The psychology behind The Traitors: Why trust, lying and group behaviour make us lose our minds
- Schoen Clinic UK
- 4 hours ago
- 8 min read
The Traitors is back, and once again it’s taking over group chats, office conversations, and our collective urge to shout “How can you not see it?!” at the television.
On the surface, the BBC hit looks like a simple game. A group of strangers live together in a castle, complete missions to build a prize pot, and vote each day to banish someone they suspect is secretly working against them. But psychologically, The Traitors is something else entirely: a pressure cooker that turns everyday social instincts into drama, placing trust, uncertainty, fear and performance under a microscope.
And what makes the show so addictive is the uncomfortable truth at its core: most of us believe we’re good at spotting lies. In reality, humans are not particularly reliable lie detectors. Especially when we’re stressed, emotionally invested, or surrounded by other people’s opinions.
The psychology behind The Traitors starts with uncertainty
The format is deceptively simple. A small number of contestants are secretly chosen as Traitors, while everyone else becomes a Faithful. Each night, the Traitors “murder” someone; each day, the group debates and votes to banish the person they believe is lying. The Faithfuls win if they eliminate all Traitors. The Traitors win if even one makes it to the end undetected.
What the show does brilliantly is create a social environment where certainty is almost impossible. Players are removed from normal routines, cut off from everyday support systems, and forced to build relationships at speed while simultaneously questioning whether those relationships are real. Under those conditions, even small changes in behaviour can feel meaningful - and suspicion can start to feel like common sense.
Why we’re so bad at spotting lies
One of the strongest and most consistent findings in psychological research is that people are surprisingly poor at detecting deception. In a large meta-analysis of deception research, Bond and DePaulo found that average lie detection accuracy sits only slightly above chance, even across hundreds of studies — meaning that, in many cases, we’re barely better than guessing. (Bond & DePaulo, 2006) (PubMed)
This matters because The Traitors is built around the assumption that the Faithfuls can “read” other people well enough to expose deception. But without concrete evidence, people often rely on social cues that feel meaningful, like tone of voice, eye contact, confidence, hesitation and emotional expression, even though those cues are not consistently reliable indicators of lying. Research suggests we tend to believe there are obvious signs of deception, but the reality is much more complex. (Sánchez, 2020) (Psicothema PDF)
In other words, The Traitors doesn’t just show us who can lie convincingly, it shows us how easily humans can misinterpret normal behaviour as suspicious when we’re searching for certainty.
Stress changes how people behave — and how we interpret them
Life inside the castle is designed to be psychologically intense. There’s isolation, sleep disruption, constant social evaluation, and the ongoing fear of being 'murdered' or banished. In those conditions, stress responses become more visible.
The problem is that stress can look like guilt. Someone who is anxious may hesitate, become tense, struggle to find words, avoid eye contact, or seem unusually quiet. But those behaviours can be signs of pressure rather than deception. In real life, this is one reason why “gut instinct” can be misleading: we often mistake anxiety for dishonesty, especially when the situation is emotionally charged.
It’s a dynamic that plays out repeatedly in the show. Contestants who appear “off” — too quiet, too intense, too emotional, too controlled — can become targets, even when there’s little evidence to justify it. The more uncertain the environment becomes, the more the group tends to rely on behaviour as “proof”, even when behaviour can have many explanations.
First impressions are powerful — and hard to undo
From the moment contestants meet, first impressions form rapidly. And once the group begins to label someone as suspicious, that narrative can become extremely difficult to shift.
This is where confirmation bias becomes a major psychological force. Once we believe something is true, we naturally start to notice information that supports it and discount information that challenges it. The person who is “quiet” becomes “secretive”. The person who is “confident” becomes “controlling”. The person who is “emotional” becomes “defensive”.
Even neutral behaviour gets pulled into the story. A pause becomes a “tell”. A laugh becomes “performative”. A calm response becomes “too calm”. The show repeatedly demonstrates how easily perception becomes reality when evidence is scarce.
The Round Table isn’t about truth — it’s about influence
The Round Table is one of the most psychologically revealing parts of The Traitors. It looks like a logical debate, but it’s often closer to a social negotiation, where people are balancing suspicion with belonging.
Classic social psychology research shows that individuals can be influenced by group opinion even when they privately disagree, especially when standing apart feels risky. Asch’s conformity studies remain some of the most well-known demonstrations of this effect, showing that people will sometimes align with a group consensus even when the group is clearly wrong. (Asch conformity research summary)
More recent experimental research continues to support the same basic idea: group consensus can shape behaviour even when people know, internally, that something doesn’t feel right. (Mallinson et al., 2018) (PMC full text)
This helps explain why The Traitors often becomes less about evidence and more about confidence. A persuasive accusation can spread quickly. A dominant theory can become “obvious” within minutes.
And once a group begins to move as one, it becomes psychologically difficult to challenge the narrative without putting yourself at risk.
What it takes to be a convincing Traitor
Playing a Traitor isn’t simply about lying - it’s about sustained performance. Traitors have to manage impressions constantly: what they say, how they react, when they speak, when they stay quiet, who they align with, and how consistent they appear over time.
This is psychologically demanding because deception increases cognitive load. Maintaining a false story requires mental effort: remembering details, tracking what’s been said to whom, anticipating questions, and staying emotionally consistent under scrutiny. Research in deception psychology highlights how lying can place extra strain on cognitive resources, particularly when someone is under pressure or needs to sustain deception over time. (Blandón-Gitlin et al., 2015) (PMC full text)
That strain can show up in ways that look suspicious - pauses, over-explaining, reduced emotional flexibility, irritability, fatigue. Ironically, the effort to appear “normal” can sometimes make someone look less natural.
At the same time, the most successful Traitors often understand a key psychological truth: trust is frequently built on warmth and familiarity, not logic. In uncertain environments, people are more likely to trust someone who feels emotionally safe than someone who appears dominant or unpredictable.
That’s why the most “obvious” Traitors aren’t always the ones who survive.
Why Faithfuls become paranoid (and why it makes sense)
Being a Faithful doesn’t mean being safe. Faithfuls can still be 'murdered' by Traitors, banished by the group, or socially isolated if their opinions don’t align with the majority. That creates a constant background threat, and when people feel threatened, they become hyper-alert to social cues.
In that state, the brain becomes more likely to interpret ambiguity as danger. Neutral behaviour starts to feel meaningful. Doubt becomes intolerable. Certainty becomes comforting - even when it’s wrong.
This is why Faithfuls can end up trapped in a no-win social situation. If they speak too much, they may look controlling. If they stay quiet, they may look evasive. If they become emotional, it’s seen as defensiveness. If they stay calm, it’s seen as coldness. Under pressure, people become judged not just on what they do, but on what others assume their behaviour means.
The real reason The Traitors feels so familiar
Even though the show is “just a game”, the emotional experience mirrors everyday life more than we often admit.
Many people recognise the same dynamics in workplaces, families, friendships and relationships.
We all manage impressions to some degree. We all make judgements with incomplete information. We all want belonging and fear rejection. And under pressure, we’re all capable of becoming more rigid, more reactive, and more convinced than the evidence deserves.
This is why The Traitors is so compelling. It exaggerates human psychology, but it doesn’t invent it. It turns everyday social instincts — trust, suspicion, conformity, performance — into something dramatic enough to watch, while still feeling uncomfortably real.
What the show can teach us about mental health
Watching The Traitors through a mental health lens isn’t about diagnosing contestants or labelling behaviour. It’s about noticing what happens to people when they are isolated, emotionally flooded, sleep-deprived, and constantly evaluated.
Stress doesn’t just affect mood — it affects judgement, attention, memory and emotional regulation. Over time, chronic stress can contribute to overwhelm, indecision, irritability and burnout. And for many people, the exhausting “performance” element of the show reflects something familiar: the pressure to seem okay, avoid conflict, not be judged, and not take up too much space.
The show also highlights a subtler truth: deception isn’t always malicious. In real life, people may hide the truth because they fear rejection, conflict, shame or misunderstanding. But sustained avoidance of honesty can also create distance and loneliness, because it’s difficult to feel close to someone when you’re constantly editing your reality.
When support can help
If The Traitors resonates because you recognise similar patterns in your own life — persistent anxiety, social stress, relationship conflict, burnout, or the feeling of constantly being “on” — support can make a real difference.
Mental health professionals can help people understand their emotional responses, manage stress more effectively, and navigate difficult relationship dynamics with greater clarity and confidence.
At Schoen Clinic Chelsea, we support children, teens and adults with a wide range of mental health concerns through evidence-based psychological therapy and psychiatric care. If you’re struggling, you don’t have to manage it alone.
More than a game
When you look at the psychology behind The Traitors, it becomes clear that the show isn’t really about “good” or “bad” people — it’s about what stress, uncertainty and group dynamics do to human judgement. The Traitors works because it turns everyday psychology into a spectacle. But the patterns it highlights are real human responses shaped by cognitive bias, social influence, and stress.
The show reminds us that when the stakes feel high and the truth feels unclear, people don’t become irrational. They become human.
And in the real world, unlike in the castle, you don’t have to carry that pressure without support.
Sources & further reading (linked)
Bond, C. F., & DePaulo, B. M. (2006). Accuracy of Deception Judgments. Psychological Bulletin.(PubMed)
Sánchez, C. (2020). Do people detect deception the way they think? Psicothema.(Full PDF)
Blandón-Gitlin, I., Fenn, E., Masip, J., & Yoo, A. H. (2015). Cognitive-load approaches to detect deception: Searching for cognitive mechanisms.(PMC full text)
Asch conformity research overview (classic social influence findings).(SimplyPsychology summary)
Mallinson, D. J., Hatemi, P. K., & others (2018). Information, social conformity, and political behaviour(experimental evidence of conformity effects).(PMC full text)
The Traitors – a cultural, and psychological, phenomenon (https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/traitors-cultural-and-psychological-phenomenon)
Podcast explores the Psychology of The Traitors (https://www.chester.ac.uk/about/news/articles/podcast-explores-the-psychology-of-the-traitors/)
Written by the Schoen Clinic UK Editorial Team, drawing on expertise from our clinicians to provide accurate and up-to-date mental health information.