personality

Adam Curtis' multi-part documentary on how Freud's ideas and Edward Bernays' public relations shaped consumer culture and political control. It argues that business and government learned to manufacture desires.

Alain de Botton's 2004 documentary based on his book Status Anxiety, running over two hours. It asks why people in rich societies are still unhappy, and examines how worries about success, snobbery and meritocracy drive that anxiety.

The first part of Adam Curtis' documentary series on Sigmund Freud and his nephew Edward Bernays, who invented public relations. It shows how Bernays used Freud's ideas to link mass-produced goods to unconscious desires and create modern consumer persuasion.

An episode of the Norwegian documentary series Brainwash, in which a comedian interviews academics from different sides about gender differences and gender equality. It looks at why more equal societies can still show unequal career choices.

An episode of Gwynne Dyer's 1983 documentary series War, about how military basic training turns recruits into soldiers. It covers the psychological side of conditioning.

Derren Brown's TV special in which he convinces a person he has a system for predicting horse race winners, demonstrating how survivorship bias and selective outcomes can fake predictive powers.

Vsauce's Michael Stevens stages a realistic version of the trolley problem with unsuspecting subjects who believe they must decide a life-or-death outcome. The Mind Field episode compares what people say they would do with what they actually do.

First episode of the Norwegian documentary series Hjernevask, in which Harald Eia interviews researchers on the nature versus nurture debate. It focuses on the gender equality paradox and gender differences in career choice.

A 1947 US military film that deconstructs how the Nazi regime used divisive propaganda and prejudice to split and control a population. It teaches viewers to recognise demagoguery tactics.

A compilation of police interrogations of innocent suspects who behave in very different ways yet are treated as guilty. It illustrates how interrogation tactics and detectives' assumptions can distort the truth.

Chapter 11 of the documentary The Corporation, on how marketing targets children, including the Nag Factor study that taught kids to nag their parents more effectively.