The Heist Analysis
Under the pretense of training a group of middle level managers in a corporate workshop on motivation, Derren Brown’s television special, The Heist, aims to determine if Brown, an English mentalist and illusionist, can persuade members of a group of thirteen business men and women to steal 100,000 pounds in what these members believe is a genuine armed robbery of a bank’s security guard. In a British country retreat setting over the course of a couple of weeks, Brown uses a series of psychological tools including, but not limited to: classical conditioning, influencing aggression by providing weapons as aggressive cues, and cognitive dissonance, in attempting to influence four out of the thirteen members to, of their own …show more content…
As mentioned in the textbook, the weapons effect refers to the phenomenon of how the presence of a weapon, (in the case of The Heist, a gun) leads to more aggressive behavior in humans, particularly if they are already aroused (Aronson et al., Chapter 12). The results of The Heist are similar to what a study published by Berkowitz and Le Page in 1967 (as cited in Aronson et al., Chapter 12) illustrates. In the Berkowitz and Le Page study, college students participated in a task where they were given the opportunity to electrically shock another student. Beforehand, some of the students were stimulated with anger while in the presence of a gun, while others were angered in the presence of a badminton racket. The students who had been angered and in the presence of the gun gave more shocks to a fellow student than those who had been angered in the presence of the badminton racket. A comparison to Berowitz and Le Page’s study can be made to the film’s heist scene: when the final four participants traveled to Gresham Street in London for their final session, the participants had been instructed to bring a toy gun they had been given during a previous motivational session. The green fence, the advertisement that featured a fist rubbing against a leg, and the song “Can You Feel it,” had already heightened and aroused the participants …show more content…
Participants are told the aim of the candy robbery is to get participants to “reclaim a childhood message.” Although many participants were initially hesitant and did not want to go through it, after the robbery, a number of participants felt an array of positive emotions such as euphoria and pride. Pamela, a learning and development coordinator, even described the experience as “something I hope will actually stay with me, because I think I could do with taking a few more risks in life.” That a number of participants such as Pamela crossed the line into criminal and deviant behavior, and then framed the experience as fun and harmless, illustrates the cognitive dissonance theory in action. In order to minimize the dissonance created by committing an immoral act, the participants who viewed stealing as enjoyable, or a way to push themselves outside of their comfort zones and “take a risk,” were able to minimize the negative aspects of having just committed an illegal act by changing their attitudes about stealing. However, there were also a few participants who refused to rob the candy store. And, as the cognitive dissonance theory predicts, those who didn’t rob the store became even more convinced that stealing is wrong. Further, the cognitive dissonance theory shows that there are implications for whether people behave more
Under the pretense of training a group of middle level managers in a corporate workshop on motivation, Derren Brown’s television special, The Heist, aims to determine if Brown, an English mentalist and illusionist, can persuade members of a group of thirteen business men and women to steal 100,000 pounds in what these members believe is a genuine armed robbery of a bank’s security guard. In a British country retreat setting over the course of a couple of weeks, Brown uses a series of psychological tools including, but not limited to: classical conditioning, influencing aggression by providing weapons as aggressive cues, and cognitive dissonance, in attempting to influence four out of the thirteen members to, of their own …show more content…
As mentioned in the textbook, the weapons effect refers to the phenomenon of how the presence of a weapon, (in the case of The Heist, a gun) leads to more aggressive behavior in humans, particularly if they are already aroused (Aronson et al., Chapter 12). The results of The Heist are similar to what a study published by Berkowitz and Le Page in 1967 (as cited in Aronson et al., Chapter 12) illustrates. In the Berkowitz and Le Page study, college students participated in a task where they were given the opportunity to electrically shock another student. Beforehand, some of the students were stimulated with anger while in the presence of a gun, while others were angered in the presence of a badminton racket. The students who had been angered and in the presence of the gun gave more shocks to a fellow student than those who had been angered in the presence of the badminton racket. A comparison to Berowitz and Le Page’s study can be made to the film’s heist scene: when the final four participants traveled to Gresham Street in London for their final session, the participants had been instructed to bring a toy gun they had been given during a previous motivational session. The green fence, the advertisement that featured a fist rubbing against a leg, and the song “Can You Feel it,” had already heightened and aroused the participants …show more content…
Participants are told the aim of the candy robbery is to get participants to “reclaim a childhood message.” Although many participants were initially hesitant and did not want to go through it, after the robbery, a number of participants felt an array of positive emotions such as euphoria and pride. Pamela, a learning and development coordinator, even described the experience as “something I hope will actually stay with me, because I think I could do with taking a few more risks in life.” That a number of participants such as Pamela crossed the line into criminal and deviant behavior, and then framed the experience as fun and harmless, illustrates the cognitive dissonance theory in action. In order to minimize the dissonance created by committing an immoral act, the participants who viewed stealing as enjoyable, or a way to push themselves outside of their comfort zones and “take a risk,” were able to minimize the negative aspects of having just committed an illegal act by changing their attitudes about stealing. However, there were also a few participants who refused to rob the candy store. And, as the cognitive dissonance theory predicts, those who didn’t rob the store became even more convinced that stealing is wrong. Further, the cognitive dissonance theory shows that there are implications for whether people behave more