To think Darren Brown "the push" is horiffic

[MrsA2015]

Just sat and howled through it. Can't believe what I've just watched really. Brilliant but horrible to watch

[venusinscorpio]

Yes, like the sectioning, or eating the dog.

[JessieMcJessie]

It was like the kind of nonsense logic that always gets Mark and Jeremy into trouble on Peep Show!

[venusinscorpio]

Plus why wouldn't you question why you personally had to be the one to do it when it wasn't your idea? And realise there was a high chance you wouldn't get away with it and as a PP pointed out, that up until you committed murder nothing you had done would be a legal offence anyway - so all those things considered, it's hard to see why you would make that decision?

[00100001]

but the Milgrim experiment was with a victim that they had only met briefly and couldn't see.

Derren's experiment was different:

1. The pusher and victim had met and interacted and built a rapport with them (of sorts) there is a relationship. The man was not a 'stranger'.
   
2. The victim was right there, not in a different room.
   
3. The people urging the pusher to kill weren't in "authority" just more confident and trying to convince the group this was the right thing.
   
   It was more about group conformity than an individual being told by a authority figure. As such, It is perhaps not comparable to Milgrim?

[DisappointedOne]

And Milgram concluded that 66% of people would administer an electric shock strong enough to kill if told to by a person in authority (those people weren't pre-screened in the way DB's were). 75% is not so far from the scientific conclusion.

[00100001]

It's an interesting play on statistics and his own point of what we believe/are led to believe.

On the surface (from this show) we are led to believe that 75% of people would push in this situation. Shocking 3 in 4 people would push!!

But actually - it's 75% of a certain population. It's hard to say what portion the four represent - but even if they represent 50% of the population (And I'm being generous here.), that means 37.5% would push.

Just over 1/3... not quite as dramatic as 3/4

[APlaceOnTheCouch]

TheOptimistic I agree with you about the dynamic of the push. You would have to have a lot of animosity against someone to give an aggressive push. The point was that the 'participants' not sure what to call them didn't have a big emotional connection to the person they were pushing off the edge. Their motivation wasn't anger against that person, it was about complying, and 'saving' themselves and the rest of the group from prison? possibly I'm not entirely sure what their thought processes would have been. Their 'emotional' connection was with the peer group pressuring them to act not with the potential victim.

001 yy I think you're right about the susceptible or the cynics applying and from them they narrowed it down to the ones they thought would comply. But there are vast swathes of the population who probably sit between being susceptible and cynical so although from a statistical analysis pov you could say it was a small number who pushed, actually since it's a self-selecting group, I'm not sure you can extrapolate from that how many would push in the general population. But, previous experiments seem to imply it would be more common than we'd like to think.

[TheOptimisticPessimist]

Apologies for the essay! Watched it last night and have been thinking about it this morning

[TheOptimisticPessimist]

People keep saying they would expect a much bigger push and a more dramatic reaction from the pushers - I think the fact there wasn't a big dramatic scream or similar made it more realistic.

If you were apprehensive about shoving someone off a building I'm pretty sure you wouldn't take a running start. There's a huge difference between looking back at a tiny push and a running start shove and surely on a subconscious level you'd be trying to protect yourself mentally. A light push could allow you to convince yourself on some level that he was unstable already, he might have fallen off anyway, he might not fall as hard, you didn't really do much - anything to make it easier to reconcile the act in your head later on. A little push isn't as violent or aggressive as doing it with clear intent and force. It would take some serious dedication to wind yourself up and shove the guy off. It's a very deliberate, aggressive action and if you do that there's no way you can justify isn't to yourself later on. These are just normal people, not aggressive thugs (or at least we hope not!) that believe someone deserves to die. Confused, scared, filled with adrenaline and being bombarded with pressure from all angles. I doubt you'd be thinking 'right I need to put my whole body weight behind this to make sure he goes over, but make sure I don't over balance and go over the edge too so...' Surely you'd be trying to minimise it instead?

I agree that the pushers looked a lot more fake than Chris but I think that's partially down to the fact that we'd watched him all the way through. We'd seen the way he reacts to different situations and been through the story with him. As viewers we were removed from the last three. We didn't have any affinity with them and hadn't grown accustomed to their body language or reactions in the way we had with Chris. On a deeper level, it's a lot easier to think they're fake than to be confronted with the terrifying reality that some people had actually just been coerced into pushing someone to their deaths.

In addition, the only time we've seen this sort of thing happen is on TV. In films the actors all start sobbing after doing something horrific because it's more dramatic visually and frankly that's the reaction you'd hope someone would have. But how many of us have killed someone in real life and therefore actually know how we'd react? I think it would be a lot more likely you'd be in shock after doing it and not thinking or feeling straight. The sobbing would come later when it finally hit you, which is probably why Derren steps in straight away, to stop that from happening or at least to reduce the impact.

Or of course they were all actors and the show was a farce...who knows!

[JessieMcJessie]

I'm a lawyer. I'd have told the Schmoosy Scot that it was entirely his call as to whether he presented meat canapés as vegetarian, but advised him that the risk of a vegetarian potential supporter realising immediately was very high and the potential fallout from that was much worse than having no veggie food available. Similarly I would have told him that the consequences of not calling police and ambulance immediately far outweighed the consequences of cancelling the event. I would have clocked early on that "Tom" was a nutcase and gone off to call the ambulance myself/ find a third party to help me deal with Tom.

Chris was a total wet blanket.

[Toria2014]

It was a load of old tosh IMO!

If I had just pushed someone off a building, I would definitely take a look over the edge to make sure they were dead!

[Jw35]

I was just shocked that 3/4 were willing to push!! I hope I wouldn't! Chris was amazing!

[00100001]

They must have screened them for things like being veggie etc

[DisappointedOne]

Ha couch! DH turned to me when the guy was asked to stick flags in the sausage rolls and said "no way in hell would you have done that! You'd have read him the riot act!" (I'm veggie ). Remember that the guy thought he was going to get a big contract out of this - I've certainly done things I wouldn't otherwise to advance work opportunities with clients!

[varicoseveronica]

I watched it last night and felt very disturbed.
Most people would have a go at CPR nowadays and it's not difficult to assess if someone's breathing but the push scenes were horrible.
I do hope the participants were actors.
Its put me off watching anything with DB again.

[00100001]

Yes, but we don't know how many people they got through with the bell test.


They had 2000 responses to the audition - but how many of them got to go into the room, we don't know - and from that they whittled it down to twelve(?)

SO, even if they had 50 people enter the room, it's still a small proportion of people.


And even if they had only 1 reject and all the others complied. THat's still only a dozen people.


Consider the type of people that would apply in the first place too. Only people who either think he's amazing and want to be on the show, or people who think he's a 'fraud' and want to prove something. That dismisses the majority of the population.

You're left with people who are susceptible, or proving him wrong - these "disprovers" wouldn't make it through the bell test. left with 12 complaint people.

of which they chose the four most compliant.

So, I think it's fair for the majority people to say they wouldn't be coerced in that way.

If he had just chosen 12 random people and put them all through the launch night test. Then it may be that no-one pushed. Or only one.


Also,you have to have someone who believes that the main organiser would be paying them that much attention on the 'biggest night'. It would strike me very odd that the main guy was with me all the time and not schmoozing the guests and benefactors.

[APlaceOnTheCouch]

Disappointed I think I've found the reactions almost as fascinating as the programme! Despite all the evidence about coercion and compliance, people are always still convinced that they would be different. And yy a tiny fraction of them wouldn't comply but there will always be some who will.

[DisappointedOne]

Milgram is the reason we now have ethics committees for scientific research. I doubt TV shows are required to consider ethics to the same degree hence some of the shite that gets shown. I found it fascinating and don't believe any of them were actors. During times of emotional pressure you just don't see things that you would if you were perfectly calm.

[APlaceOnTheCouch]

One of the actors (I think it was Bernie) popped up in the comments' section of The Guardian to say he was an actor but the people being duped were members of the public not actors.

[ChipsandGuac]

It was crap. The three pushers were clearly actors, and not very good ones at that.

[JessieMcJessie]

I agree- their choosing Chris as pusher had no basis whatsoever! I'd have told Tom to fucking do it.

[venusinscorpio]

The reasoning for killing Bernie was also really stupid- no sane person thinks that murder is a safer alternative to having to explain to police that you mistreated a dead person who was actually alive all the time. Is that even an offence?

Exactly. And I think I'd have said - er no, you want to push him off, you can push him off, it's nothing to do with me, and I'm going to fuck off and leave you to it (and call the police). Clearly it's wrong, and it's obviously very likely you wouldn't get away with it. People tend to notice when people fall off high buildings.

[JessieMcJessie]

I was interested that " Tom" the bloke doing all the suggesting was Scottish as I have read more than once that people find Scottish accents the most trustworthy of all British accents. I'd have thought people were less positive towards us since all the referendum hoo hah but Derrem knows his stuff so we must still have the power to dupe the English with our dulcet tones .

To me the thing that tang most false was the way Bernie just sat quietly for ages on the edge of the scaffold while the discussion went on behind him, when only seconds earlier he'd been ranting and raving. That was a huge clue it was a setup.

I do hope the pushers were all actors as they have really fucked ip the rest of their lives by agreeing to be seen on TV being persuaded to kill someone.

The reasoning for killing Bernie was also really stupid- no sane person thinks that murder is a safer alternative to having to explain to police that you mistreated a dead person who was actually alive all the time. Is that even an offence?

In my view demonstrating that people would move the body and pretend to be Bernie was enough to prove Derren's point.

[Gildo]

I'm really confused... Why are people talking about these people like they are victims...?
If it wasn't a set up, 3 of them would be murderers. So why are people feeling sorry for them..? Am I missing something??

[LittleLionMansMummy]

I mean Marmite base their entire marketing campaign around the fact that it divides opinion.

Did we receive the viewing figures? Yes.

Are people talking? Yes.

Is it controversial? Yes.

Well job done. No need for employees to troll these boards as it's of no consequence to them if people believe it or not - some do, some don't in much the same way some people believe in ghosts or fortune tellers. There's no such thing as bad publicity.