knows apart from ourselves?
How can they guess what work we do and describe our hopes and fears
within seconds of meeting us?
In general terms
According to Derren Brown, it's easy – but it's not fortune telling. When, in this
week's episode, Derren walks through London's Carnaby Street stopping
people at random and instantly exposing intimate details about their lives, he
is not calling upon some mysterious psychic gift, but is using a form of mind
control referred to as 'cold reading'. A well-known mentalist technique, Derren
explains, 'Cold reading is when you look for responses in someone in order to
narrow down possibilities. It's more of a linguistic trick: you talk to someone
apparently about them but using general language that applies to everyone.'
Astrology is a good example of this where, Derren says, 'Generalisations, are
used. "You're an extrovert with a shy side," could apply to absolutely anyone.
You hear the things you want to hear and not those that you don't.'
Deductive reasoning
A variation of the technique can also be used to 'read' a person's life. 'When I
stopped the security guard,' says Derren, 'it was more a form of deductive
reading that I was using. For instance, if you look at someone's belt and it
seems that they have it on a tighter notch than normal, you can see they have
lost weight recently and so are probably into health and fitness. I also put
myself in their shoes: what would it feel like to be them. I looked at the
security guard and felt how he would like to be moving around, have space
about him. It's making deductions from looking at clues,' he concludes, 'rather
like Sherlock Holmes.'
We hear what we want
This was the technique used by the renowned 1940s American circus
impresario and skilled psychological manipulator, P T Barnum. The eminent
psychologist, B R Forer conducted a series of tests to investigate what he
termed the 'Barnum effect', and concluded that 'people tend to accept vague
and general personality descriptions as uniquely applicable to themselves
without realising that the same description could be applied to just about
anyone.'
Handing out the same personality description to each of his students, Forer
asked them to mark the accuracy of the description in relation to their
character on a scale of 0 to 5, with 5 signifying an excellent assessment. The
students' evaluation averaged at 4.26. The same test carried out today, still
produces an average mark of 4.2.
Further information
Channel 4 Television is not responsible for the content of third party sites
Books
Arts of Deception: Playing with fraud in the age of Barnum
by James W Cook
(Harvard University Press, 2001)
Explores some of the playful forms of fraud that astonished and outraged 19th
century America's emerging middle class.
Buy this book from
Amazon.
The Elusive Quarry: A scientific appraisal of psychical research
by Ray
Hymann (Prometheus Books, 1989)
An analysis and critique of parapsychological experimentation.
Buy this book
from
Amazon.
Flim-Flam: The truth about unicorns, parapsychology and other delusions
by
James Randi (Prometheus Books, 1994)
A professional magician exposes the tricks of 'mystics', 'mediums', 'psychic
surgeons' and others who claim to possess supernatural or paranormal
powers.
Buy this book from
Amazon.
The Skeptic's Dictionary: A collection of strange beliefs, delusions and
deceptions
by Todd Carroll (John Wiley & Sons, August 2003)
A compendium of all things supernatural, occult, paranormal and
pseudoscientific.
Buy this book from
Amazon.
I Know What You're Thinking
by Lillian Glass (John Wiley & Sons, 2002)
A practical guide to understanding what people are really thinking and gaining
an insight into their personalities.
Buy this book from
Amazon.
Websites
The Forer Effect
www.skepdic.com/forer.html
Describes the work of psychologist B R Forer who concluded that people
accept vague personality descriptions as uniquely applicable to themselves
without realising that they could be describing just about anyone.
Cold Reading
www.skepdic.com/coldread.html

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