Derren Brown - Person swap experiment

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Psychological magician Derren Brown recreates a psychological experiment[1] where a person is asking a test subject for directions when some guys carrying a large painting cuts between them. The asking person is then switched and the aim is to see if the test subject recognizes the switch. Surprisingly they rarely recognize that another person emerges from behind the painting. This works by first focusing the test subjects attention on the problem of finding the directions, not on Derren and how he looks, secondly the switch is performed outside of the view of the test subject. Now, the test subject (consciously and subconsciously) assumes that the same person will emerge behind the painting, and since not enough information has been stored in memory about Derrens looks, the test subjects mind subconsciously assumes and recreates a memory that it is the same person [2].


[1] D. J. Simons and D. T. Levin "Failure to Detect Changes to People in Real-World Interaction," Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 5:644-49 (1998).

[2] D. Gilbert "Stumbling on Happiness", Vintage Books 2006.

Channel: Entertainment
Uploaded: August 26, 2007 at 5:26 am
Author: ozxlyr

Length: 00:05:01
Rating: 4.85
Views: 54551

Tags: Derren Brown psychology mind control

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Video Comments:
BlazelDude (December 30, 2008 at 11:35 am)
LOL, the bald guy is a magician, from that show monkey magic!
zab666 (January 2, 2009 at 8:33 am)
yep and before that, it is luke jermay...
peterkay21 (December 29, 2008 at 2:30 pm)
derren brown is fantastic, he turns into an asian girl. i guess when you are occupied your mind pays little attention to other things. :)
SlipJack440 (December 25, 2008 at 3:02 pm)
I think the older woman realized the swap after the guy left.
Muzozavr (December 25, 2008 at 7:58 am)
Derren sounds kinda like Rincewind from the first Discworld game.
But the trick is amazing.
saxquiz (December 22, 2008 at 7:48 pm)
The reason they only did one switch from male to female is probably because that was the only person they tried that didn't notice the switch from male to female. I bet nearly everyone would notice that.
LowIQ1234 (December 17, 2008 at 7:56 am)
This was actually a real scientific experiment done by somebody else way before derren brown. Hes copying the experiment. The original was almost exactly the same.
BlazelDude (December 30, 2008 at 11:37 am)
So?
LowIQ1234 (December 30, 2008 at 5:42 pm)
So? What do you mean so? I was just saying that this experiment had been done before him, and that he was re-creating it.

Prick.
slr31 (December 7, 2008 at 1:39 am)
this is absolutely amazing....derren brown is a genius =]