The “Break it Down” Blog

This is amazing…

Derren Brown is the host of the UK show “The Heist” (I’ve not seen an episode before). He’s a master of suggestion, motivational speaker, can manipulate willing people with the way he phrases words, etc.

In this episode he takes a group of 20 or so people and invites them to a “motivational talk”. Over a period of two weeks, through his talks, assignments, exercises, etc. he whittles the group of 20 down to 4. During that 2 weeks he also implants tons of triggers all for the ultimate setup of getting the people to rob a security van.

While that sounds outrageous, consider this. From the start of the two weeks to the end, he implants, day-by-day little suggestions using colors, feelings, emotions, words, subliminal suggestion, visual triggers, musical triggers, etc. all pointing at feels of “take”, “steal”, “rob”, etc. Then in the final scene, he asks each of the 4 separate people to meet him at a building down the road, on the way down the closed off street there is a security van loading the money it needs to transfer for the day (it’s a setup van) and watch as each person walks into the situation.

I was *amazed* at how seamless the people took the triggers. There wasn’t a lot of humming and hawing about it, deciding if they should rob it or not… they simply pulled out a gun and robbed the security guard like it was their intention the entire time. Luckily the last guy didn’t take the bait, and just walked right by. I still have hope for our race

Give it a watch, about 45mins long but fascinating. Not everyone was drug into the suggestive wording though, and those people were ruled out during the process, but the ones that were pulled in performed as expected. I can certainly see myself falling for some of the exercises, but not others.

It’s scary how mutable we are…