For those who aren’t aware, Derren Brown is a famous British ‘mentalist’ which – according to him – means that he uses his deep understanding of human psychology to manipulate his subjects’ perceptions and behaviour, as opposed to employing the same old the run-of-the-mill illusionist trickery purveyed by his competitors.
Anyway, what can we (and governments and media organisations the world over) learn about controlling the minds of the general public from Derren’s 2016 special ‘The Push’?
As it turns out, quite a lot.
The Premise
Derren will attempt to take an unwitting member of the public and in a few short hours manipulate them into doing the unthinkable – killing an innocent man in cold blood.
“Can we be manipulated, through the familiar forces of social pressure to commit murder?”
Derren Brown
Of course the dupe won’t really be killing anyone – in this case Derren will have them push an old man off a building who is actually rigged up with a bungee cord – but from their point of view this is what they will think they are doing.
The Setup
As always, Derren has pre-screened 2,000 people who applied to be on his TV show and has done the usual psychological profiling and compliance testing – just like any good stage hypnotist would do.
We’ve all seen the ‘waiting room’ compliance test where three stooges stand up and sit down repeatedly as a bell is rung, meanwhile test subjects are brought in one at a time to see if they start copying the group behaviour despite it having no apparent purpose.
I don’t know what percentage of the population would comply with this blatant pavlovian conditioning but regardless, Derren excluded anyone who didn’t stand up and sit down on cue. He then filled out his shortlist with several other schmucks who did whatever they were cued to – maybe they figured obedience would help get them on TV.
Anyway, Derren chooses his final four targets, then sends them all home having been told that they were not chosen – this way they won’t be suspicious when they are later lured into Derren’s trap.
Several months later, Derren has arranged a controlled venue and a troupe of 70 actors to play out a rehearsed scenario guided by hidden earpieces, working in sync with professional stunt and special effects people. The ‘event’ is a phony fundraising auction for a fake youth charity called PUSH (Project for Urban Social Happiness) attended by high powered VIPs and wealthy benefactors – ie. actors.
Here, Derren will employ a sophisticated pressure-cooker of social compliance, in an attempt to induce a ‘regular joe’ into killing a man in cold blood.
Before we begin…
I would recommend that you watch the show – it’s only 60 minutes and quite entertaining throughout. For those who won’t, and as a convenient reference for the later material, I have included a blow-by-blow of the main events in the accordion below.
Part 1: Before Bernie’s ‘death’
- Chris arrives at the charity fundraiser with his business partner, who is actually ‘in on it’ with Derren. They have ostensibly been comissioned to build a fundraising app for the PUSH charity, and are there to learn more about the organisation.
- They go backstage to the kitchen to meet Tom – the president of the charity.
- Chris’ business partner then borrows Chris’ cell phone, and takes it away so Chris doesn’t have it for what follows.
- When the vegetarian entrees ‘don’t arrive’, Tom induces Chris to divide the meat sausage rolls into two, and put vegetarian labels on one group. Chris complies and takes them out to the event.
- Tom introduces Chris to ‘Bernie’ the wealthy (childless) benefactor who Tom explains is vital to the children’s charity. Tom then begins getting Chris to carry Bernie’s bag and jacket as they move around.
- Chris is introduced to key board members of the charity on the rooftop.
- Back downstairs, Chris watches Bernie rehearse his speech.
- Bernie discovers and shows Chris that some of the auction brochures have the reserve prices too low for valuable items which he has donated. Bernie goes out to confront Tom about it.
- Tom claims that Bernie set the prices himself with the auctioneer – perhaps he forgot – and that they have email records of all of this. Bernie starts to ramble incoherently, then collapses – seemingly of a heart attack.
Part 2: Moving the body
- Tom sends Chris to look for pills in Bernie’s jacket in the other room, and while Chris is looking, switches the Bernie actor for a very realistic prosthetic corpse.
- Chris returns to find Tom sitting by the ‘dead body’. Tom convinces Chris that there’s no point calling an ambulance for now – Bernie is already dead – and it’s vital for the charity that the auction goes ahead.
- After some convincing, Tom induces Chris to help move the body into the storage room and then to hide it in a large crate. Chris accepts Tom’s plan that they will ‘find’ Bernie after the auction and report it then.
- With the crate closed, the auctioneer arrives to briefly greet Tom, and ‘mistakes’ Chris for Bernie. Chris does not correct him.
- Tom and Chris join the auction, and the auctioneer introduces Chris to the whole room as Bernie. Under more pressure now, Chris again nods and smiles.
- The auctioneer brings Chris (ie. ‘Bernie’) up to the state to deliver his speech.
- The auctioneer brings out a ‘mystery crate’ to be bid on. The crate looks like the one that Bernie’s body is in, so Tom tells Chris they must win this item to ensure nobody else sees inside. Chris bids for it in place of Tom and as ‘Bernie’, wins the item.
- Despite the auctioneer hyping the crowd to have Chris open the mystery box, Chris refuses.
- Tom and Chris ‘discover’ that is was a different crate anyway and Bernie is still where they left him.
- Tom suggests wheeling Bernie’s body (wearing sunglasses!) in a wheelchair out to his car so that he can be ‘discovered’ there.
- They can’t get the wheelchair through the revolving door so Tom leaves Chris with Bernie’s sitting on the couch in the lobby while he goes to look for the car.
- Some ‘drunk guys’ come to mess around with Bernie’s body and Chris has to deter them.
- Tom returns, says he can’t find the car – and convinces Chris to move Bernie’s body into the emergency stairwell so they can pretend he had a heart attack and fell down the stairs. Again Chris reluctantly agrees.
- They move the body and Tom attempts to induce Chris to kick the body so that there will be bruises and it’s more ‘realistic’ for the fall. Chris flatly refuses.
Part 3: Bernie isn’t dead
- Tom and Chris return to the lobby to find the board members from the roof and Bernie’s ‘wife’, who tells them that she hasn’t been able to contact her husband – she has pills for him and that if he doesn’t get them he might have an ‘attack’ and ‘seem dead’ but not be dead. They take the pills and she leaves.
- Tom gets ‘stressed’ and starts to spill to the rest of the few board members that he ‘needs to tell them’, then induces Chris to ‘tell them everything’. Chris basically does, then they go to look at the body in the stairwell.
- When they get to the stairwell the body is missing, and they hear Bernie shouting from the roof that they tried to kill him.
- They go up to the roof, Bernie shouts at them and shows that his dictaphone was recording the whole time so he has ‘evidence’ of their conspiracy etc.
- While Bernie is having a cigarette sitting on the edge, the few board members huddle and discuss that they will all suffer heavily now that Bernie is pulling out of the charity. They will lose the funding, the construction contract, their jobs, and so on. They try to convince Chris to push Bernie off the edge – that he should do it since he was the one impersonating a dead man.. committing ‘fraud’ and is likely to ‘go to jail’ for this and so on.
- Chris says that he’ll go to jail if need be, but he will not be killing anyone.
- Chris walks down from the roof and is met by Derren who reveals the experiment.
- Derren reveals that they did this experiment 3 other times over two days, and all of the others pushed Bernie off the roof (to be caught by a bungee cord). Interestingly, those three all also kicked the ‘body’ at the bottom of the stairs.
Here we go…
I have broken down what I see as the primary methods employed by Derren in coercing this poor man to take actions which contradict his morality and common sense. Some of what I mention are things that Derren acknowledges on the show, and others are my own observations.
Along with each tactic I have included a bonus point for your entertainment, of how governments or media organisations around the world could potentially employ these tactics on an unsuspecting public… for the public good of course. Why not play along and see if you can guess these before opening up the drop-down?
And onto the compliance techniques…
Establish authority
Derren hosts this charity event at an impressive large-scale venue.
He has video clips of UK celebrities (Robbie Williams, Martin Freeman etc) playing on big screens, where they endorse the charity and talk about how important it is.
The rooms are filled with (supposedly) wealthy benefactors who are backing the organisation, which was created to help helpless kids.
How could anyone possibly argue against that?
Bonus tactic
To encourage the general public to take an experimental medical intervention they might otherwise be suspicious of, use celebrities to endorse the practice. Also, remember to reinforce that they are doing it to protect kids and old people – those people are most at risk so you need to help them.
Subordinate power dynamic
From the moment Chris arrives at the event, the situation is subtly (and not so subtly) arranged to make him feel inferior, and thus more likely to comply with instructions.
The very reason he is there in the first place is to pitch for work – he is not there as a guest, but to produce a fundraising app for the charity. This already puts him in the supplicant position and also such that he ‘owes’ it to his business partner to not screw up the ‘opportunity’.
Chris is deliberately not told that it is a black tie event and so feels under-dressed. He starts off out the back in the kitchen and though he’s given a drink by Tom the charity head (a common sales tactic to create a sense of obligation), it’s clear that Chris is there in a ‘worker’ capacity. He is ‘the help’.
Bonus tactic
‘Citizens’ must be regularly reminded that they are in the obedient position. They should be herded like sheep through their days – crammed into public transport, journeys punctuated with regular and offensively loud intercom announcements – such that there is no confusion about their status.
It is important that ‘Citizens’ realise that they exist to work, their ‘betters’ exist to enjoy the fruits of those labours. What rules and regulations apply to them (masking, social distancing, no gatherings) will be deliberately shown to not apply to their superiors.
With these ideas instilled, instructions can be issued at will and achieve a high degree of compliance.
Ratcheting compliance
Derren refers to the ‘foot in the door’ technique – that someone is much more likely to agree to a large request, if you can have them agree to a modest request first.
Once Chris has been induced by Tom to put vegetarian labels on the meat sausage rolls (due to a catering delay), Derren knows that Chris will be more likely to comply with Tom’s subsequent instructions.
Sure enough, these instructions escalate and Chris quickly goes from getting Bernie a drink, to carrying his bag and jacket, and basically becoming an unpaid lackey who can be cued with a simple nod in the lead up to the more extreme orders surrounding Bernie’s ‘death’.
Bonus tactic
To create acceptance and compliance around oppressive new protocols, start small and build from there.
Begin with the wearing of surgical masks being optional, then ‘advised’, then ‘mandatory’, then advertise penalties for non compliance, then run TV programmes about the evil people who refuse to practice the simple common courtesy of blocking their own air hole!
Don’t just roll out a ‘mandatory’ digital vaccine passport for access to restaurants – it’s a little too ‘Minority Report’ and you’re likely to scare away the customers.
Instead, start with a paper-based ‘health’ self-declaration that is easily faked with dummy details. Then introduce the threat of ‘government inspections’ of businesses to ensure vetting and enforcement pressure on those paper documents. Then introduce an optional QR code tracking system which runs parallel to that paper system. Then make that digital system ‘mandatory’. Then add a vaccination status requirement to that digital system.
And voila!
Over time these systems will become normalised and the citizens can be cued with familiar signage, infrastructure, and associated imagery.
Monkey see monkey do
When Tom is encouraging Chris to comply with further actions, he almost always begins doing the action first and then gets Chris to do it with him. Tom is the one that starts moving the meat sausage rolls onto the vegetarian plate. He initiates picking up the ‘dead body’. He begins lifting it into the crate. And so on…
It’s much easier for Chris to mirror the behaviour that someone else is already doing, especially when they are in a position of perceived authority – once that momentum is built, he can run from there.
Bonus tactic
Like a parent pretending to take bites of food to convince a toddler to eat, having celebrities and newsreaders wearing masks on television is a good way to tap into their primal instinct to copy their superior.
Seeing but not saying
The more Chris witnesses something wrong going on, but doesn’t speak up or do anything to stop it, the more he is complicit in (and so invested in) the proceedings. When he sees Bernie eat the mislabelled sausage roll, or has opportunities to tell other people what has occurred with Bernie – but doesn’t – he is aligning himself further with the lie and less likely to question it.
Bonus tactic
Once your citizenry have been trained to self-censor their natural moral impulses, a victory has been won. When they can see the stupidity of a policy – but do nothing to oppose it – they are tacitly accepting and agreeing with that policy.
Confusion paralysis
When Chris and Bernie are looking at the brochure, Bernie is outraged to discover that valuable items he donated for the auction have – in some brochures – had reserve prices set far too low.
When Bernie confronts Tom about this, Tom reminds Bernie that he was the one who set the prices with the auctioneer. First Bernie says he doesn’t remember, then Tom claims there are email records to prove it, and then Bernie starts getting confused about where he left his car.
From Chris’ point of view, what’s going on here?
The point is, that Chris is confused in a stressful situation where he feels partially responsible – he was there when Bernie ‘found’ the information. So what could be going on?
- Maybe there was an honest mistake in printing revisions since there are different versions on different copies.
- Maybe Bernie just forgot that he set the prices and he’s going senile.
- Maybe Tom is taking advantage of Bernie’s senility, is lying to him about the prices and emails and is actually laundering off the valuable items cheaply to his friends.
- Maybe the auctioneer has pulled some sort of scam on his own- but then surely Tom would have to know about it. Or is Tom just finding out now and covering for him?
As you can see, this is all very confusing for Chris and his mind is not able to settle on one solid interpretation of the situation. He is being disoriented by a barrage of conflicting information, which generally tends to result in people just.. giving up. They don’t know what to think so they just default to the ‘safest’ option, ie. the most obvious authority figure. In this case it’s Tom.
And so just as Chris is struggling to wrap his mind about what might be going on, he is blind-sided again with Bernie’s (apparent) death.
Bonus tactic
If you want the public to blindly accept an offer, it’s best if they are thoroughly confused and mentally worn out before you even pitch it to them.
For example: “It came from a bat”.. “It escaped from a lab”.. “It’s a biological weapon”… “It’s a big pharma plot”… “Bill Gates is a eugenicist”.. “It’s 5G”.. “Hospitals are full”.. “Hospitals are empty”.. “Ivermectin is poison”.. “Ivermectin is the solution”.. “It’s just the flu”… “There are no viruses as described”.. and so on.
If you can release so many contradictory stories through the mainstream media that the average person entirely gives up hope of ever knowing what is really going on – they will likely just disengage their logical mind and default to what appears to be the ‘safest’ ie. most mainstream choice.
It’s almost over…
When Bernie collapses from his ‘heart attack’, Tom immediately sends Chris to the other room to look for pills in Bernie’s jacket – this gives Tom the time to switch the actor for the prosthetic ‘dead’ body.
When Chris returns, Tom is just sitting there beside the ‘dead body’, doing nothing.
Chris reiterates that they should be doing CPR and calling an ambulance, but for obvious reasons Tom can’t have either of those. If Tom refused Chris directly this would force Chris to make a decision and likely take action. In order to defuse this, Tom plays the ‘delay’ game.
- “I know CPR.. I tried.. he’s dead”
- “Just give us a minute”
- “I need some breathing space for a second”
This tactic continues throughout the experiment – whenever Chris wants to call someone or is not happy with the latest task – Tom continues to promise that “this is the last thing we need to do” and “it will all be over soon”. It’s always almost over – by dangling this carrot Chris never reaches a breaking point where he feels decisive enough to take a stand.
Bonus tactic
During times of extreme oppression, in order to ensure the population don’t revolt (at least on occasions you don’t want that) make sure the promise of hope is dangled forever just out of reach.
“Just two weeks to flatten the curve”
Do it for the ‘greater good’
Chris has been primed from the beginning that Bernie is a big benefactor and without him there will be “no childrens’ centers”, and thousands of kids “won’t get their chance”.
Tom claims that if Chris doesn’t help hide Bernie’s body, it will ruin the event. “70 people are about to come into the room” and the auction must go ahead – it’s about the charity, the money, and the kids, he says.
As Derren describes, social compliance is basically following orders “because someone else tells you it’s the right thing to do”.
Bonus tactic
A great way to bypass critical thought or analysis is to just engender the idea that something is “good for the group”.
“If you don’t get ABC injection or take XYZ test it could kill kid my kid.. kill.. my grandma.. kill your grandma..” and so on. The idea of promoting ‘safety’ appears like an unassailable position to the fearful mind, which lacks the perspective to assess whether something is indeed helpful or harmful.
Positive reinforcement
Chris is regularly rewarded by Tom at key moments with compliments and literal back-patting for his compliance in their corpse-moving conspiracy.
Bonus tactic
Compliant citizens like nothing more than a way to virtue signal to their peers, so providing mechanisms on social media for them to receive group praise for taking injections or implementing ‘precautions’ is very effective. Allow them to claim ‘digital badges’ which advertise their new ‘status’ on social and dating platforms.
The general public sees celebrities and government representatives as parental figures so having them deliver verbal pats on the head through the television is also nice strategy.
Group pressure
In a room full of strangers, people will do just about anything to fit in.
Derren Brown
When Chris enters the main auction room, it is full of well dressed and (seemingly) wealthy important people. Everyone else is playing along and operating in sync – they are listening to the speaker, laughing and clapping in unison at the appropriate cues.
Anyone who has organised (or even attended) an event realises that this is not a difficult dynamic to establish. People can be herded, and the more people doing something in the presence of others, the more likely other people are to be magnetically attracted to copying that behaviour.
When the auctioneer focuses the group’s attention and expectation on Chris, he has created a magnifier effect on that pressure to comply.
Bonus tactic
As Derren notes – when it comes to rooms full of strangers, people are desperate to fit in.
In a crowded train carriage, once the percentage of surgical mask wearers hits a critical mass (say for example by promoting the virtues of mask-wearing on television) there will be a strong desire on the part of the individual to mimic those around him. At this point, there is such a uniformity in outward behaviour that even if 95% of individuals don’t actually want to wear the mask, each is too scared to be the one to deviate from the pack.
The cattle chute – no turning back
A cattle chute works by having a gentle narrowing corridor such that the cows naturally merge into single file, and then no longer have the space to turn around – other cows are now pushing them from behind, and their only option is to move forwards.
Derren creates this dynamic by guiding Chris into making decisions which become increasingly embarrassing and awkward to ‘undo’, as time goes on.
When the auctioneer first meets Chris and ‘mistakes’ him for Bernie – who happens to be lying ‘dead’ in a crate next to him – Chris knows it would be an awkward time to correct him. Making an issue of it could potentially raise more questions about Bernie that Chris doesn’t want to answer at this time – so he lets it go.
Later when the auctioneer introduces Chris to the room as Bernie, this is an even more awkward moment for Chris to correct the mistaken identity, so he stands, nods and smiles instead.
When the auctioneer calls Chris up to the stage to do his (Bernie’s) speech, it’s now extremely difficult for Chris to say no. He has literally just communicated to the room that he is Bernie. Tom hands him the script and Chris goes up and delivers it.
Perhaps there is something ‘scarier’ than public speaking – not giving a speech when the room is telling you to. Will Chris bring the entire event to a crashing halt by saying that he isn’t actually Bernie, knowing that Bernie’s body is lying in a crate in the next room? No, he will not.
Bonus Tactic
The more we commit to a ‘stance’ on a subject, the less likely we are to re-assess or later admit we might have been wrong.
Anytime we take an action that we perceive ‘can not be undone’, we are more likely to try to forget about it and just keep moving forwards.
The more that the citizenry can be encouraged to take steps for which there is no easy ‘undo button’, the easier they can be marched forwards.
Future threats
When Bernie awakens from his temporary and movie-esque ‘lack of consciousness’, he starts shouting and playing his dictaphone recording of Tom telling Chris to kick Bernie’s (seemingly lifeless) body. He is furious about what has happened and is going to go after all of them!
The idea of course is to ratchet up the pressure on Chris – to force him into a corner so he has no option but to take drastic and immediate action.
So while Bernie is conveniently having a ‘cigarette’ on the other side of the roof, the other board members – who have now been told what transpired – are gathering around Chris and telling him that he is going to go to jail for what he has done, and that they will all suffer in various ways also.
Derren wants Chris to feel like he has only one way out of this mess – that everything was ‘fine’ when they thought Bernie was dead, and now everything is a mess. The construction guy will lose his contracts, the board members will lose their livelihoods, and the kids will lose Bernie’s generous donation.
Essentially the idea is that Chris and the others will have their futures’ destroyed.
Fortunately for Chris (and his reputation) he decides not to go ahead with the ‘push’, and he walks down from the roof instead.
The same could not be said for the other three experiment subjects who all decided to comply with the ‘group concensus’, and push an innocent old man off a rooftop in cold blood to protect their reputation.
This man could be your neighbour...
Derren consoles these pseudo-murderers by reassuring them that statistically most people would do what they did. Right. And most people in the United States might be obese but surely that’s no consolation, is it?
Bonus Tactic
So it turns out that if you want to get someone to do something that they know deep down is wrong, one way is to make them believe that not doing it will permanently affect their future – that their life as they know it will never be the same.
They will lose their freedom of movement, their ability to travel, their job, their livelihood, and their ability to look after their family, unless they do what you say.
In Conclusion
So, what do you think? Would this elaborate pressure cooker work on you?
Interestingly Chris – the only one who didn’t comply – was also by far the largest physically of the four. He was actually half a head taller than the other men in the final ‘board member squeeze’ session, so it’s possible that underlying physical strength plays some part in peoples’ willingness to go against the grain.
It is all pretty grim, if you think about it.
On the positive side – this ruse was so elaborate and involved, with so many people working in unison just to coerce one victim, that these psychological ploys could never work on a mass scale, right?
Right?
