Behaviour Change

PROPAGANDA FOR CHANGE is a project created by the students of Behaviour Change (ps359) and Professor Thomas Hills @thomhills at the Psychology Department of the University of Warwick. This work was supported by funding from Warwick's Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

The Psychology of Breaking Bad: It's easier than you think


Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad, said that his goal with Walter White was to turn Mr. Chips into Scarface.  Take a regular person, like you—assume you’re regular for a second—and then make you nice and evil, like a witch in a gingerbread house.  Is that really even possible?  Could you become another Walter White?  

In this post at Psychology Today, I describe some of the psychological reasons that make this easier than it looks. Most importantly, they almost all apply to work in the persuasion and influence literature.