Spoiler alert – don’t read on if you haven’t watched the series already!
September saw the Irish version of The Traitors hit our screens. And what a hit it has been, both for RTE and the production company behind it. Hundreds of thousands have tuned in, social media is buzzing with clips, chats and comments, and Limerick contestant Paudie, AKA ‘The Paudfather’, can barely make it through the Crescent shopping centre such is his new found fame.
Lots of people, of all ages and all across Ireland, are talking about it, including the Department of Psychology in MIC. We couldn’t help but notice the psychology involved in so many aspects of it.
Applications are currently being sought for the second series, so here are some tips from psychology to help you get past the roundtables to the final firepit.
1. Manage your self-presentation
Strategic self-presentation is vital to success on the Traitors. Survival in the game rests on convincing the other players that you are “100% Faithful”; whether you are or not! However, you must also be careful about how you present yourself as a Faithful: adopting a leadership role, like David and Niall early in the series, or coming across as too ‘savvy’, like Mark, leaves you liable to murder by the Traitors. On the other hand, attempting to keep a low profile was frequently seen as suspicious.
Advice to ‘just be yourself’ is almost always over-simplistic, in The Traitors as elsewhere in life. As psychologists studying self and identity will tell you, we have numerous different versions of ourselves that we present depending on the situation. For instance, you would probably present a different version of yourself on a night out with friends, then you would when visiting elderly relatives: this does not mean that one version is your ‘real’ self, and the other is somehow ‘fake’.
The nature of the game is that players can be recruited as Traitors, and thus have to switch overnight from truthfully presenting themselves as Faithfuls, to continuing to present themselves as Faithfuls while actually being Traitors. Some players, such as Andrew, appeared to struggle with this switch, while others, such as Nick appeared to embrace it. Self-monitoring theory (Snyder, 1974) suggests that some people do find it easier to adapt their self-presentation than others: high self-monitors are adept at changing their behaviour to be the right person for the situation, whereas low self-monitors prefer to behave in a way that they see as true to themselves across different situations.
It might appear as though high self-monitors are ideally placed to win the game, but even Nick was eventually caught in a rare unguarded moment by Kelley, paving the way for the Faithfuls’ eventual victory. Kelley herself, who was the player that came under least suspicion for being a Traitor throughout, has attributed her success to being her ‘true, authentic self’ throughout the series. Of course, this is also a form of self-presentation! However, it is probably true that the fewer versions of your self that you have to juggle, and the less conflict there is between your self-presentation within the game, and outside it, is an important aspect to success.
Our first tip is therefore as follows: present a version of yourself that feels comfortable, but also meets the demands of the game.
2. Consider how to use your real-life identity
Contestants on the Traitors had an identity within the game, but also identities from their ‘real lives’. Some contestants chose to hide aspects of their identities that they felt would arouse suspicion in the game: for instance, Eamon chose not to reveal his career as a Garda, and Katelyn hid her background in psychology. Andrew and Paudie also attempted to hide their family relationship: despite one memorable slip from Andrew! Other contestants sought to strategically deploy aspects of their identities, with Ben arguing that his army career was evidence of his trustworthiness.
Alliances also often depended on pre-existing identities. Christine attempted to build an alliance with John based on their shared Corkness, while alliances based on gender clearly emerged in the later part of the series. The diversity of the contestants also allowed for identities and experiences to be compared and contrasted, in-game: one notable moment was when Vanessa and Joanna discussed how their experiences as migrants gave them a specific perspective on interpersonal relationships in the castle. However, identity-based alliances often did not survive the vagaries of the game. John gave his much-coveted shield not to Christine, but to Katelyn: who, as a Traitor, proceeded to murder him!
3. Work on your memory skills
The importance and fallibility of contestant’s memory skills came into play at various times. Memory skills were tested throughout the challenges from recalling numbers and symbols to win more for the prize pot, to recreating the laughs of scary dolls after running to a phone box in a forest. Memory skills were also key to detecting clues to the traitor’s identities, remembering who said what when, to bring to the round table each night. However, sometimes recollections of conversations differed, even when people weren’t deliberately lying to each other. This was evident at the roundtable discussion between Vanessa, Joanna, Faye and Oyin, with each of these Faithfuls strongly believing their own version of events.
We know from psychology research investigating memory in real world contexts, such as eyewitness testimony (Loftus, 2019), that our memories are not always perfect or accurate and that errors can creep in. Often we remember the gist of things, rather than exact details. Writing things down is a very useful and well recognised memory aid (see Egan 2018), and one that perhaps helped Oyin be such an excellent traitor detector. In her post-series interview, Oyin mentioned how she kept written records in her journal each night of the day’s going on’s to help her figure out who was a faithful and who was a traitor. Perhaps this was one of the secrets to her success.
4. Engage counterfactual thinking
Finally, another cognitive skill that was evident throughout the series was counterfactual thinking, which is the ability to think about how things could have turned out differently (Byrne, 2016). This was present in contestant interviews during the show, traitor discussions in the conclave and also in all the chats we as viewers had with family, friends and colleagues. It can influence our emotions, reactions and help us learn from past mistakes. If Paudie hadn’t chosen his son Andrew to join him as a traitor might he have stayed until the end? What if traitors Nick and Ben had chosen Oyin instead of Wilkin as their final murder victim of the game? It’s easy to imagine how just one thing being different could have changed the outcome of the game.
While we’ll never know the answers to these questions we thoroughly enjoyed watching how it all played out, and thinking about the psychology of it all. We’re looking forward to the next series already, and we hope that these tips will inspire some MIC students to future glory!
By Dr Suzanne Egan and Dr Marc Scully, Department of Psychology, MIC.
References
Byrne, R. M. J. (2016). Counterfactual Thought. Annual Review of Psychology, 67, 135-157.
Egan, S.M. (2018). Memory and learning: How we learn by remembering what happened and imagining what could have happened. In C. O’Siochru (Ed.) Psychology and the Study of Education. New York: Routledge.
Loftus, E. F. (2019). Eyewitness testimony. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 33(4), 498–503.
Snyder, M. (1974). Self-monitoring of expressive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 30(4), 526–537.
