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  • Essay / Derren Brown: The Guilt Trip

    Derren Brown is an English mentalist, hypnotic, skeptic and illusionist. Derren Brown uses techniques such as cognitive psychology, hypnosis, memory and cold reading. His shows perform psychological illusion by combining the skills of a magician and a hypnotist (Totally History Derren Brown). In his show The Experiments, he conducted an experiment he called "The Guilt Trip." According to Derren, guilt has always been used as a tool of manipulation. In the modern world, guilt and shame are important emotions when experiencing depression. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get an original essay The aim of the experiment is to see if an innocent person can confess to a murder that did not happen due to manipulation cognitive learning, memory, state of consciousness and emotion. The subject had previously auditioned to go on Brown's show, but was told he had been rejected. The subject, Jody, was psychologically evaluated to ensure he was stable. Later, Jody was invited to a mock seminar at a historic country hotel to host "Student Futures", during which he was asked to speak about graduates' success in the job market. Little did Jody know that this was all a set-up. Twenty-one secret cameras were placed, as well as a ground crew, who he claimed were filming the seminar. During the first stage, triggers were created to make him feel guilty. The actors were asked to create situations in which Jody would feel guilty and squeeze his shoulder, while Derren would trigger the sound of a bell being played in the hotel. So Jody began to associate the feeling of guilt with a squeeze on the shoulder and the sound of the bell. An authority figure was also introduced, an artist Jody greatly admired appeared as a presenter during the seminar, while Jody was led to believe he had offended the artist to further entrench the guilt triggers . The second step aimed to make the subject doubt their own memory. A series of inexplicable events happened around him, such as furniture changing, their clothes changing color, and his food disappearing while he was distracted. Then, expensive jewelry went missing and appeared in Jody's room. He confessed to stealing the pearls even though he had no memory of it because it had begun to frighten his memory. During the final stage of the experiment, the feeling of motive was instilled by making the "victim" a rude person and a cheater. The night before the murder was staged, Jody drank alcoholic beverages, which further distorted his memory. While sleeping, Jody's state of consciousness was manipulated into a hypnopompic state, between wakefulness and sleep. He woke up outside with no memory of how he got there or why. Later that day, police informed attendees that there had been a murder. In the end, Jody turned himself in for a murder he didn't commit. The guilt trip demonstrated that by being exposed to false information, distorted or false memories, many innocent people confess to crimes each year, as noted in the course text, Chapter 7: Memory. The experience also resembles Ivan Pavlov's classical conditioning, which establishes the learning of a new behavior through the process of association that was explored in Chapter 6 of the course text: Learning as well. The subject's state of consciousness was discussed in the experiment, placing the subject in a state.