#169： The Psychology of Scam Artists & How Not to Get Duped
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Summary
Maria Konnikova is the author of the new book The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It Every Time, and why we fall for it every time. In it, she looks at the psychology of scams and how even really smart people fall for them all the time.
Transcript
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Brad McKay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so we've probably
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all seen some sort of scam or fraud there was the Bernie Madoff thing a couple years ago
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where lots of people got duped into a Ponzi scheme the Nigerian prince that guy in Nigeria
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wants to send you lots and lots of money but in order to complete the transaction you got to wire
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over $100 first there's psychics there there there's a ton of them out there and whenever we
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see these things we probably tell ourselves man those people are just dumb like how could they
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fall for that how could they how could they not see it was a fraud like I am way too smart that
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could never happen to me well my guest today wrote a book saying well that might not be the case her
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name is Maria Konnikova she's the author of the book the confidence game why we fall for it every
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time and in it she looks at the psychology of scams and what scam artists do to get inside our brains to
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make us convince ourselves that the scam they're selling is actually a good idea and how really
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really smart people tracking doctors experts in in art fall for scams all the time how even really
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smart people can fall for scams and how sometimes they're even the easiest people to scam really
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interesting podcast with some great takeaways on how to scam proof your life so without further ado
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Maria Konnikova welcome to the show thank you so much for having me Brett so your new book is called
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the confidence game and it's all about con artists frosters scamsters whatever you want to call
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them and the psych psychological principles that underlie what makes scam artists able to do what
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they do I'm curious what set off the research into this book you did a lot of research into this I
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mean what was there like a scam artist you came across or a scam you were you scammed you're like I need
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to figure out why I'm why I'm so predisposed to being scammed what happened there so I was actually
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one finding I was watching House of Games David Mamet's first movie I believe and Mamet is obsessed
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with cons and has explored them in lots of movies but in this particular movie the protagonist is a woman
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who is a professional woman she has a PhD she's a psychologist she's just written this best-selling
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book she's a really smart sophisticated person and she falls for this very elaborate long con
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and she thinks she's one step ahead of the con artists the whole time that she's kind of in on it
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and it ends up that they anticipated that and that actually she's not in on it at all and she loses all
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of her money she loses a lot of other things too but at the end of this movie I just thought first of
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all wow you know what what a different way of looking at the con because normally you see these
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victims who are just saps and this woman really was not and then I thought well you know how how does
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that happen how does someone who's so intelligent so savvy and who knows so much about human psychology
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become a victim and so I started trying to find a book that would explain it to me and it didn't
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exist so I wrote it well there you there you go I like that I think uh I've done that quite a bit
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too where nothing's out there so you got to find out on your own yeah um so you start off the book
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talking about what makes a con artist a con artist right the cycle the psychology of a con artist
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con artist um and so you really prevent this very nuanced approach to it is a con artist something
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that you're you're you're born a con artist or is it something that you develop over time or is it a
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little bit of both I think it's a little bit of both and I think there's definitely a huge component
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of developing over time um so by a little bit of both I mean that there are certainly predispositions
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not everyone will become a con artist right you can put a lot of the same people in a certain situation
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and most of them will be just fine and one of them will turn to the grift as a way out um and so
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that one probably had some sort of predisposition toward it that said in 99 other situations he might
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have been just fine as well and so I think what we need to understand it's that con artists are are
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made really it's predisposition but it's predisposition that meets opportunity um at the
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right time at the right place at the right point in the person's life um and I think the exact same
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person who could become a con artist or a perfectly functional um and respected member of society
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depending on how the chips fall and by predisposition what is it is it psychopathy
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machiavellianism narcissism I mean what is that makes someone predisposed to perhaps be a con artist
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so I do I talk about the dark triad which is machiavellianism narcissism and psychopathy
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um and I think any of those three or any combination of those three can give you the necessary
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predisposition so by psychopathy um I mean the condition where you don't really experience
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emotions the way that other people do um you don't experience empathy and that really makes
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you able to take advantage of people because you don't feel bad for your victims and you can't feel
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victims the moment you do you're no longer a good con artist so that's one narcissism because you have
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to feel like you're not just the center of the universe but you deserve things you have things coming
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to you you know you you really deserve to have someone else's money you deserve to have their
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trust their reputation so it's this real sense of entitlement um and machiavellianism gives you the
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ability to persuade other people to do things um for your own and directly from machiavelli's the
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prince from the ideal prince and and how he's able to manipulate those around him right and so
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one situation like if you went down if you're put in a certain environment you might
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become a con artist but if you have these traits you could become an attorney a politician
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right absolutely and marketing genius and advertising guru yep all all respectable well
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some people would say respectable um all all legitimate professions right so I'm curious uh if you came
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across this in your research I don't remember reading this in your book um but we we call scam artists
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con men um are are men more predisposed to be con artists than women are or is it pretty cut uh down
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the line about the same you know it's a really really interesting question and unfortunately there
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hasn't been any systematic research into it I will say that more of them are probably men than women
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and I will say the reason I say that is because we know that some con artists are psychopaths and we
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know that almost no psychopaths are women um it's a fewer than one percent of psychopaths are female
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um and so that's just a really tiny tiny percentage so from that you can make the assumption that there
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are more um that there are more con artists who are male and historically we also have more examples
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of historical con men who are men not rather than con women that said maybe the women are just better
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so they're not getting caught because we know that some of the best spies in history for instance
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were female are very good at a lot of these types of skills of deception and manipulation
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right and as I was reading you know the the traits of a of a good con artist and by good I mean
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they're good at conning um it was kind of uncomfortable because like I felt like there
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was like a very hazy line between being an emotionally intelligent person and being a good
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con man right the thing that really made like for example you talk about the q test um can you explain
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what the q test is and I'll share what I the test that I it was similar to that but it gave like a
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different outcome or a different uh interpretation sure so that test um was described by richard
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wiseman and basically what it asks is that you put your finger your index finger of whatever your
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dominant hand is to your forehead and you draw the letter q so I'm assuming now you've done it and
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then you look well which way did you draw it is the tail facing to the right as you look at it or to
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the left so have you drawn it from your own perspective or from the perspective of someone
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is that people who draw it from the perspective of others are more sensitive to how they're perceived
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they're more sensitive to how others we respond to them they want to create a better image of
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themselves in the eyes of others and so those types of people probably have a slightly higher
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tendency towards the types of things that go along with being a con artist I'm not saying that they
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are con artists I'm saying that they have some of those same underlying predispositions that make
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people want to deceive right so when I read that so like the version I heard was the e-test where
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you draw an e on your forehead and if you do it in the way that okay you write the e so that someone
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who's looking at you would see it as a rate like a forward-facing e well that meant well you're an
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emotionally intelligent person you have empathy right and so when I did that I was like oh because
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that's how I did I drew it how someone would they could see it right and I'm like wow I'm an
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emotionally intelligent person and then when I read about the q test in your book and their
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interpretation I'm like wait maybe I'm a psychopath and like I'm like possibly have tendencies to
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deceive so I mean is that what you found when you're doing your research there is sort of a
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blurry line between I mean are con men emotionally intelligent people or super emotionally intelligent
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people absolutely oh my god yes so con men are people and by the way you can be incredibly
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emotionally intelligent and be a psychopath because you can understand people well enough that you don't
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experience emotional empathy you experience cognitive empathy and in some ways cognitive empathy is
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actually stronger because you're really able to go into someone else's shoes you're not blocked by
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emotion whereas the emotional intelligence the emotional side of empathy you often have things that stand in
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the way and so good con artists are definitely people who are phenomenal at reading others they can read the
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most subtle signs in order to take advantage of them they need to be they need to be extremely wonderful
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psychologists in a sense because that's how they're able to find their victims find the weak the weak
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right and we'll talk a little bit about how they do that in a little bit here but before we get there
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let's just talk about the mark right us who might possibly be getting scammed by the the con artist
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um why are we so bad at spotting liars and frauds like we always think like you were saying
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like the lady who thought she was really smart and she like uh was you know she was ahead of the the
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scam artist in the movie but she really wasn't um and oftentimes you the stories you share of the
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the victims like they never knew until the very end and like these some of these people are really
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smart like they had double degrees you know phds and they still couldn't tell see that they were
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getting um duped why are we so bad at that well i think there are two reasons reason number one
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it's actually more evolutionary advantageous to trust people than it is to spot deceptions because
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deceptions often make society go around and function well it makes us get along with others
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because all of the little white lies that we tell each other um are are really essential for
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people to get along um if no one lied and if you were able to catch everyone who lied people would
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be so pissed off at each other all the time it would not be a very pleasant place to live so that's the
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first part of it um the second part of it is that we are phenomenally good at self-deception so
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basically the best con artists of all are ourselves because we really are able to rationalize
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almost anything in order to fit with a certain image of ourselves so a lot of people even when
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they should see that they're being conned they don't because they don't want to admit that they
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could be so foolish and so they rationalize away and they make up all of these excuses and at the end
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of the day they don't even realize sometimes they have been conned a lot of people at the end will say
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oh i was just unlucky they won't admit it even when they have the evidence right in front of them
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right so i guess con artists are just taking advantage of this evolutionary like they're
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evolutionary freeloaders in a way you know kind of a way to describe them they're taking advantage
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of the fact that most people are trusting absolutely i love how you organize the books you
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you break it down to the different parts of a con and i think it's interesting i i learned a lot
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about con artists and there seems it is sort of an artistry um they there's like things that they
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pass on to one another and they they learn things and they it's sort of a system and it is a technique
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right and they have different uh names for different parts of the con so you break it down
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and you talk about the psychological biases that con men use or take advantage of in each part of the
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con um so you start off talking about the put up um what is the put up and um what psychological
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biases or psychological advantages that con men use to uh get the put up going
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the put up is the first stage of the con where you really profile and identify your victim so in
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some ways it's the most important part in order for the con to ultimately be successful because
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if you choose the right victim and if you size your victim up properly then you can really sell him
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just about anything and so what you need to do um this is some of the some of what we were talking
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about with empathy and with being able to really understand someone else and not just understand
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them in terms of their personality but emotionally where they're coming from what drives them what they
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want what their kind of deepest needs are um psychics are really really good at this because they do
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something called the cold read where they can look at you they look at your body language they look
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what you're wearing they look at things that you say and they're able to tell you things that you
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don't realize you've given them the information to discern because we are always throwing off cues
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without even realizing it and so it's something very subtle it can be something along the lines of
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oh you're from new york too aren't you or you're not from new york either correct um so it's the exact
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same sentence and phrased in a way where we will then tell them yes or no and then they will use
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that information to get even more from us and we won't realize that we gave it to them so it's this
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beautiful dance where they're able to get so much from us that we don't realize we're telling them
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and that's one of the ways that they're able to figure out okay what do you want what can i sell you
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right and they're they also you know speaking of the psychics it seems like they're also
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by the nature of the profession they're self-selecting the their marks right they're
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finding certain people who are probably more predisposed to being conned in the first place
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because they know something about that person already because they're coming to see a psychic
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right absolutely a lot of cons have come with a pre-selection mechanism so like the 419 scam the
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nigerian scam that you will see in your email you know there's a fabulous inheritance if only you can
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just give them the small wire transfer fee um a lot of those have really bad typos spelling errors bad
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english and you think how in the world you know doesn't doesn't they doesn't doesn't this person
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know what a spell checker is well here's the the true answer is yes they do um and they used to send
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very wonderful literate emails and the thing that happened is they got too many responses
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and so then they had to really work hard to weed out the suckers now it's such a poorly written email
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only the true suckers respond so it's a pre-selecting mechanism so that they don't need to work nearly as
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hard um and so a lot of scams do have kind of one step beforehand where you're already selecting
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victims and it doesn't even need to be like the nigerian scam it can be something like a catfishing
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sweetheart scam on a romance site well by very virtue of signing on to a romance to a matchmaking
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site you're already saying something about yourself you're saying that you want a relationship that
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you're lonely that you want some sort of connection so you're already self-selecting in a sense into a
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pool of potential victims gotcha so after they've identified their mark and i guess the comment is using
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their their emotional intelligence and depthness to figure this out how do they get the victim to
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start trusting them because you know most people they don't trust strangers right away we are even
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though we are trusting species um we do put up a front for a little bit but con men are somehow able
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to take down that guard what exactly do they do or as psychological biases within us that they
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manipulate to uh bring that guard down they do a few things um one that i think is quite easy and quite
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easy to understand as well um is their ability to fake similarity and familiarity which are two of the
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markers that we use to try to figure out whether or not we like someone and liking often comes right
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along with trusting um so first there's similarity and that is how how much does this person resemble
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me and we tend to trust people who are more like us and we tend to trust people who are less like us
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and this is a really really ingrained way of looking at the world um and it can be very superficial
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things like we like people who like the same sports team that we like it doesn't need to be like
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oh the person is my age and went cool and you know is in the same profession although all of those
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things help um and similarity is remarkably easy to fake because it's kind of like we were what we
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were talking about with the psychics all you need to do is read a few cues from the person and then you
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pretend that you are exactly the same if you think about how many first dates um seem very promising
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and you initially have very you know a very good relationship and they realize oh this person
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isn't at all who i thought because they were really faking that similarity well a con artist doesn't need
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to do it for the length of a relationship a con artist just needs a few good first dates um in order to
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hook you and that's quite easy to do and the other is familiarity which is do i recognize you are you
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someone who i feel comfortable with just because i've seen you around a lot so we're much more likely
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to trust someone who is our neighbor and we see all all the time or even someone who we see at our
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local gym just by by the sheer virtue of seeing them around they become a familiar presence and this is
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something called the mere exposure effect where merely being exposed to something or someone makes
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us like that thing or that person more and so a con artist can do something like start dropping in at
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your local coffee shop um and even saying hi to you on some mornings and all of a sudden you're much
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more likely to trust that person when they finally strike up a conversation just because you've already
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just because you've already seen them multiple times so those are kind of very basic things that can
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happen in order to establish that baseline level of trust right and as you're talking about that seems like
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this is very easy to do on the internet right online uh you can fake familiar similarity very easy and
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then the familiarity aspect if you just interact with people via twitter or facebook frequently you
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can build that trust even though you've never seen this person in person absolutely absolutely one of
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the things i learned when uh writing this book is never accept a facebook request unless you know
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exactly who the person is because that's that's the way that con artists are able to infiltrate
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networks because then once you get one week link um suddenly you're in my friend network then the
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next person's more likely to um to accept your friend request because you know me and so you've
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already been vetted and all of a sudden we've got 20 friends in common of course you must be a decent
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person right um okay so we've gotten the they've met got the mark they've built that trust the next step is
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the uh the play uh what's the play and what psychological biases do con artists take advantage
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of to uh get the play going the play is all about emotion um it's about really telling the story that's
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going to emotionally involve the person so now you trust me i am going to make you emotionally
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invested in this and the psychological principle at at play in the play um is that when we are feeling
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emotional we stop thinking rationally um emotion really clouds our judgment and we make decisions that
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are much worse um in general we just don't look at the world in the same way that we normally would
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our logic falls by the wayside um and that's the that's the goal of this stage of the
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so if you can get um someone really hot and really riled up um then basically they stop thinking
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critically and they start believing what you say rather than questioning it and it might be a
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question of telling a sob story of telling a sob story and they become very empathetic that's
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basically you have to be a storyteller and storyteller who's able to engage your marks emotions because
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the moment that the emotions are on high that's when that's when you have them that's when they stop
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thinking critically right and it's not just stories i mean some of them like i guess uh cults take
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advantage of sort of thing too right they seclude people and just really get people thinking emotionally
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instead of rationally right they do all these sort of exercises to get people crying yelling doing all
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this stuff absolutely absolutely i think that's a really strong technique um and it also makes some
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bond with the people that they're with rather than the outside world so it's a two-pronged um approach in
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that particular case right and the stories don't even have to be you know a sob story i mean i think
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you gave some examples of some cons of like stories about you know buried treasure from a pirate right
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or that you know that and people got really into it and like i guess they get really emotional about
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that because it plays on i don't know excitement wonder adventure i mean it doesn't have to be
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your typical emotional sob story to to be a good play oh absolutely not it could be any sort of a
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good story that has an emotional component and our emotions are can definitely be engaged in any number
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of ways um and we need to be careful not just when somebody gives you a story of oh i'm so sorry you
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know i need to make it to my kid who's in the hospital but oh my god this is so incredibly excited
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i have just found this treasure and i'm going to share it with you that's also a story and that's
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also pretty emotional right and as i was reading this i was like this is like what marketers do
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right like they tell they tell stories about brands i'm like again like are marketers con men i mean
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what's going on here absolutely absolutely well you know it's a thin line it's really a thin line
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between advertising marketing and cons right well and speaking of the marketing tactics you have the
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next section about the rope and you you go through a list of tactics that con artists used to uh get
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people hooked into the con and i thought it was interesting he's like these are the same things
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that i've read about in like advertising books or marketing books or like even like rhetoric you know
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being persuasive when you're public publicly when you're speaking publicly um so what are some of the
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tactics used in the rope um i'll tell you about one of them um which i think is quite effective um
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it is the door in the face technique and that is first you get someone to slam the door in your face so
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you ask them for something outrageously big um and they obviously say no they slam the door in your face
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but then they you probably feel really guilty because it doesn't make you feel like a very good
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person to slam the door in someone's face and so the next time you come knocking and you ask them
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for something that seems much more reasonable in comparison which by the way can still be a very
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big favor but just compared to the first thing that you asked it's quite reasonable this guilty
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feeling person is going to say yes because they've so bad for slamming the door in your face the first
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time around and this is such a brilliant psychological maneuver and it works beautifully i've had it done
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on me actually um i've realized in retrospect where people have asked me to you know like volunteer for
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a day um with some organization i don't even remember which organization um and i just couldn't do it
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uh because it was you know a day of my time and i just was in no position to say yes but then when
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they asked me to then donate a piece of my writing um also for free which i never do i have a rule of
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never write for free um i did it um because i felt guilty for not volunteering for a day um and that's
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classic door in the face and con artists love doing this because we really don't want to feel guilty it's a
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really bad feeling and so we'll do almost anything to assuage our guilt right so yeah this is a very
00:27:18.980
i love this chapter it's great for like being on the lookout for yourself but then also i'm like i
00:27:23.360
don't know i'm thinking like how can i use this to like persuade other people to possibly do things
00:27:27.620
that they need to do for you know if i'm a leader or a manager and you know it's great great tactics
00:27:32.500
there's a lot to be there's a lot to learn from con men um was one of the things i got from the book
00:27:36.940
um so you talk about the tail and this goes back to what you said earlier about human beings being
00:27:44.820
we're like the the ultimate con we're the best con artist right we start we convince ourselves uh
00:27:51.100
we're good at self-deception so the tail is the part where the con man uh well actually the comment
00:27:58.580
doesn't do anything the person the victim starts convincing themselves yeah the plan is actually great
00:28:04.360
how how does that happen right how do you how does something that seems like if even if you're
00:28:08.480
really smart or intelligent how do you start convincing yourself that this actually i could
00:28:12.920
definitely make a lot of money from this even though i know it's probably too good to be true
00:28:17.160
well because we are very very good at and i love that you phrased it the way that you did
00:28:22.840
because um you just said it's probably too good to be true and at this point you have to remember that
00:28:29.340
we've already gone through all the other stages of the con so we already trust this person we're
00:28:33.580
feeling some sort of connection with them we're already emotionally invested and so we latch on
00:28:39.760
to that word probably because we think well it's probably too good to be true but but probably look
00:28:48.060
and in this particular case i deserve it and so we instead of thinking it's too good to be true start
00:28:55.420
thinking actually no it's not really too good to be true i just deserve my lucky break i've been
00:29:01.760
working really hard for this i deserve whatever it is that that we're dealing with in this particular
00:29:06.780
con and so we just change our mindset completely because we want to justify everything that we've
00:29:15.000
felt and gone through up to this point and we're so incredibly good at justifying that at saying oh
00:29:21.920
well there's a reason i like this person there's a reason i trust this person there's a reason i'm
00:29:25.320
emotionally involved in this story and that reason is that it's a good story it's a good person
00:29:31.120
i'm doing everything correctly and no no this is not something that's too good to be true actually
00:29:42.840
because we have so many externality biases which means we like to feel ourselves exceptional in almost
00:29:51.020
any respect those really play into this particular stage of the con because we can we can use those
00:29:59.960
to justify almost anything really right and so there's a lot going on here so yeah you talk about
00:30:06.140
in the book that a lot of people think we're human beings we're the rational animal i know a lot of
00:30:11.240
people say like oh yeah i'm very logical and blah blah blah blah but like the research says it's not true we
00:30:16.380
actually feel something first and then we come up with reason afterwards to justify those feelings
00:30:22.500
or like we make a decision with our emotions first and then we come up with the reasoning um ex post
00:30:27.440
facto right yes right that's exactly what happens um we we justify our decision after the fact and we
00:30:37.340
think but we we do it so well that we convince ourselves that actually we did it before right we do it
00:30:44.860
we we have this just very perverse circular logic and when it happens to someone else you're very
00:30:52.740
well able to spot it when it happens to yourself you never think it you never think that it's
00:30:58.860
happening to you right and the i love the the emphasis on how we deceive ourselves in thinking
00:31:03.360
that we're above average and that you know we won't get duped and yeah maybe i this time it'll work
00:31:08.860
for us because we're smart and we're great um there's a name it's like the lake wabagon effect is that
00:31:14.140
what it's called or there's something else there's another name for it yes right it's yep um and there
00:31:20.840
are lots of other names for it but it's it all comes down to the same thing which is there's also
00:31:26.260
the very simple name for it is the better than average effect and one of my favorite illustrations
00:31:32.180
of this was a study that was done in the hospital of people who had just gotten into car accidents
00:31:38.060
and a good number of those people had actually caused the accident themselves and what the
00:31:44.940
researchers did was ask them what kind of a driver they they were and everyone said that they were
00:31:50.620
above average driver even the people who had caused the car accident and were in the hospital
00:31:58.240
which is kind of crazy but it shows just how strong this effect is right right and that's great to know
00:32:03.720
not only to avoid being conned but i think it's great just life advice realizing oh wait i think
00:32:07.860
i'm smarter than i am but maybe i'm not as smart as i think i am can make a lot of progress in life
00:32:13.160
with that sort of attitude absolutely but it's a hard attitude to maintain because deep down inside
00:32:19.460
you still think you're smart right yeah even though even though all right so there's a there comes a
00:32:23.820
point in in the con in every con well not every con because not sometimes cons don't even get
00:32:28.120
discovered but in a lot of in some cons where things start breaking down and the the victim
00:32:33.720
or the mark starts realizing something is up i mean what happens psychologically um whenever we
00:32:41.660
realize we're being duped is there um like do we suddenly like see that it's like a parapetia where
00:32:47.580
we're like oh yeah okay i am being duped and i'm just gonna stop doing this or do we is there
00:32:51.960
something going on we try to convince ourselves well no maybe it's not as bad as we think we are and
00:32:55.740
it's okay well this is where that concept of cognitive dissonance really comes into play
00:33:00.980
and that means that as soon as we see red flags it's much easier to dismiss the red flags than to
00:33:08.960
admit that we've been wrong and so that's exactly what we do we engage in what's called dissonance
00:33:15.040
reduction we try to reduce the mismatch between what we think and the evidence that we're seeing
00:33:21.000
and we do that by saying this evidence doesn't make sense by explaining in a way and so we see
00:33:27.420
the red flags but we say oh it's not actually a red flag look doesn't it look pink to you oh it's not
00:33:32.060
even a flag it's a handkerchief it's a pink handkerchief okay i'm good and and that's exactly
00:33:37.840
what we do with all of the signs that we might be getting conned and so a lot of people by the end of
00:33:45.160
the con so we're we're getting to the stage of of the final um the final stage of the con a lot of
00:33:51.720
people even then won't realize they've been conned because they were so good at reducing dissonance
00:33:58.160
and at convincing themselves that no con is actually happening right you gave a great example of it was
00:34:03.480
like the guy who did the first ponzi scheme um before ponzi right the guy who started the investment
00:34:08.940
fund and even when people realize like you know the i guess the the law enforcement was in on it
00:34:14.720
they're closing the bank down there's a little his bank quote-unquote bank and uh people are like yeah
00:34:20.040
there's something's going on here but they still have people like coming to the bank and like i want
00:34:23.480
to deposit more money um he's a great guy i mean that was it was insane what happened like even like
00:34:29.320
made more money while he was getting uh discovered that he was a fraud yes yes and he is not the only
00:34:36.800
one this happens again and again the first time you say well franklin was just a really this is the
00:34:42.580
guy who ran the franklin syndicate the con you're talking about um he must have just been a really
00:34:47.500
really good really good at this and he was don't get me wrong but con artists tend to be very good at
00:34:55.120
this um some of my favorite stories involve um people who ended up paying the legal fees for the
00:35:01.640
people who conned them when the con artist was already on trial um and a lot of times the victims
00:35:07.440
are the ones who end up paying what i thought was interesting too is that most people um who are
00:35:14.360
conned and they find out about it they don't report it that's why um like financial fraud just kind of
00:35:21.460
one of the most underreported crimes in america or in the world i mean what is it why don't people
00:35:27.260
report is it is this like a sense of shame what's going on there i think it's two things one is
00:35:32.020
reputation management people don't want others to know that they could have been so stupid
00:35:36.960
and they really want to preserve their reputation even at the cost of knowing that this person is
00:35:44.200
still out there doing the same thing to others and the second thing is you might be so incredibly
00:35:48.580
good at self-deception at all these different biases that you and i have talked about that you don't
00:35:53.740
realize that you've been conned and you persist in saying that you were not a victim even even after
00:36:02.000
even after the con is done and so a lot of people will say oh it's just bad luck it could have gone
00:36:07.200
the other way i wasn't conned this is not a con artist oh i'd invest with him again if the chance came
00:36:14.640
around um so i think that that's the other reason why people don't end up reporting it so as i was
00:36:20.540
reading this book i was uh you know one it made me uncomfortable in a lot of some places but also
00:36:25.440
i'm like man i don't want to get scammed but it looks like my brain is like waging a war against me
00:36:31.560
and trying to get me scammed and duped um what are some things we can do like just a few brass tack
00:36:37.360
things that people can do to uh steal themselves from being scammed all the while here's the catch like
00:36:43.680
not while still being a trusting and caring person at the same time yeah i think i think that that's a
00:36:52.040
very important distinction because we don't want to be someone who's just completely emotionally
00:36:57.760
closed off um that's not a very good way to be so i think one thing that we can do is to really
00:37:03.520
try to know ourselves as well as we can try to do the put up on ourselves try to do a self-analysis
00:37:11.240
in the way that a con artist would what are the things that drive me what are the things that are
00:37:16.500
important to me what are the things that i want what are my weak spots and then when something happens
00:37:23.760
that really falls into one of those categories you should suddenly have little red flags in your head
00:37:30.380
and a little alert that says wait this is exactly what i want and now it's happening
00:37:34.640
let me analyze what's going on here is it because i've done something and it really should be
00:37:41.860
happening or is it because this really nice man who well i only met him a week ago but he's awesome
00:37:46.500
um is is offering me something or is telling me something that fits into that so it's a really
00:37:54.200
difficult actually piece of advice to give because what it says is the moments where you want to be the
00:37:59.080
least skeptical because no one wants to question when good things happen people want to question when bad
00:38:03.980
things happen but at those moments where you want to be the least skeptical you actually need to be
00:38:08.780
the most skeptical i think that's the single most important thing you can do to try to avoid being
00:38:14.380
scammed awesome well maria where can people find out more about the confidence game um they can go
00:38:20.160
to my website which has links to a whole lot of stuff about the book and that's just my first
00:38:27.100
name dot my last name dot com so maria konnikova dot com great well maria thank you so much for your
00:38:32.840
time it's been a pleasure thank you so much brett i really enjoyed the conversation my guest name is
00:38:37.680
maria konnikova she's the author of the book the confidence game and you can find that on amazon.com
00:38:41.820
and bookstores everywhere and you can find out more information about her work at maria konnikova dot com
00:38:45.860
well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
00:38:53.120
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy this
00:38:57.060
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00:39:00.960
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