Hoods up, torches lit, knives sharpened: viewers across the UK are ready for another delicious finale of The Traitors this evening, the TV game show where contestants try to uncloak the ruthless (not strictly real) murderers who walk among them.

For psychologists – professional and armchair alike – The Traitors is a goldmine of devious human behaviour to pick apart and analyse. And it isn’t just psychology. Game theory, human evolution and criminology are just some of the scientific fields that offer clues about the show’s Machiavellian dynamics.

We surveyed experts in treachery (academically speaking
) to find out what it truly takes to win The Traitors. Warning: spoilers ahead if you aren’t up to date with the show.

Watch out for conformity bias

“Having a strong characteristic seems to be something that other people notice as being influential and potentially threatening,” says forensic psychologist , who hosts a about The Traitors with colleagues from the University of Chester, UK. She singles out contestants like Yin (too intelligent), Elen (too emotional) and Armani (too confident).

Their downfalls are likely to have been linked to , the trait in humans that makes most of us conform to social norms. Individuals who don’t conform may be disliked or distrusted.

This isn’t the place for altruism

, an evolutionary anthropologist at University College London, says players should keep in mind that “in evolutionary literature, altruism doesn’t really exist”.

“Remember, it’s not a cooperation game,” she says. “It’s a game of deception, a survival game. You need to be there at the end to win. That’s a mistake some players make because they’re too trusting of the people they’re close to.”

Emmott says that we evolved to help ourselves ahead of others, so any altruistic behaviour seen on the show has a selfish benefit behind it. And such apparent altruism isn’t a bad tactic, whether you’re a faithful or a traitor.

“In the game context, being cooperative serves as a signal of trustworthiness. A good example might be overtly not going for the shield [which protects you from the next murder] during the show’s tasks.”

But here’s where Machiavellian intelligence comes in – because everyone knows the rules of the game, a good player won’t take altruistic behaviour at face value. “In this game, it’s not an honest signal because there could be ulterior motives to you cooperating,” says Emmott.

So watch out for the nice guys. An between players in Diplomacy, a game that shares similarities with The Traitors, found that players who were excessively polite were more likely to betray others.

Beware of in-group bias

“We know from social psychology that when people form social groups, they have what’s called an , and this can be really accelerated in The Traitors,” says Wright. “[Contestants] display preferential behaviour to people who are in that group with them.” This is why it all went wrong for Minah after recruiting Charlotte as a traitor.

For Minah, who always recruited female traitors, her group was the so-called sisterhood she created. “She very much identified it as a sisterhood, she used the word a lot,” says Wright. “The problem was, Charlotte already had a strong group identity with the faithfuls. So when she was recruited, kind of against her will, she didn’t have any allegiance to the new group.”

And what happened? Charlotte double-crossed Minah immediately, and Minah was voted out on the next night.

Wright says the same in-group bias can lead to a herd mentality when players are voting, and an illogical trust in people within the game.

The hidden rules that determine which friendships matter to us

Evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar has found that our friendships are governed by secret rules, based on everything from your sex to your sleep schedule. Our unique social fingerprints help determine who we are drawn to, which friendships last and why some friends are ultimately replaceable

What makes a good liar?

Nervous or incoherent answers to questions are generally regarded with suspicion, even if someone is telling the truth. That’s because those behaviours are tied to stereotypes about what people think liars do. A better giveaway is people who always say the same thing, says , a psychologist and criminologist at the University of Manchester, UK.

“One thing to look out for is someone who always tells the same story in exactly the same way and doesn’t really elaborate when they retell it,” she says. A story might sound plausible, but when we repeat it we usually add details as we remember them. “People sometimes mistake consistency for honesty. But that’s not how recall works in genuine memories.”

Think like a scientist

“A mark of a good detective is a high tolerance of ambiguity. They won’t come to a conclusion quickly,” says Barrett. It’s similar to thinking like a scientist: “You might have a plausible hypothesis about something. Then you’ll ask yourself about the assumptions you’re making and the gaps in your understanding. You have to actively look for evidence that disconfirms the hypothesis you’re generating.”

Faithfuls aren’t very good at that on The Traitors, but another tactic they could use is to encourage a suspected traitor to talk more than they’d like to. It’s about giving them enough rope to hang themselves with, says Barrett.

“If you’re a faithful, a good strategy to detect a traitor is to subtly encourage them to talk,” she says. “For instance, if you were a police officer and you wanted to know if someone had given you a false address, one question you might ask is, ‘Oh, how do you get there, what’s your nearest station?'”

Take control of your brain’s master switch to optimise how you think

The discovery that a small blue blob of neurons, the locus coeruleus, controls your mode of thinking suggests ways to increase learning, creativity, focus and alertness

If in doubt, try game theory?

An uninformed majority will always lose to a fully informed minority. It was on this basis that Russian psychologist Dimitry Davidoff created Mafia – the parlour game on which The Traitors is based – in the 1980s. Since then, Mafia has been used as the basis of many game theory experiments and models.

The good news is that Davidoff wasn’t quite right. He believed that the faithfuls’ probability of outing the bad guys is no better than chance. But many of the that model the game find that the chances of victory are roughly equal – and even tipped in favour of the faithful in live games, possibly because of the weight of the lies that traitors have to tell.

In other words, forget cold mathematics. If you really want to win The Traitors, you simply have to be more devious than everyone else.

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On the glittering Red Sea coast, there’s a luxury tourist destination that has it all: white sands, impeccable accommodation, world-class yachting and – perhaps surprisingly – a cutting-edge laboratory that’s protecting coral reefs from climate change.

AMAALA is designed to be a new kind of sustainable destination. It’s not finished yet (the first guests will arrive in 2025) but the destination is one of the first by Red Sea Global (RSG), a Saudi Arabian developer whose ambition is to redefine what regenerative tourism can do.

Run with 100% renewable energy, AMAALA is one of two carbon neutral luxury destinations that RSG operates (the other, called The Red Sea, is also in Saudi Arabia). They’re test beds for sustainable development and hubs for new technology and ecological research.

“Corals cover less than 1% of the Earth’s surface but sustain 25% of all marine life”

With two hotels already open and four more welcoming guests this year, RSG is building mangrove nurseries and experimenting with carbon negative concrete. But arguably its most ambitious project is to protect and regenerate corals, which are under extreme pressure from warming temperatures, in the Red Sea and beyond.

“Corals cover less than 1% of the Earth’s surface but sustain 25% of all marine life,” says John Pagano, Group CEO of RSG. “To protect and enhance the coral reefs under our guardianship we are using advanced technologies, such as remote operated vehicles and machine learning, to monitor coral cover. These innovations can produce 3-D images and automatically analyse these images, enabling our scientists to quickly identify and respond to threats like coral bleaching and invasive species.”

RSG researchers have also created offshore coral nurseries to help sustain and grow rescued corals, while a coral nursery on dry land could supercharge the speed at which new coral can be nurtured.

The work forms RSG’s ‘coral commitment’, announced at COP28 in Dubai last year. There, it signed a letter of intent with the Coral Research & Development Accelerator Platform (CORDAP), a body set up by the G20 to fast-track research into new solutions to save the world’s coral from our rapidly changing climate.

The company’s scientists have already enjoyed some success. They are monitoring around 300 reef sites in the Red Sea, deploying advanced technology like robotic submersibles to photograph the corals. The 3D images they produce are then stitched into vast digital panoramas of the reef sites.

“We have the processing capability to create 3D models and have our AI analyse these models,” says Dr Jess Bouwmeester, associate director of marine enhancement at RSG. “It means we have real quantitative data from every image collection that we’re doing. We’re working in patches of 5x20m and collecting these mini digital twins from over 100 reefs in the area. The data we get from the AI analysis then allows us to monitor our coral reefs over time with high resolution.”

The technology allows Bouwmeester and her colleagues to quickly identify signs that the coral is struggling to adapt to warmer temperatures, after which the health of the affected corals might need to be closely monitored and the reef potentially supplemented with new corals.

This is where RSG’s Coral Gardening Pilot Project comes in. Beginning in 2021, researchers established offshore floating nurseries to nurture and regrow rescued corals. The pilot achieved a 97% survival rate.

The nurseries are suspended from floating platforms, allowing researchers to provide the optimum conditions for coral to grow, while also minimising threats. “They’re sheltered from predators, they’ve got good water conditions, and they are protected from sedimentation,” says Bouwmeester. “And because we have accelerated growth, we can transfer anything that grows above the normal rate to the reef or to artificial substrates to enhance our coral cover.”

Bouwmeester can also adjust the depth of the floating nurseries, lowering them into deeper water or raising them to shallower depths, which allows her team to control temperature and light conditions for the corals.

“A good example of that came last summer when we had a temperature stress event,” she says. With global sea temperatures higher than usual due to climate change, coral bleaching was reported all over the world. Bouwmeester and her team were able to shade their corals beneath the floating platforms, decreasing added stress from full sun exposure, which reduced stress and kept them healthier – but they are also developing an onshore coral nursery and breeding programme, to have the option to boost the natural coral reefs if, in the future, the recovery from a bleaching event is low.

“We think of the land-based nurseries as a back-up system for the natural life cycle out in the lagoon,” says HH Princess Shaikha Al Saud, a marine conservationist on the team. “If there’s an issue with the reproductive cycle or a major stress event, we still have really good stock to rely on.”

The breeding programme helps scientists enhance corals and maintain genetic diversity, which can be an issue after mass bleaching events, Princess Shaikha says, but it also helps them address another issue: corals’ narrow reproductive window.

“They will spend between six and nine months developing their eggs and sperm for everything to be released over just two hours a year. That’s it,” Bouwmeester says. “That’s your only reproductive window.”

That window usually begins around 10pm in the Red Sea, making it even harder for researchers and conservationists to study. So, to make it easier, Bouwmeester intends to play a trick on mother nature.

“We’re going to have four different systems where we trick the corals with the temperature cycles and the light cycles,” she says. “If I can trick the corals to think it’s night during the daytime and day during the nighttime, I can get them to spawn at 11am, a time that works much better for me because I will be awake and have a functioning brain.”

In the future, Bouwmeester will also get different corals to think it’s spawning time at different times of the year. “So now my team and I can do four spawning events per year, not just one.”

With time, she says this could mean an exponential increase in the number of new corals grown to increase coral cover, by replacing lost colonies or boosting the coral community.

“If there was another bleaching event or a temperature stress event we would be able to release our swimming larvae to a reef and supplement what is going on in the wild,”Bouwmeester says. “We can also keep our larvae in our tanks for longer and just let them settle and grow, then plant those directly out on the reef. That usually gives us even higher survival numbers.”

Soon, RSG will also begin testing 3D-printed materials to create artificial substrates for relocating coral colonies or growing new ones. Essentially, it means creating new reefs to support marine life. And the cool thing is, everyone’s invited.

“Research and tourism can work together, for people and planet alike”

RSG’s vision is for tourism, conservation and research to co-exist and sustain each other at its destinations. The marine life institute it is building at AMAALA, Corallium, will include a number of visitor experiences alongside its laboratories and rehabilitation centres. Tourists will be encouraged to participate, play and learn.

“We believe that academic research and tourism can work together, for people and planet alike” says Pagano.

“The facility goes beyond any existing marine life attraction. It has 10 zones that provide everything from augmented reality experiences to night diving, as well as dedicated spaces for the scientific community to advance research projects.”

Bouwmeester is looking forward to welcoming visitors, too. “We want to get them involved,” she says. “As soon as people start learning about corals they tend to be a lot more protective of them. In terms of environmental awareness, getting the tourism sector involved with some of our work is extremely important.”

It’s an optimistic, pragmatic approach to conservation. Hopefully, we can keep learning from the coral, Bouwmeester says.Ìę “Corals surprise us in a lot of ways,” she says. “We know they’re some of the most sensitive organisms in the world but they do have the ability to bounce back. What we want to do is support that resilience and boost it when we can.”

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Find out more about Red Sea Global at

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The figures are impressive. With 1 per cent of the world’s population,
Britain carries out 6 per cent of its research, produces 8 per cent of all
science publications and achieves 9 per cent of the citations. We are the most
cost-effective producer of research among the G7 countries. We should take this
broader picture into account when discussing detailed policy concerns, no matter
how justified they are.

As Science Minister I am likely to argue that we are good at science, and
that we must nurture and develop it. But the key policy makers are also well
aware that science is vital to the nation’s competitiveness. The White Paper on
competitiveness, Creating the Enterprise Centre of Europe, stressed
that, “Science, engineering and technology are fundamental to competitiveness .
. . [and] are amongst the UK’s principal assets”. In his Budget speech, Kenneth
Clarke, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, drew attention to the relatively good
settlement for science, saying: “We want to ensure that the British science
research base remains the best in the world, which it certainly is at the
łŸŽÇłŸ±đČÔłÙ.”

The role of government in funding basic and strategic research is at the
heart of this. The nature of such research means that the market will not
operate effectively, since firms are understandably reluctant to support
research where the resulting benefits cannot be captured by an individual body.
Well over 90 per cent of the research funds which flow through the Higher
Education Funding Councils and the research councils support basic and strategic
research and, indeed, some 80 per cent of total government funds for research
and development back such research.

The challenge is to improve the effectiveness of delivery. The Foresight
programme is the key to prioritisation: it brings together business people,
engineers, scientists and government in networks which identify emerging or
longer-term markets and technologies.

The government objective for the next Parliament will be to use Foresight to
build on what we have already achieved. We shall concentrate on generic
priorities in basic and strategic research through the research councils, taking
account of relevance as well as intrinsic merit of science research. Since March
1995, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council has provided
ÂŁ330 million for 14 strategic research programmes to take the Foresight
findings forward. We are brigading technology policies under the Foresight
banner. This will help to increase links in Foresight priority areas between
publicly funded science, technology and users. Since March 1995, 15 such new
projects have been announced, worth up to ÂŁ110 million, for LINK
programmes fostering collaboration between academia and industry.

We shall seek to stimulate industry to increase its investment in R&D and
innovation. We are already encouraging firms to improve technology transfer and
exploitation, as well as the skills of their workforce, to meet accelerating
changes in product development. This is done in three ways: first, through the
Department of Trade and Industry’s International Technology Promoters Scheme,
which fosters collaboration between British and overseas companies; second,
through Postgraduate Training Partnerships encouraging academics to work in
industry; and third, through the portfolio of programmes offered under the
Teaching Company Scheme. Inward R&D investment also plays an important role
in stimulating research attracted to Britain by the strength of our science base
and the relative buoyancy of our economy in the European Union.

A Conservative government will continue to target key sectors through
campaigns such as the Crusade for Biotechnology and the Information Society
Initiative. And we are working on a multidisciplinary project to extend the
quality of active life (EQUAL) of our citizens. The party also recognises the
need to promote dual-use technologies to harness defence research skills in the
civil sector through the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency’s Dual Use
Technology Centres. We shall ensure participation by Britain’s researchers in
European Union programmes and influence the Fifth Framework programme due to
start in 1999, to respond to user needs in “priority” sectors.

These are key policy commitments. To underpin them, our universities need to
produce highly skilled men and women and we need to concentrate research
resources on university departments which have international recognition. In
this, we shall pay close attention to the outcome of the Dearing Review of
Higher Education. We shall work with teachers to enhance the quality of science,
mathematics and technology teaching in schools. Campaigns to improve the public
understanding of science and the Year of Engineering Success are vital. However,
it is important to reassure the public about key ethical issues through bodies
such as the Human Genetics Advisory Commission.

Businesses, universities and public research bodies have distinctive roles.
Through enlightened funding and targeted initiatives, the government can
interconnect them better—not by picking winners, but by creating the right
climate in the key areas highlighted by the Foresight exercise. This represents
a coherent strategy for investing in education, scholarship and research, and
stimulating cross-fertilisation with industry.

The government’s economic management is creating an atmosphere of long-term
economic confidence, as the OECD has recently confirmed. These conditions will
benefit the research community as well as strengthening the culture of
innovation and enterprise.