The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It . . . Every Time

by Maria Konnikova

Cons thrive in times of transition and fast change, when new things are happening and old ways of looking at the world no longer suffice. That’s why they flourished during the gold rush and spread with manic fury in the days of westward expansion. That’s why they thrive during revolutions, wars, and political upheavals. Transition is the confidence game’s great ally, because transition breeds uncertainty. There’s nothing a con artist likes better than exploiting the sense of unease we feel when it appears that the world as we know it is about to change. We may cling cautiously to the past, but we also find ourselves open to things that are new and not quite expected. Who’s to say this new way of doing business isn’t the wave of the future?

No matter the medium or the guise, cons, at their core, are united by the same basic principles—principles that rest on the manipulation of belief. Cons go unreported—indeed, undetected—because none of us want to admit that our basic beliefs could be wrong. It matters little if we’re dealing with a Ponzi scheme or falsified data, fake quotes or misleading information, fraudulent art or doubtful health claims, a false version of history or a less than honest version of the future. At a fundamental, psychological level, it’s all about confidence—or, rather, the taking advantage of somebody else’s.

The confidence game starts with basic human psychology. From the artist’s perspective, it’s a question of identifying the victim (the put-up): who is he, what does he want, and how can I play on that desire to achieve what I want? It requires the creation of empathy and rapport (the play): an emotional foundation must be laid before any scheme is proposed, any game set in motion. Only then does it move to logic and persuasion (the rope): the scheme (the tale), the evidence and the way it will work to your benefit (the convincer), the show of actual profits. And like a fly caught in a spider’s web, the more we struggle, the less able to extricate ourselves we become (the breakdown). By the time things begin to look dicey, we tend to be so invested, emotionally and often physically, that we do most of the persuasion ourselves. We may even choose to up our involvement ourselves, even as things turn south (the send), so that by the time we’re completely fleeced (the touch), we don’t quite know what hit us. The con artist may not even need to convince us to stay quiet (the blow-off and fix); we are more likely than not to do so ourselves. We are, after all, the best deceivers of our own minds. At each step of the game, con artists draw from a seemingly endless toolbox of ways to manipulate our belief. And as we become more committed, with every step we give them more psychological material to work with.

The mentalities of “too good to be true” and “I deserve” are, unfortunately, at odds, but we remain blind to the tension when it comes to our own actions and decisions. When we see other people talking about their unbelievable deal or crazy good fortune, we realize at once that they’ve been taken for a sucker. But when it happens to us, well, I am just lucky and deserving of a good turn.

We get, too, a unique satisfaction from thinking ourselves invulnerable. Who doesn’t enjoy the illicit glimpse into the life of the underworld—and the satisfaction of knowing that clever old you would be smarter than all that, that you can laugh at the poor sap who fell for something so obvious and still be safe in the knowledge that you are keener, savvier, more cynical and skeptical? They may fall for it. You? Never.

If we’re highly motivated, we will focus on and be persuaded by the arguments in the message itself. If we’re not motivated, we’re more likely to be influenced by external cues, like a person’s appearance, what she’s wearing, how she’s talking, and the like. Visceral cues, like the basic emotion brought forth by a powerful story, however, can override even motivation. Instead of processing a message logically, we act like the unmotivated person and take in all the wrong things. That’s the power of the play. Even if we’re trying hard not to get conned, if the play unrolls in the right way, it eventually won’t matter; the narrative sweep will take over.

From the first snake oil sale, cons that play on our anxieties about our health have been among the leading scams of the world. They have everything needed for the fear-based play built into them: a health concern, real or not, followed by the relief of knowing there’s a remedy.

As for when the events are actually happening, we tend to attribute the good aspects to our own prowess and dismiss the bad as environmental consequences—something known as the locus of control, or where we see control residing.

When we compare ourselves to others, we tend to emerge ahead for a simple reason: we focus on our own most positive traits. And, no, we aren’t just all wonderful people.

Most people are average by definition, although nobody wants to think themselves so.

our traits, our lives, our decisions—our personal attachment overshadows our objective knowledge. We systematically misevaluate evidence based on our own characteristics, and if we’re given evidence that something about us poses a threat, instead of thinking about how to change our own behavior, we call the evidence itself into question. To put this in conning terms, if I paint a picture of a perfect mark for you, and you recognize yourself in it, you are more likely to think I’m a poor researcher than yourself a good target. Nah, you’ll say. Those aren’t actually the things that get someone conned. I bet this girl didn’t do any research and is just constructing this out of thin air.

Alas, our belief in our own superiority persists in the most unfortunate, and ironic, of places: in our assessment of the extent to which we believe in our own superiority. Of course, we realize that some things are simply too good to be true, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and any number of other clichés we bandy about for just this purpose. We understand this in general. And yet. The illusion of unique invulnerability to all those biases is a tough one to break. We simply never think that, in any specific instance, it applies to us.

Cons work so widely because, in a sense, we want them to. We want to believe the tale. And we want to believe things that are too good to be true more than anything. Cons aren’t about money or about love. They are about our beliefs. We are savvy investors. We are discerning with our love interests. We have a stellar reputation. We are, fundamentally, people to whom good things happen with good reason. We live in a world full of wonder—not a world of uncertainty and negativity. We live in a world where good things happen to those who wait. The teller of the tale has us hooked.

We are terrible at predicting the future. It’s unpredictable by definition, true, but that doesn’t keep us from thinking it isn’t. When things are going well, we tend to think they will continue doing so—and, quite possibly, even improve. We tend to think, as Taylor puts it, that “the present is better than the past and that the future will be even better.”

As information from our environment comes in, we home in on the positive and tend to isolate and filter out the negative. That selective perception makes us more empathetic, happier, better able to care for others, more productive, and more creative. When we receive negative feedback, we can (usually) deal with it, because, we rationalize, it’s not really our fault. We are good at what we do; it’s just that, this time, things went a bit awry. And even if we don’t rationalize, it’s easier to take the bad when you think yourself capable. Yes, I messed up, but I’ll be able to make it work.

The more and the longer we’ve invested in something, the more likely the sunk-cost argument is to get the better of both our reason and our perception. We don’t ignore red flags. To us, they simply aren’t there. They might be right in front of us, but we literally don’t even see any signs of danger.

Once we’re in the game, it’s easiest to follow the path of least resistance. It justifies what we’ve already done and reduces the effort we need to make going forward. The deeper we get, the more difficult psychologically it becomes to extricate ourselves, or to see that we’re even in need of extrication. All of the factors are aligned against us.

Our reputation is the most important thing we have. It determines not only how we’re seen by others, but also how they will act toward us. Will they trust us? Will they want to do business with us? Do they consider us responsible, reliable, likable, effective? In medieval Europe, fama meant two things: what people said about others’ behaviors, and reputation. The fact that both ideas were represented in a single word signals a fundamental truth: our reputation, in effect, is what others say it is. Financial ruin is often the least part of the confidence game; in fact, many con artists aren’t even after money. The deepest scars come to our reputations—to how we’re seen by others and how that perception will, in turn, affect our future. That is precisely what the confidence artist is counting on, even after, despite our best efforts at self-delusion, it becomes apparent that we’ve been taken for a ride: that our reputational motivation will be strong enough to keep us quiet. In the touch, we’ve finally been taken for all we’ve had: the grifter has gotten all that he’s after, and is ready to disappear from our lives. But how to do that without getting caught, so that he can easily go on to play the same game he’s just played with some new mark? In the blow-off, the confidence artist has one main goal: now that the touch has been taken, get the mark out of the way as quickly as possible. The last thing you want is for someone to complain and thus draw attention to the whole en...

Con artists, at their best and worst, give us meaning. We fall for them because it would make our lives better if the reality they proposed were indeed true. They give us a sense of purpose, of value, of direction.

That, in the end, is the true power of belief. It gives us hope. If we are endlessly skeptical, endlessly miserly with our trust, endlessly unwilling to accept the possibilities of the world, we despair. To live a good life we must, almost by definition, be open to belief, of one form or another. And that is why the confidence game is both the oldest there is and the last one that will still be standing when all other professions have faded away.

Ultimately, what a confidence artist sells is hope. Hope that you’ll be happier, healthier, richer, loved, accepted, better looking, younger, smarter, a deeper, more fulfilled human being—hope that the you that will emerge on the...