This is an excerpt from I guess a British show featuring some guy I never heard of called Derren Brown. He uses what he calls “negative suggestion” to get some woman to press a button and supposedly electrocute a kitten.
He tells her she must not kill the kitten, and that she will win 500 pounds if she doesn’t kill the kitten. There’s a timer countdown of two minutes.
So what happens? The pull of negative suggestion is SO STRONG that she kills the kitten. Well, not really, but she seems to think so.
Right on the dot of one second on the clock.
I think this whole scenario is rigged, just because she waits until just as the timer is running out to hit the killing button. That just smacks of those Hell’s Kitchen’s cooking contests ALWAYS coming out even down to the last point.
Anyway, what the hell? If someone tells me not to kill a kitten for two minutes and I’ll get big cash payoff, I would have no problem not killing a kitten for two minutes. This whole thing seems like bullshit to me. Or possibly cat shit.
So you would probably doubt Derren Brown: Pushed to the Edge where he convinces, using social compliance, 3 out of 4 participants to push an innocent man off a roof to his supposed death?
Um. What? Don’t push the button, the kitten lives and you win 500 pounds. How is that negative?
Now, put a child in the room with no incentives and tell them not to push the button and you’ll have a kid pounding on the thing the second the adult leaves the room. Every time.
But a supposed not mentally challenged adult, with two rewards due for not doing a thing? I’m not following.