How Derren Brown manipulated someone into murder (spoilers)

On balance, I've decided to reshare this with additional commentary. If you don't want spoilers, don't read the rest of this post. If you don't have time to watch the documentary, read on. It's a long one, but it has to be.




This is an attempt to convince otherwise ordinary people into committing murder in the space of (essentially) one hour. Derren Brown begins by asking people to come for an interview to see if they'd be suitable for a show. This is correct, but deceptive : they're not told what the real show is; their answers to the questions are immaterial. Actually they're being psychologically assessed for compliance. For instance, the waiting room begins with three actors filling in forms. At the sound of a bell, they all stand up, then sit down again. Genuine recruits then enter one at a time. Those who follow the crowd proceed to the next stage, those who do not are rejected. Interestingly, none of them ask why they're standing when a bell goes off : they either do or do not comply.

Everyone is then told that they've been rejected. In reality, only some of them have, but unfortunately we're not told what the fraction is (there might be a bias in who applies for show anyway, so it might not tell us much). For nearly the rest of the show we concentrate on one single participant, Chris.

We next meet up with our unlucky subject some time (weeks, I think) later. Brown has created an entirely fictitious charity (PUSH) for helping disadvantaged youths (or whatever). A manager of PUSH meets with Chris to discuss whether Chris' (very real) IT company can help PUSH to design websites or whatnot. He arranges for Chris to come to a charity auction a week or so later so he can meet the rest of the team. Every single thing that follows is a set-up : everyone is in on the act except for Chris. Derren Brown is watching on hidden cameras to coordinate activities, such that nothing happens at the wrong moment and that actors say the crucial things.

The auction itself forms the bulk of the show, subjecting Chris to an hour of intense psychological manipulation. It begins very gently with thin-end-of-the-wedge stuff, with the main manager asking him to help in very simple, easy little tasks you couldn't possibly refuse : holding doors open, that sort of thing. The other managers, importantly, form little bonds with Chris, but we won't meet them again until the climax. Chris also hasn't been told the event is black tie, putting him at an instant, small but constant social disadvantage compared to everyone else present. The realism of this is basically perfect, with a video showing celebrities (David Tennant, Martin Freeman, Stephen Fry... pretty big, seemingly trustworthy names) talking very earnestly and convincingly about the importance of "making that final PUSH", or something very similar.

Our main manager (I forget his name, let's call him Tim to make things easier) introduces Chris to Bernie, a wealthy, elderly (I'd guess ~70) patron who's absolutely vital to PUSH. In fact he's donating £5 million, so it's vitally important to keep him on side. Chris gets a behind the scenes tour with Bernie, during which Bernie sits on a wall on the edge of the roof having a cigarette.

A little later, Chris is very briefly introduced to the auctioneer, who mistakes him for Bernie (apparently the auctioneer is just hired for the event and isn't otherwise involved with PUSH). There's no time for Chris to correct him and it's seemingly unimportant.

At this point the guests haven't yet arrived. The auctioneer goes off and Bernie practises a short speech. Tim disappears, and Bernie, having taken quite a shine to young Chris, takes him aside to check over some final details. He discovers the auction items are being hugely undervalued, and gets very angry that he's already provided corrections but they were ignored. Tim hears Bernie shouting and returns, wherein Bernie collapses and apparently has a heart attack. Tim instructs Chris to go back to the office and find his medication. He takes maybe 2 minutes before he gives up, grabs all of Bernie's stuff and returns. But by that point, Bernie is dead. In fact the actor has been replaced with a staggeringly deathlike (lifelike is hardly accurate) prosthetic.

Tim then claims he's already given him CPR. He says there's no point calling an ambulance because Bernie's dead (this is of course bollocks). Anyway Chris is persuaded that though yes of course they will call someone, they first and urgently need to get Bernie out of the way. They can't have the guests finding the patron dead on the floor.

So Chris goes from the small steps of helping Tim in ordinary ways to the rather bigger step of moving a dead body out of sight. And then, not without reluctance, to the considerably larger step of hiding the body in a crate. Tim uses a mixture of gentle persuasion and more forceful emotional rhetoric to do this, but eventually succeeds. Finally Chris takes perhaps the most critical step of all : he agrees to pretend everything's all right until the auction's over.

The auction proceeds. The auctioneer says a few words, then invites "Bernie", who he says is extremely shy, to come and say a few words. Chris reluctantly does so at Tim's insistence. He reads Bernie's speech notes and then recalls the joke he heard Bernie give in his earlier practise.

After a few normal rounds of the auction, the auctioneer announces a mystery item which comes... in a box. He enthusiastically encourages the audience to bid because it's something "really special", and so on. Tim gets Chris to bid, promising to pay him back later, because they can't take the chance of revealing Bernie's body like that. So Chris wins. And then they box is wheeled out, and the auctioneer whips up the crowd to chant, "OPEN THE BOX !". Chris refuses, but another mystery item is promised for later.

Tim and Chris retreat to the office, where they discover that there was a second box under the table the whole time, and that's the one that was brought out. Still, they need to get Bernie out of the office, which only connects to the auction room. They do so by dressing him in dark glasses and putting him in a wheelchair, pretending he's a random old man who's had too much to drink. The stress level on Chris at his point must be phenomenally high, constantly veering between intense pressure and massive relief.

They get Bernie downstairs, not without incident. While Tim goes to look for Bernie's car (something about making it look like he had a heart attack there and never made it inside), Chris has an unfortunate encounter with a couple of "drunk" guests who try to take a picture with Bernie. Chris persuades them not to; it's a totally unconvincing argument but it maintains the pressure-relief cycle.

Tim returns without Bernie's car and the drunks go off; Tim himself is acting at turns angry and distressed. The only safe place left is, apparently, the bottom of the stairwell, so that's where they go. But they can't leave him their in his wheelchair because there's no reason for him to be there. So instead they place him on the ground as though he's fallen... but hang on, if he'd fallen, he'd be bruised, wouldn't he ? Tim wants Chris to kick Bernie, but this is a red line for Chris. He will neither kick Bernie's body nor allow Tim to do it instead. Tim complies. They now find the other managers and Chris explains the whole thing to them. Returning to the stairwell. they find that Bernie is gone.

After a few minutes of panic, Tim gets a phone call from Bernie's wife, worrying that he's not taking his medication. Without it he has a tendency towards paralysing attacks that render him unable to move but aren't fatal. So they rush back to the stairwell, hearing an angry Bernie shouting from the roof.

Thus we enter the dramatic endgame. A furious Bernie has been aware of everything that's going on and his dictaphone has recorded the whole thing. He's threatening to kill the charity and send them all to prison. And just like he did the first time, he goes and sits on the edge of the wall and has a cigarette.

At which point someone makes the suggestion that if Bernie were actually dead there'd be no problem. If he just fell off the roof they'd all be innocent and everything would be fine. They just need Chris to make that final push.

Chris doesn't do it; he doesn't even seem to consider it. He walks away, at which Derren Brown reveals the act.

And then, just as Chris has been subjected to pressure, relief, pressure, relief... Brown reveals that Chris wasn't the only subject. Four other people went through exactly the same experience, and they did push Bernie off the edge. Of course Bernie had a concealed harness and was absolutely fine, but they were genuinely convinced they'd committed murder.


So in the space of an hour, a single hour for God's sake, it's possible to convince ordinary people to commit atrocities. Yes, it requires extreme effort to do this. And yes, only some fraction of the populace will comply. But whatever that fraction is, I can't help but think "it's enough". No doubt different techniques would be more or less effective with different people, but I shall never again doubt the importance of Fake News or the importance of media in manipulating people. This an extreme example, of course. In everyday life we get different, subtler, but more prolonged tactics.

In Brown's view, showing and understanding how vulnerable we can be to this is what allows us to fight back. Certainly the methods used are very clever :
- Find the most naturally compliant people to begin with.
- Thin end of the wedge, getting people to do small things so they'll be more inclined to do larger things. Constantly but quite slowly increase the drama.
- Make people feel choiceless. At no stage does this experiment seem to make people into enthusiastic killers; they are all reluctant. Making people believe that this is not merely the least bad option, but also a genuinely, absolutely good result, is a very different prospect. The final act is shocking, but it's hardly the most violent method possible.
- Misinformation : lying is absolutely critical to the experiment.
- Trustworthy sources - more subtle. Except for the celebrities in the demo video, none of the actors are convincing. But if you were there at the time, would you really think someone was experimenting on you ?
- Similarly, having someone in charge. Tim acts as a vital lifeline for Chris, providing him with instructions when he'd otherwise be lost. Tim has established himself as a helpful authority figure; Chris probably sees him both as taking control and rendering assistance at the same time.
- Emotional manipulation is vital. There are a whole number of events at which one might say, "but hang on..." but wouldn't necessarily have the wit to actually question, if one had been turned into an emotional wreck by the different mechanisms. You literally can't think straight if pressurised correctly.
- A mixture of rhetoric, from the forceful to the compassionate, coupled not with maintaining pressure but by constantly varying the stress, giving false hope only to take it away again.
- You do not need to demonize people. Bernie is a bit aggressive, but he's seen as essential to the charity, not a villain.


Of course this has huge ethical problems. It's a fascinating result, but I'm not at all comfortable with deliberately manipulating people into thinking (even for a few seconds) that they've murdered someone. Brown's claim that it helps fight manipulation may be honest and sincere, but I'm still not OK with this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doFpACkiZ2Q