to think that participants in this Derren Brown programme should be under arrest?

[TheLegendofGreySock]

www.channel4.com/programmes/derren-brown-pushed-to-the-edge

OK, so maybe not arrest, but if I had pushed the man, I wouldn't be able to cope. If I thought I could be encouraged to murder an innocent person, I would seek help urgently!

Surely the participants should too? Doesn't this exercise prove that they are very dangerous people?

Nope. No one was going to be hurt making this.

No, of course not, but they didn't know that. They genuinely thought they'd killed the man.

He doesn't just leave them to it after he deprogrammes and counsels them, if indeed they even believed it in the first place

Yes, I'm sure he does. I think he's excellent. But he doesn't "programme" them to do it. They do it because they feel the social pressure so strongly.

OP -- you would probably do it too. (And the rest of us.) Have you read up on the Stanford Prison Experiment? That would mean putting nearly all of us in jail.

Absolutely chaotica, it's frightening what any of us are capable of given the right circumstances.

It's comforting to think that people who do horrible things are monsters or evil, but the truth is they're made up of the exact same stuff as you or I. The only difference is circumstance.

Exactly - see The Stanford Prison experiment or the Milgram experiments in the 60's where more than 65% of participants were willing to deliver what they believed to be a potentially fatal electric shock - it's called social obedience, iirc.

Yes, those experiments are interesting.

So does this suggest that we're all inherently evil?

It's very worrying to think we could all be talked in to murder, within the space of a few hours.

While we are all very likely to perform immoral acts due to rather insignificant situational factors, on the bright side, the best way to resist the influence of these factors is to be aware of their effect. So if you know (ideally by having experienced it, but studying the effect also helps) that figures of authority, wearing white coats and carrying clip boards are likely to elicit your obedience, you are more likely to resist the effect.

What crime do you think they should be charged with, OP?

No it means we're all suggestible.

This is relevant for people who think Islam is the reason people become terrorists too - and for those who believe people with mental illnesses should be assumed to be dangerous without having actually done anything. We ALL have the potential to do evil things, but luckily most of us are never put in a situation where we're actually going to do it.

At times like these we need all the reminders we can get of dreadful things done by apparently normal people.

That programme was bloody terrifying. As was the one where he got the perfectly innocent man to confess to a murder he hadn't committed.

www.jewishcurrents.org/2004-jan-dimow.htm

The Standford prison experiment is no longer considered to be very reliable unfortunately.

I know what you are getting at op, they had both the mental and physical elements of murder (they thought they did). From their perspective they killed someone, they didn't know it was staged. But really what could they be charged with? Attempted murder? The police, cps and a jury would all have to agree which is silly and would be a massive waste of police time and taxpayers money.
It's definitely a big moral issue though...imagine living the test of your life with the knowledge that you were prepared.to kill another person? That would fuck me up.

It's social conformity and/or obedience to authority.

The vast majority of the population would have done it too.

We're programmed to conform to group norms and obey authority figures.

Milgram's experiments and the Stamford prison experiment are the more famous studies but there are plenty more studies showing similar results.

It's social compliance that contributes to usually law abiding people to participate in riots.

There are some individuals who are truly evil, sociopaths and psychopaths for example, but it's terrifyingly easy to convince most people to commit horrific acts.

Yes, it must be terrible to think you could kill. How would your friends and family view you afterwards?

It suggests that someone like Myra Hindley was showing normal behaviour because she was manipulated by a figure of authority.

It really frightens me!

I actually felt a bit sorry for some of the participants in that. It must fuck your head up.

On the other hand, If i remember correctly one of the women who went ahead with the pushing said afterwards she felt 'it made her a stronger person.' I suppose she was trying to say she felt she was now less suggestible, but personally i think i would have been a quivering wreck knowing what i'd done/ thought i'd done!

Well, you can do something about it asap. Train your ability to withstand manipulation by authority figures.

I am more worried about this happening in real life. South American countries where the church and government manages to manipulate people to participate in the mass murder of women by forced birthing, for example.

Or the IS.

If you want to imprison the participants of this programme, you'd have to have yourself tested, too, whether you are as easily manipulated, and if you are, you would have to go to prison, too.

But seriously, this being a TV programme, not even pretending to be scientific valid research, it was probably faked.

Besides, we would need MUCH more prisons to imprison all potential criminals who could possibly be manipulated into committing a crime.

In an anonymous survey, 30% of male university students at a normal university in the US admitted they'd rape if they could get away with it. A whopping 30%. Much as I'd want the men who so happily admitted they view women as subhuman imprisoned, that would not solve the problem of the 30% of men in the general population being just the same. (And also, imprisoning study participants would make it very hard to do any research on that subject ever again)

Can't watch this crap. I find the whole hypnosis as entertainment a pile of steaming shite! It's a misuse of the word 'entretainment'.

It's sad he can't put his 'powers' to better use.

He didn't use hypnosis though! It was all social pressure