From groupthink to splitting, psychology experts reveal the manipulation techniques being used in The Celebrity Traitors

But The Celebrity Traitors is more than just a fun reality TV show. Beneath the drama, it’s a game of strategy, deception and psychological warfare. Contestants must maintain a poker face around the clock, knowing that something as seemingly innocuous as reapplying their lipstick could land them in the firing line at the next round table. Whether they realise it or not, they’re putting tried-and-tested psychological principles into practice.

To get to the bottom of the mind games, Stylist spoke to psychology experts about the tactics they’re spotting on screen and what our favourite celebrities’ behaviour reveals about the psychology of deception. 

One of the biggest differences between The Traitors and The Celebrity Traitors isn’t the price of the contestants’ coats; it’s that many of them already know one another. From Julie Hesmondhalgh immediately bonding with Industry star Myha’la in the church to comedians Joanne McNally, Joe Lycett and James Acaster drawing on years of shared professional experience, the contestants aren’t starting from scratch. And who could forget Bash and Bella’s particularly wholesome friendship?

These existing relationships offer an advantage: contestants have a baseline against which to judge one another’s behaviour. But they can also cloud their judgment. We’re more likely to trust people we already know or make assumptions about their character based on their public persona. A familiar face might feel reassuring, but that doesn’t necessarily make them more trustworthy.

“The presence of several comedians, including Rob Beckett, Romesh Ranganathan and James Acaster, creates an interesting dynamic,” says Mark Vahrmeyer, psychotherapist and founder of Brighton & Hove Psychotherapy.

This can be explained by social identity theory, which explores how our sense of belonging to particular groups shapes the way we see ourselves and others.

“We naturally identify with people we perceive as belonging to the same group as us,” Vahrmeyer says. “That sense of familiarity and belonging can translate into trust. However, familiarity and trustworthiness are not the same thing.”

In other words, we might feel more comfortable with someone because they share our profession, background or sense of humour, rather than because they’ve actually demonstrated that they’re reliable.

“James Acaster being a traitor illustrates the potential danger of this,” Vahrmeyer says. “His professional identity as a comedian may make him feel familiar to the other comedians, but it tells them absolutely nothing about whether he is a faithful.”

We’re all susceptible to the halo effect, a cognitive bias that leads us to let one positive trait shape our overall impression of someone. In The Celebrity Traitors, being funny, charming or charismatic can make a contestant seem more trustworthy, even when those qualities have little to do with whether they’re telling the truth. A comedian might have the whole room laughing, but that doesn’t mean they’re not lying through their teeth.

“The halo effect describes our tendency to allow one positive characteristic of somebody to influence our judgment of them more generally,” says Vahrmeyer. “If somebody is warm, funny, attractive or charismatic, we may unconsciously assume that they are also honest and trustworthy, despite there being no necessary relationship between these qualities.”

Celebrity status makes this bias particularly relevant. Unlike in the civilian series, contestants often arrive with established public personas, meaning our impressions of them may already be shaped by their performances, interviews and time in the spotlight.

Credit: BBC/Studio Lambert/Euan Cherry

On The Celebrity Traitors, fame might be the one thing everyone has in common, but not all celebrities are created equal. Hannah Fry might be an impressive intellectual force, but Bella Ramsey has starred opposite Pedro Pascal in The Last Of Us. The comedians might share years of professional history, while Maya Jama arrives with the kind of household-name recognition that comes from fronting Love Island. These differences in status can shape who gets listened to, who gets suspected and, ultimately, who survives.

Fame can be both a shield and a target. Amol Rajan was the first to leave the game, raising the question of whether his reputation for intelligence made him a threat, or whether his profile made him a less obvious choice for the traitors to kill. We saw a similar dynamic in the first series, when the prospect of murdering Stephen Fry appeared to carry its own reputational risk.

At the round table, however, the logic can work in reverse. If the faithfuls assume that the producers would reserve the traitor role for a big name, a celebrity’s profile can become evidence against them. Richard E Grant’s banishment illustrates this possibility: the idea that production might have cast him as a traitor became part of the suspicion surrounding him.

And celebrity status doesn’t have to keep someone safe to give them power. It can also determine whose suspicions carry weight. Bella, Miranda Hart and James Blunt, for example, could command attention within the group for different reasons, whether through their public profiles, personalities or relationships with fellow contestants.

Perhaps the sweet spot is being famous enough to influence the room, but not so famous that your name becomes a liability. In The Celebrity Traitors, the biggest star isn’t necessarily the one with the best chance of making it to the final. 

Being seen as trustworthy can be an advantage on The Celebrity Traitors… until it isn’t. Julie Hesmondhalgh was voted the group’s most trustworthy contestant, but by episode four, James Blunt was suggesting that her very trustworthiness was cause for suspicion. When even your best qualities can be used against you, how do you defend yourself?

This is confirmation bias at work: our tendency to favour information that supports an existing belief while overlooking evidence that contradicts it.

“The danger is that a theory becomes impossible to disprove,” says Natalie Buchwald, founder and founding clinical chair at Manhattan Mental Health Counseling. “Warmth becomes calculated charm; distress becomes performance; a strong defence sounds rehearsed; a hesitant one seems evasive.”

In other words, once the group decides someone is a traitor, almost anything they do can be interpreted as proof. The problem is no longer whether the evidence supports the theory, but how to make the evidence fit it.

Having English class flashbacks? Don’t worry. The name might come from Shakespeare, but the psychology is straightforward: looking nervous doesn’t mean you’re lying.

“In psychology, we call this the Othello error: we see someone who looks anxious and assume they’re lying, when honest people under suspicion often look more anxious than liars do,” says Dr Saz Guscott, HCPC-registered practitioner psychologist, co-founder and chief clinical officer at Lore.

The Celebrity Traitors offers plenty of examples. When Myha’la was banished, a glance between her and Richard E Grant following his banishment was interpreted as evidence of collusion. But what if she was simply nervous? Similarly, when Julie Hesmondhalgh became visibly upset following Bella Ramsey’s murder, her emotional reaction appeared to fuel suspicion, ultimately contributing to her banishment despite being a faithful.

“One of the cruellest things about The Traitors is that a completely genuine emotional reaction can end up being used against you,” says Randle. “We mistake someone’s anxiety about being accused of something for evidence that they’re actually guilty.”

The same misreading happens outside the castle, too. In the workplace, someone who becomes defensive or emotional when questioned by their manager might not be hiding anything; they could simply feel embarrassed, intimidated or unfairly accused. When we treat discomfort as evidence of dishonesty, we risk mistaking a natural human reaction for a confession. 

Another example of how easily we can misread someone under pressure comes in the form of Julie Hesmondhalgh’s banishment. After becoming emotional following Bella Ramsey’s murder, she attracted suspicion. Later, as she defended herself at the round table, she struggled with a dry mouth. She was eventually banished, only for it to be revealed that she was a faithful.

Buchwald points to the fundamental attribution error as one way to understand this: our tendency to overemphasise what someone’s behaviour supposedly reveals about their character, while overlooking the circumstances they’re responding to.

Being publicly accused, scrutinised by people you’ve grown close to and given limited time to defend yourself is hardly a recipe for composure. Yet, as Buchwald says, observers may think “she is struggling because she is hiding something”, rather than recognising that being wrongly accused is upsetting.

The trap is expecting innocence to look a particular way. If we believe a convincing faithful should remain calm and articulate, someone who is genuinely distressed may struggle to meet those expectations. In the process, the very pressure of being suspected can make an innocent person look guilty.

Hesmondhalgh’s banishment raises another question: did the group reach its verdict by weighing the evidence, or did consensus itself become a form of proof?

“Julie’s banishment is groupthink in its purest form,” says Dr Guscott. “Psychologist Irving Janis, who developed the concept of groupthink, identified directive leadership as one factor that can encourage it. A group doesn’t need a formally appointed leader, either; authority can emerge organically. By taking charge of practical tasks during missions, James Blunt may have built up a degree of influence that extended beyond the challenges themselves.”

But groupthink is about more than a majority reaching the same conclusion.

“Groupthink occurs when the desire for agreement interferes with proper scrutiny,” says Buchwald. “It can involve pressure on dissenters and people withholding doubts to preserve consensus. A majority vote alone does not establish it.”

The divisions between contestants complicate the picture. Hannah Fry and Hesmondhalgh disagreed, while Miranda Hart continued to challenge Fry’s account of the shield. The important question, then, is not simply who sided with whom, but whether competing explanations were given a fair hearing. Could contestants voice doubts without making themselves targets? Were alternative theories properly explored or dismissed because they threatened the group’s emerging consensus?

Credit: BBC/Studio Lambert/Euan Cherry

Richard E Grant’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it stint as a traitor gave us plenty of memes, but there’s a psychological lesson beneath the comedy. What happens when the excitement of playing a role gets in the way of actually playing the game?

“Grant’s spectacularly short-lived traitor career was a brilliant example of how our eagerness to impress can sometimes be our biggest downfall,” says Seb Randle, coach in residence at Exchange. “His excitement at the prospect of becoming a traitor appeared to get the better of him, and he was swiftly banished.”

Randle connects this to impression management: the way we try to influence how other people perceive us. “We can become so concerned with how others perceive us that we lose sight of how we’re actually behaving,” he explains.

The lesson? Confidence isn’t about being the loudest person in the room. Sometimes, it means holding back, observing and resisting the urge to perform. In a game built on deception, getting carried away with your own role can be a dead giveaway. If only Grant had read the room before unleashing his inner traitor.

We love putting people into boxes. But real people are rarely so straightforward, and The Celebrity Traitors plays on our instinct to see them that way.

“From a psychoanalytic perspective, one of the most interesting features of the programme is how it encourages a process known as splitting,” says Vahrmeyer.

“Splitting is a psychological defence through which we divide people into good or bad, trustworthy or dangerous, rather than being able to tolerate the reality that people are complex and often contradictory.”

The format makes this particularly easy. Contestants are either faithfuls or traitors, and everyone is under pressure to work out which category their fellow players belong to. But a role in the game is not a reliable reflection of someone’s character outside it.

As we saw earlier while discussing ‘confirmation bias’, Hesmondhalgh illustrates just how quickly perceptions can change: she went from ‘most trustworthy’ on day one, but by episode four, she was banished as a suspected traitor. Her role in the game hadn’t changed – she was a faithful all along – but the way the group interpreted her behaviour had.