Why Breaking the Fourth Wall Feels So Unsettling | Psychology

[00:00:00]A few years back, there was a special that ran on  BBC called “the experiments” with Derren Brown.

[00:00:12]On one particular episode, Derren held a game  show called “remote control” where the audience, all wearing masks to conceal their identity, were  given complete control of a random gentlemen’s evening via hidden cameras and planted actors  around him all hired by the show. The man’s name was Chris and as the evening progressed,  the audience was given choices by majority vote of causing either a good thing to happen to  him like winning a new TV or a bad thing, like getting falsely accused of groping a woman.  And without fail the audience would continually make Chris’s evening a living nightmare by picking  the unfavorable circumstance every single time. He was overcharged by the bartender, had a drink  spilled on him, got accused of shoplifting, and was quite literally arrested. The longer  you watch the more… uncomfortable you feel as the curtain of comedy is slowly pulled back and  it becomes hard to ignore just how sinister the audience’s decisions are... seemingly because  they are able to hide behind a mask and blend into the crowd. Granted, despite the name of  the show, this was not an experiment. There was no control group, and by making light of Chris's  evening, framing the whole thing as a game show, and subtly egging them on, Derren Brown is almost  certainly influencing the audiences’ decision to keep on heckling poor Chris. Now don’t get me  wrong, when folks feel like they are anonymous, we do typically feel less responsibility for  our actions and may even be more willing to follow questionable instructions. Like there  was a study back in 69 by Philip Zimbardo where college students would be more willing to follow  instructions to administer volts of electricity to someone in another room if they were hooded  than if they had to perform the shocking with no hood and a nametag on their shirt… Don’t worry  no one was really being shocked, but the subjects didn’t know that and yet anonymity seemingly made  them more cruel and obedient. So our friend Derren is tapping into something real with his show,  and we’re definitely gonna be talking about that a bit today, but what I’m ultimately  here to discuss is this moment right here, on the last segment of the show when the audience  decides they want Chris to get kidnapped: Okay, full disclosure, Chris is totally fine, and  although the audience had truly been a real 2020 to him all evening, that last outcome was pre-shot  and done with a stuntman dressed just like him.

[00:03:46]Chris was delivered safely to his home and given a  letter explaining what’s been happening to him and that new TV the crowd didn’t pick. Derren tells  this to the audience and goes on to explain that their decision making was so sinister because of  something called deindividualization. By being thrown into a crowd and slapping on creepy  masks, the audience members have stopped behaving in a way that is socially acceptable  and instead just act totally selfishly or simply go with the flow of the crowd and atmosphere,  despite how barbaric that may be. And again, there is truth to this like I just mentioned with  the hooded study and even with something called the online disinhibition effect, which basically  states that when online, people tend to act out more frequently or extremely than they would in  person because they feel less governed by social niceties or the need to maintain appearances. It’s  one of the things that makes cyber bullying such a real problem. Anonymity creates a comfort zone,  a bubble of safety, a hamster ball of immunity, where we suddenly feel comfortable making  decisions we might not make if someone were monitoring us… and it’s that comfort zone that the  magical 4th wall preserves when we experience a story, be it in a game, a movie, a performance, or  even a book. For those that don’t know or haven’t watched a video on the 4th wall before, which  is understandable they’re really hard to find, the 4th wall is an imaginary wall separating the  story from the audience. In a traditional story, the characters are interacting independent of  anyone watching them and have no idea they’re in a fictional world being observed by millions  of adoring yet highly opinionated viewers. Much like Chris doesn’t know he's on a game show,  Harry Potter doesn’t know he’s part of a multi million dollar franchise. And because of this,  we the viewers/players are free to enjoy, detest, manipulate, or make fun of characters and  events in the show all we like. A luxury you don’t exactly have with your family because they  have feelings and notice when you’re rude or don’t laugh at their jokes. But when someone is behind  a screen or on pages, you’re free to interact with them however you like, because you aren’t really  interacting with anyone, it’s just pixels or ink….

[00:05:54]Which is what makes breaking the 4th wall and  breaking that anonymity such a bizarre sensation.

[00:06:03]So there's this scene in The Road to Morocco  when Bob Hope and Bing Crosby are singing about… well the Road to Morocco and then make  what I believe is the first reference to plot armor in history. and this is the most common  form of 4th wall breaking, the meta reference, the inside joke, the wink... we know we’re in  a movie. You see it at the end of Kiss Kiss bang bang when RDJ thanks you for watching, in  spaceballs when they literally watch their own movie to decide what to do next, in wrestling  when john cena jokes about making a heel turn (heel=becoming a bad guy), in Kid Icarus:  Uprising when Pit makes reference to game design, and allllll over the place in deadpool. Comedy  is sort of the first level of 4th wall breaking.

[00:07:04]It doesn’t exactly snap the anonymity of the  viewer, but it does make you feel included because the characters are making reference  to something that only the audience should know about. The 4th wall is broken, but you’re  still at a safe distance, and your hamsterball is unscathed. But what if you’re minding your own  business playing a game and then this happens?

[00:07:26]This is a part out of batman arkham asylum where  the game crashes, restarts, and has you play as joker in this surreal fever dream sequence. It  was RockSteady’s way of making the player feel like they were losing it from scarecrow's gas just  like Batman was. If you restarted your console or redownloaded the game thinking there was a serious  problem, you weren’t the only one. This is a great example of what is sort of the second level of  4th wall breaking, the spooky coincidence, the double-take goosebumps, the “for that reason, I’m  out”. These breaks are almost totally exclusive to games because of their inherent interactivity with  the player. Somew good examples are how Bravely Second and Eternal Darkness appear to erase  your save data or how… the latter will turn your volume down even though your dog definitely isn’t  laying on the remote, how you have to plug your controller into the player 2 port to beat psycho  mantis, how Xmen makes you reset your Genesis to reset the in-game computer, how flowey notices  that you restarted to before your last save to keep from killing toriel. Things like this really  start to encroach on your level of separation from the in-game world and are so perturbing  because of our very human social wiring.

[00:08:43]Have you ever been doing something really  embarrassing... like unironically flossing in the kitchen while you wait on your hot pocket  to finish cooking…. well beyond the point of it being okay to unironically floss…. only to  then notice someone is watching you ruin your whole career? Or have you ever been complaining  about a coworker only for that coworker to come cartwheeling around the corner and ask what you  were talking about? And with all the finesse of a walmart bag holding one too many cans of leaking  cat food said, “oh nothing”. If so, you’ve felt the sensation of quickly shifting from a state  of being inconspicuous and nameless to very much conspicuous and very much named…. Which totally  shifts our entire psyche all at once creating that chills down your spine moment. It’s not just  sudden fear that spooky 4th wall breaks create, it’s sudden vulnerability. We touched on this in  an older video, but people behave very differently when they feel like they’re being watched vs  when they are alone. This is sometimes called the Audience effect and has been seen again and  again in psych research from people being more willing to donate to charity, choosing not to  litter, or choosing to follow social norms when in the presence of others. This seems to ring true  even when people simply feel like they’re being watched, even if they really aren’t. One study  found that bike theft drops massively in areas with signs that simply warn that people may be  watching. Great 4th wall breaks capitalize on this by first allowing you to feel inconspicuous and  comfortable and then make you feel like you feel like you’re being watched when your guard is  down. Have you ever been playing a game and felt a little awkward or uneasy when a character without  warning stares directly into the camera? This feeling is due to something called DFOG… Where  you look has a dual purpose, one of course is to select what you see, but the other is a form of  communication. And when there is someone around, you’re accountable for where you’re looking  (tomb raider seen enough pause) which is why you’ll rarely feel uncomfortable scrolling  through someone’s facebook photos, but may want to avoid too much eye contact when around  them. Now when you watch a movie or play a game, assuming you’re alone, which you should be right  now, you’re free to look wherever on screen you like without judgement. You won’t make Peter  Kavinsky uncomfortable if you get lost in his eyes... as we all have. However when the 4th wall  begins to crumble, or one of the characters looks directly at the camera like at the end of the  movie psycho or the middle of the visual novel psycho, you may suddenly feel like you should  avoid eye contact... even though no one is really there… which is probably why this video  for practicing eye contact has almost 2 million views and is actually kind of tough (laughing).  And to me, this is one of the most viscerally human responses someone can have to media. But  my friends, I think you all know that 4th wall breaks can get even more primal than this… so to  wrap this up, let's talk about the crem de la crem of 4th wall breaks in video games, the deepest  layer, when the characters know a little too much.

[00:11:49]So back in 79, Arthur Beaman and his colleagues  ran a study on halloween where they’d observe kids (in the most non creepy way possible) to  see if they would follow written instructions to only take one piece of candy from bowls  at random houses in a given area. At houses where a mirror was set up right by the bowl such  that the kids could see their own reflection, trick-or-treaters were much more likely to  follow the instructions and only take one candy. The bowls with instructions but no mirror  had far more candy taken on average. And this has been replicated in adults as well, using not just  mirrors but also monitors displaying the subjects image. Studies have found evidence that seeing  your own reflection or even yourself on camera can affect your likelihood to follow rules, choose  to not litter, and even facilitate healthy dietary decisions. These studies have been so influential  in fact, that you’ve probably seen businesses put up a monitor to show you walking into the store  in plain sight at the entrance, or even one of these mirror monitors at the Target self checkout  to discourage shoplifting. And it makes sense, when we see our reflection, it’s like we're  reminded of what we look like to the outside world and that everything we do is seen. It’s  sort of the same sensation as the audience effect, except now that Audience includes us and we’re  hyper aware of our every move. So when Psycho Mantis reads your memory card and sees  that you’ve been playing Castlevania, your reaction is probably something like “Holy  shit why does he know that, does he know who I am? I don't like this, I don't like this… wait can  he see my browser history?.” You see games have the unique opportunity to break the 4th wall and  then make a hugeeee leap to identifying something super specific about you, which makes you acutely  aware that you, yes you, sitting on the couch are a part of this and that your actions are  not anonymous. When Monika reads your Steam account and calls you by your actual name,  it’s not just encroaching on your anonymity, it’s kicking it’s door in. It’s putting your  hamster ball through a woodchipper. We go from a comfortable bystander simply pressing buttons  to a participant in the action, responsible for everything that’s been happening to these  characters... and, they know that… they’ve been your guinea pigs the whole time and you’re  just now being made startlingly aware of it.

[00:14:10]And this makes for some beautifully twisted  moments where all at once, you don’t feel like your actions are influencing some random  characters in some game, you’re affecting a whole other reality that is keenly aware of you and  the real world. I won’t spoil too much because I haven’t actually played this yet, but in the  original version of OneShot, you must complete the game in one shot otherwise the world you leave  behind when you close the window will change for good. Oh and the main characters call you by name  which kinda cuts deep if you mess up. Spec Ops: The Line doesn’t actually identify you in any way,  but does subtly change the loading screen menus after you incinerate the wrong people, asking  you haunting questions like do you feel like a hero yet or why you should care about killing  since this isn’t real. Undertale hits you with a pretty similar dose of guilt by again addressing  you directly and making it starkly clear that your actions matter to this reality. I feel like  if Undertale did something like Metal Gear Solid or Doki Doki and specifically identified you, it  would be the magnum opus of a 4th wall breaking guilt trip. Like can you imagine if Flowey  called you by name or if mid fight sans read your PC or your console memory and said something  like “why don’t you just go play overwatch so you can let your teammates down instead of  us” (do edit). If a game could somehow get your image on screen when shaming  you for being a horrible person, I think it would really have that target  checkout line effect of making you hyper aware of yourself and add to the shame of  whatever you just did in the game (I never thought I’d be recommending we look to target’s  checkout line for game design inspiration) Moments like these flip the script from an  anonymous person on the couch just playing a game for a good time to a very real specific  person influencing what now feels like a very real specific world. And to me this harkens back to  that moment where all at once the masked audience went from jeering laughter to stunned horror  that their incognito decisions had shockingly real consequences. The 4th wall isn’t just about  keeping a story separate from the real world, it’s also about protecting us from any form  of social burden or liability, especially in games. And when it’s broken, we may feel more than  just charmed, we may feel more than just spooked, we may very well feel exposed. oh hey there  what are you still doing here videos over oh well you must want to post credit scene okay I  got you well joke's on you my friend we haven't even got to the credits yet and I'm creatively  drained so you're not getting one oh why am i created rained you've asked well to be honest  I I kind of blew my load on Animal Crossing I mean the video did really well thank you for  that but kind of out of juice I'm kind of like that that empty capri-sun that you inflate and  then put on the sidewalk and stomp so it pops really loud the end let's be honest you know  the video you just watched it was mediocre at best with my best work so I'm gonna take a few  days I'm gonna recharge my batteries a little bit I'm enjoying myself I'm gonna play a little  bit of this you know I'm sure some of you guys are doing the same so anyways no push credits  scene and in fact I talked about instead of a post-credits scene I'll just give you this  video I found of a man playing with the bear in the river how's that sound yeah you like  that okay we're gonna with that cue the bear