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Started reading
September 26, 2018
Their genius lies in figuring out what, precisely, it is we want, and how they can present themselves as the perfect vehicle for delivering on that desire.
The confidence game—the con—is an exercise in soft skills. Trust, sympathy, persuasion.
A confidence artist is only too happy to comply—and the well-crafted narrative is his absolute forte.
Give us a compelling story, and we open up.
Skepticism gives way to belief.
“You’re not being foolish to fall for it. If you don’t fall for it, the magician is doing something wrong.”
their root, magic tricks and confidence games share the same fundamental principle: a manipulation of our beliefs.
or even years to unfold, manipulate reality at a higher level, playing with our most basic beliefs about humanity and the world.
As long as the desire for magic, for a reality that is somehow greater than our everyday existence, remains, the confidence game will thrive.
Transition is the confidence game’s great ally, because transition breeds uncertainty.
Technology breeds crime. It always has, and always will.”
The con artist will find those things where your belief is unshakeable and will build on that foundation to subtly change the world around you. But you will be so confident in the starting point that you won’t even notice what’s happened.
The majority of the cases, affecting just over 5 million adults, involved one scheme: fake weight-loss products.
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.
The Internet was a predatory place.
Psychopathy is part of the so-called dark triad of traits. And as it turns out, the other two, narcissism and Machiavellianism, also seem to describe many of the traits we associate with the grifter.
It’s Fred lying to the candy store to avoid embarrassment—not the greatest of cons, but one driven by that kind of self-centric tendency.
In the psychology literature, “Machiavellian” has come to mean a specific set of traits that allows one to manipulate others to accomplish one’s own objectives—almost a textbook definition of the con.
Machiavellian as someone who “employs aggressive, manipulative, exploiting, and devious moves in order to achieve personal and organizational objectives.”
when people were taped while denying that they had stolen something (half were being honest, and half lying), those scoring higher on the Machiavellianism scale were believed significantly more than anyone else.
“If confidence men operate outside the law, it must be remembered that they are not much further outside than many of our pillars of society who go under names less sinister.”
When Shelby Hunt and Lawrence Chonko gave the Machiavellianism scale to one thousand professional marketers, they found that over 10 percent scored in the highest possible range—and far, far above the population average.
the truth is that real con artists aren’t simply born. They are, as is usually the case, made as well. As the popular saying among scientists goes: genes load the gun; the environment pulls the trigger.
As he was going through the Alzheimer’s scans, one brain popped out. It had all the markings of the psychopath. Hmm.
Fallon believes that the first three years of life play a crucial role in determining your psychopathic future.
Grifters are made when predisposition and opportunity meet.
But it’s true. The tone at the top really does matter.”
It wasn’t one bad apple. It was a tree that allowed such apples to flourish.
In one study, foreign students were more likely to pay a kickback than American ones, no matter the incentives.
In Russia, a plagiarist wouldn’t get a second look—and even a data falsifier might get a free pass, as long as the data was falsified in the appropriate direction.
Just over 20 percent of fraudsters say they simply want to hide bad news: their performance isn’t what it ought to be, they feel ashamed, and they truly believe that, with just a little wiggle room, they can get back on their feet and no one ever needs to know. Of course, that doesn’t usually happen.
And yet, the exact same case shows the opposite side of the story: that no con is ever as innocent as it might appear.
cooking the books,”
Once you’ve decided to get on the sled, and have eased yourself over the edge of the hill, it’s too late to break.
And once you do it once, and successfully at that, the temptation to do it again, do it more, do it differently, grows.
Some did, it’s true—one fifth admitted to having committed fraud, they said, “Just because I can,” a pure dark triad response if ever there were one.
Over 40 percent were motivated by greed—but even more, just under half, by a sense of superiority, the hallmark of narcissism.
we lie, on average, three times during a routine ten-minute conversation
Just because we want someone to feel ashamed, it doesn’t mean they do—or that they aren’t perfectly capable of hiding it in any event.
Ekman did find that one particular characteristic could prove useful: microexpressions, or incredibly fast facial movements that last, on average, between one fifteenth and one twentieth of a second and are exceedingly difficult to control consciously.
lying is more difficult, theoretically, than telling the truth.
don’t lie like the amateurs. They are craftsmen. For them, lying isn’t uncomfortable, or cognitively draining, or in any way an anomaly from their daily routine.
what you’re looking for, you may find yourself further from accuracy than you would like.
they found one consistent tell: the deceitful papers used far more words related to the nature of the work itself—how and what you measure—and to the accuracy of the results.
Those students who were specifically told that there might be some wrongdoing ended up paying more attention to possible signs of untrustworthiness than those who had no negative expectations.
People with higher verbal ability were 34 percent more likely to trust others; those with higher question comprehension 11 percent more likely. And people with higher levels of trust were 7 percent more likely to be in better health, and 6 percent more likely to be “very” happy rather than “pretty” happy or not happy at all.
It wasn’t the people who saw the world most clearly who did best; it was, rather, those most skilled at the art of seeing the world as they wanted it to be. And the world-as-we-want-it-to-be is precisely what the con artist sells.
