"Psychology of sanction"

[lionking]

Two of my favourite TV shows are the BBC's "Spooks" and "Wire in the Blood", both gritty and credible dramas. Anyway I was reading the latest "Wire" book, "Beneath the Bleeding" by Val McDermid, and the hero, psychological profiler Tony Hill spoke about the Psychology of Sanction. He claimed that MI5 watch "Spooks" and make operational decisions based on scenarios in the show. Quote from the book "When they're watching a show like Spooks, even sophisticated viewers suspend enough disbelief for the drama to work. And once that disbelief has been suspended, even a little, the viewer is conditioned to believe that the real world is just like that. So it gives permission to those mad bastards at Five to push just that little bit further at the edges of the envelope".

Now this does make some sense to me, but I have been spending too much time lurking in the Conspiracy sub-forum :). But is this a credible premise by Dr Hill?

[Jeff Corey]

Not having seen those on the telly (next to the penguin), I have to say that I find it improbable, based on woos's responses to "The X Files" and all. What I get is reasonably smart people who saw the thing about the Mayans predicted the world was going to end in 2012 on the HISTORY CHANNEL! I went all Lewis Black on that.
" The freakin' Mayans are going to tell us about THE END OF THE WORLD? People who had no grasp of science or EVEN DENTAL HYGIENE!
Give me a freakin break, these people predicted the end of the world, but not the destruction of their whole civilization by the Europeans?"

[Francesca R]

Are you talking about psychosomatics? Or something else?