The Psychology Of Slow Horses: Why It Actually Works

Filmed at the Slow Horses locations around the Barbican and Regent's Park.

Every spy show we've ever loved has the clever people in the nice suits winning. Slow Horses has them losing, to a bunch of failures in a damp office run by a man who smells of chip fat. And we can't get enough of it.

I live round the corner from Slough House (the Barbican, London), so with series 6 out this week I went and stood outside it to ask why the show works so well. My answer isn't in the writing or in Gary Oldman, though both are brilliant. It's in us. There are four biases we all carry, me included, that decide who we believe before they've opened their mouth. Slow Horses takes those biases and turns them inside out. That's the bit our brains can't get enough of, and it's also the bit that tells you something about how real life runs.

The four biases, with the research behind them:
Status bias: Kraus & Keltner (2009), Psychological Science
The halo effect: Thorndike (1920), Journal of Applied Psychology
Authority bias: Milgram (1963), Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology
Accent bias: Lev-Ari & Keysar (2010), Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Filmed at the Slow Horses locations around the Barbican and Regent's Park.

I’m Barry Ferns – a comedian whose personal journey through failure, homelessness, and rebuilding led me to explore the socio and behavioural economics of inequality.

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