How Does Mind Control Psychology Work?

Since his first Channel 4 television show Derren Brown: Mind Control in 2000, he has reached well known status by many marketing experts. Brown known for his “mind-reading” act says at the start of each of his Trick of the Mind shows that he gets his results by combining a combination of “magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship”. He uses his skills and seems to be able to predict and change people’s thoughts with simple suggestions and manipulate their decisions. He basically reads their small physical signs and body language to determine what a person is thinking.

Derren began his television work with a series of one hour specials during a two year stint which led to the production of a six part series Mind Control. This included new footage of how he is able to perform his apparent mind influence and psychological psyop techniques. As a marketer we can take some real powerful insights into how the human psychology works and how we can use this to influence prospects of our sales marketing online.

Psychological Illusions

Darren was interviewed in New Scientist and said that he learned many of his psychological influencing skills from his training in hypnotherapy before he got involved in learning face to face magic. When asked how he was able to create some of his mental illusions such as: mind reading, hypnotic induction and lie detection, Brown said he was able to rely on subtle clues such as small muscle movements which tell him is someone is lying or withholding information. He admits his participants are selected based on their receptiveness to be hypnotized and also feels the presence of a t.v. camera increases a person’s responsiveness.

NLP

Many authors have stated Derren uses Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) in his shows which use magical tricks, misdirection, and also setting up audiences to give him the responses he is looking for by using small subliminal cues in his conversations with them. His response to be unfairly using NLP in his performances Brown states, “The truth is I have never mentioned it”.

Brown does have an off stage interest in the system and he talks about it in relation to hypnotism and suggestion. In the book “Tricks of the Mind” he says he attended a course on NLP by Richard Bandler one of the creators of NLP, but he claims the unflexible methods for body language interpretation used by NLP are not as effective as its users say. Brown also says the concept of eye cues as a method have limited use and his language patterns used on subjects are highly similar to the ones used by Richard Bandler and the hypnotist who Bandler learned his skills from, Milton Erickson.

So what can we as internet marketers take from the lessons of Derren Brown? It’s hard to incorporate some of his methods because he is using a physical presence to gain reaction from people, but we can see how receptive and suseptable people are to mind influence overall. This can be applied to our language and sales writings in all forms of online marketing we produce.

Maybe you are like me when I first saw this and thought it was completely staged? I think it is more real than you might believe and that we all have certain triggers which can be ployed upon to get us to react in specific ways and any adcopy writer would agree with that.

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Mind Control Marketing Can Make Sense

Author: Scott Holden – TrafficEraBlog