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

INTRODUCTION

  • Page 4 It's the oldest story ever told. The story of belief -- of the basic, irresistible, universal human need to believe in something that gives life meaning, something that reaffirms our view of ourselves, the world, and our place in it. "Religion," Voltaire is said to have remarked, "began when the first scoundrel met the first fool." It certainly sounds like something he would have said. Voltaire was no fan of the religious establishment. But versions of the exact same words have been attributed to Mark Twain, to Carl Sagan, to Geoffrey Chaucer. It seems so accurate that someone, somewhere, sometime, must certainly have said it.
  • Page 5 In some ways, confidence artists have it easy. We've done most of the work for them; we want to believe in what they're telling us. 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.
  • Page 6 The con artist doesn't force us to do anything; he makes us complicit in our own undoing. He doesn't steal. We give. He doesn't have to threaten us. We supply the story ourselves. We believe because we want to, not because anyone made us. And so we offer up whatever they want -- money, reputation, trust, fame, legitimacy, support -- and we don't realize what is happening until it is too late.
  • Page 6 When something doesn't make sense, we want to supply the missing link. When we don't understand what or why or how something happened, we want to find the explanation. A confidence artist is only too happy to comply -- and the well-crafted narrative is his absolute forte.
  • Page 7 We want deception to cover our eyes and make our world a tiny bit more fantastical, more awesome than it was before.
  • Page 9 The con is the oldest game there is. But it's also one that is remarkably well suited to the modern age. If anything, the whirlwind advance of technology heralds a new golden age of the grift. 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.
  • Page 9 Transition is the confidence game's great ally, because transition breeds uncertainty.
  • Page 9 Today, we have the technological revolution. And this one, in some ways, is best suited to the con of all. With the Internet, everything is shifting at once, from
  • Page 9 the most basic things (how we meet people and make meaningful connections) to the diurnal rhythms of our lives (how we shop, how we eat, how we schedule meetings, make dates, plan vacations).
  • Page 10 Technology doesn't make us more worldly or knowledgeable. It doesn't protect us. It's just a change of venue for the same old principles of confidence. What are you confident in? 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.
  • Page 11 At a fundamental, psychological level, it's all about confidence -- or, rather, the taking advantage of somebody else's.
  • Page 11 This book is an exploration of the psychological principles that underlie each and every game, from the most elementary to the most involved, step by step, from the moment the endeavor is conceived to the aftermath of its execution.
  • Page 11 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.
  • Page 12 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.

    CHAPTER 1: THE GRIFTER AND THE MARK

  • Page 15 Here's the thing about cons: the best of them are never discovered. The best confidence games remain below the radar. They are never prosecuted because they are never detected.
  • Page 21 If the vast majority of the people who surround you are basically decent, you can lie, cheat, and steal all you want and get on famously.
  • Page 23 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.
  • Page 24 the Machiavellian-minded among us made for more convincing liars than the rest:
  • Page 24 Machiavellianism, it seems then, may, like psychopathy, predispose people toward con-like behaviors and make them better able to deliver on them.
  • Page 26 Psychopaths, narcissists, and Machs may be overrepresented in the grift, but they are also overrepresented in a number of other professions that line the legitimate world. As Maurer puts it, "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."
  • Page 27 As the popular saying among scientists goes: genes load the gun; the environment pulls the trigger.
  • Page 28 For most people to go from legitimacy to con artistry, three things need to align: not just the motivation -- that is, your underlying predisposition, created by elements like psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism -- but alongside it, opportunity and a plausible rationale.
  • Page 28 A third of perpetrators aren't simply willing to go one step beyond what's technically legal
  • Page 32 Thus is a grifter born. There's no such thing as an innocent cutting of the ethical corner. 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. It starts with a small thing.
  • Page 33 Who, then, is the con artist? He displays a dark triad–influenced bent, and he acts when the opportunity arises, for unlike other, less sinister-minded counterparts, he can rationalize away just about any behavior as necessary. And yet, despite this seeming underlying commonality, con artists can still surprise us and resist easy classification. Some conform to expectations, others do not, and there may be significant divergence from the profile that emerges from one study to the next.
  • Page 36 Even some legitimate professions find it difficult to escape the image of playing a bit loose with the truth.
  • Page 36 Con artists, in some sense, merely take our regular white lies to the next level. Plagiarists. Fabulists. Confabulists. Impostors. They take that desire to shine, to be the best version of something, and they fly with it.
  • Page 40 the more you lie, the fewer identifying signs, even tiny ones, you display.
  • Page 47 We think we know the typical victim profile. We think we know what makes a mark. And we think absolutely wrong.
  • Page 48 it's not who you are, but where you happen to be at this particular moment in your life. If you're feeling isolated or lonely, it turns out you're particularly vulnerable.
  • Page 48 Likewise if you're going through a job loss, divorce, serious injury, or other major life change, are experiencing a downturn in personal finances, or are concerned with being in debt. People in debt, in fact, are also more likely to fall for fraud that's completely unrelated to finances, like weight-loss products.
  • Page 48 our impulsivity and appetite for risk are some of the only reliable indicators of fraud susceptibility.
  • Page 48 When we're feeling low, we want to get out of the slump. So, schemes or propositions that would look absurd in another light suddenly seem more attractive. When we're angry, we want to lash out. Suddenly, something that once seemed like a gamble looks awfully appealing. A victim isn't necessarily foolish or greedy. A victim is simply more emotionally vulnerable at the exact moment the confidence artist approaches.
  • Page 49 There's an entire subset of cons, in fact, devoted to catching the master grifter at his own game, often perpetrated by others who feel he might have gotten too big for his boots.
  • Page 51 It ends up that the more you know about something, the more likely you are to fall for a con in that specific area.

    CHAPTER 2: THE PUT?UP

  • Page 57 One of their great skills is to discern details of a victim's life without her knowledge, so that she doesn't even realize how much she's given away -- and then, to use those very details to impress the victim with their insight.
  • Page 57 That ability is, indeed, the first step of a con: the put-up.
  • Page 57 We listen to their words and their voice, read their gestures and their tone, infer between the lines to get a sense of their inner world.
  • Page 59 We never learn to be expert people-readers because that expertise can backfire spectacularly. Why form accurate judgments when the inaccurate ones make our lives far more pleasant and easy?
  • Page 63 con men don't just want to know how someone looks to them. They want to correctly reflect how they want to be seen.
  • Page 63 confidence artists can use what they're learning as they go in order to get us to give up even more.
  • Page 64 If we mimic someone else, they will feel closer and more similar to us; we can fake the natural liking process quite well.
  • Page 64 mirror back someone's words or interests, feign a shared affinity for a sports team or a mutual hatred of a brand.
  • Page 64 Dale Carnegie advised in his treatise on winning friends and influencing people, a sort of unwitting bible for cons in training. And if you're having trouble?
  • Page 64 "Talk in terms of the other person's interests."
  • Page 68 People chose the shapes they had seen earlier as more pleasing -- even though they had no conscious memory of ever having seen them and couldn't distinguish old from new at above-chance levels.
  • Page 68 the mere exposure effect: familiarity breeds affection.
  • Page 69 In one series of experiments, people were more likely to buy something from a relative stranger if that relative stranger happened to recall their name.
  • Page 69 A seasoned technique: pretend you're someone's relative and that you met at a wedding. All you need to know is the name of the wedding party in question, and you're golden.
  • Page 71 All you needed to do was successfully friend someone on Facebook or connect with them socially on some other network -- and if you could get them to see you as friendly long enough to click on just one link or download just one file, the whole system would eventually be yours. One entry point is all that is required.
  • Page 74 Things that trip us up, Epley has found, include pressure -- time, emotional, situational -- and power. When we're feeling pressure, we grow far less able to think logically and deliberately. When we're feeling more powerful, we tend to feel as if we don't need others quite as much, and our ability to read their minds and the cues they throw off falters.
  • Page 75 There's nothing a con artist likes to do more than make us feel powerful and in control: we are the ones calling the shots, making the choices, doing the thinking. They are merely there to do our bidding. And so as we throw off ever more clues, we ourselves become increasingly blind to the clues being thrown off by others.
  • Page 75 always deferring to their power and seniority -- even though he, too, had a claim to an elevated status. That way, he could glean all he could from them, and they, in turn, would be too flattered to scrutinize him too closely.
  • Page 82 If they aren't looking for you, they don't see you."

    CHAPTER 3: THE PLAY

  • Page 89 Be a patient listener (it is this, not fast talking, that gets a con man his coups). -- THE FIRST COMMANDMENT OF THE CON MAN, FROM VICTOR LUSTIG, CON ARTIST
  • Page 91 The put-up is all about choice of victim: learning what makes someone who she is, what she holds dear, what moves her, and what leaves her cold. After the mark is chosen, it is time to set the actual con in motion: the play, the moment when you first hook a victim and begin to gain her trust. And that is accomplished, first and foremost, through emotion.
  • Page 92 emotions, says psychologist Seymour Epstein, cause us to think in "categorical, personal, concretive, unreflective, and action oriented" fashion. They have us thinking reflexively instead of reflectively, reacting instead of considering. They have us just where someone who may wish to take advantage wants us.
  • Page 98 Con men are likewise expert at rapidly invoking greed, pity, and other emotions that can eclipse deliberation and produce an override of normal behavioral restraints.
  • Page 101 When we're immersed in a story, we let down our guard. We focus in a way we wouldn't if someone were just trying to catch us with a random phrase or picture or interaction.
  • Page 101 relations. "Popper proposed that falsifiability is the cornerstone of the scientific method," Bruner told the American Psychological Association at their annual meeting in Toronto in the summer of 1984. "But believability is the hallmark of the well-formed narrative."
  • Page 103 so strong is narrative that it has been shown to be one of the few successful ways of getting someone to change her mind about important issues.
  • Page 103 "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him," Marc Antony says in his first speech to the Roman people.
  • Page 103 "I'm not trying to sell you anything!""You can take it or leave it!""I'm not looking for charity!" So many prefaces to a story can catch you off guard Marc Antony–style.
  • Page 104 nothing compels us to receptivity, emotional and behavioral, quite like the neat, relatable narrative flow.
  • Page 106 "People think it's all about sex or humor or animals," he told the Johns Hopkins Magazine. "But what we've found is that the underbelly of a great commercial is whether it tells a story or not." The more complete the story, the better.
  • Page 110 the most engaged readers were also more likely to agree with the beliefs the story implied
  • Page 110 wants to create to further his scheme. According to a theory of persuasion known as the elaboration likelihood model, we process a message differently depending on our motivation level. 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,
  • Page 111 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.
  • Page 111 The con artist can employ something called "wishful identification." We don't feel
  • Page 111 sorry for the character; we want to be him.
  • Page 111 The more we like the confidence man, the more we relate to him.
  • Page 111 wishful identification at its finest: invest with me, and you, too, will have all this and more. Don't you want others to see your exquisite taste?
  • Page 113 practiced deceivers were better at one of the basic skills of the con: the ability to tell a good story.
  • Page 117 Con artists lie for a very specific reason: personal gain, whether it be financial or other. They lie to set the play in motion, so that they can gain your confidence and then lead you down a reality of their making. And their lies are believable whereas a pathological liar's are often too big and elaborate to be taken seriously.
  • Page 120 When we're angry, we think future events that are bad are the result of human error; when we're sad, that they're situationally determined. They called the phenomenon "mood as information." How I happen to be feeling is giving me concrete evidence of how I should act -- even if, in fact, my decision is totally distinct. The way I process the information will be colored by my emotion all the same.
  • Page 120 affect heuristic: we make decisions based on whether we feel that something is "good" or "bad," without much conscious analysis.
  • Page 121 What visceral states do is create an intense attentional focus. We tune out everything else and tune in to the in-the-moment emotional cues. It's similar to the feeling of overwhelming hunger or thirst --
  • Page 122 "They are so eager to get their hands on the proffered scam payoff that they fail to pay even rudimentary attention to the details of the proposed transaction and ignore scam cues that may be obvious to others not so overwhelmed by desire," he wrote.
  • Page 122 Sadness likewise makes us more prone to risk taking and impulsivity -- the perfect play for a certain type of con. If you want someone to take a risky financial gamble? Say, invest in your perfect scheme or chance it on a game of three- card monte? Sadness is your best friend.
  • Page 123 Con artists love funerals and obituaries, divorces and scandals, company layoffs and general loneliness.
  • Page 123 When we're happy, we don't analyze data nearly as systematically as we otherwise would, and thus, become far more open to persuasion. In one study, happy people
  • Page 123 were equally persuaded by a strong and a weak argument, whereas sad ones were only swayed by the strong.
  • Page 124 When executing the play, fear is one of the con artist's great friends. In one study, a team of psychologists decided to test the effects of different types of fear on people's willingness to comply with a request.
  • Page 124 the emotional drain of anxiety followed by the wave of emotional relief created a state of relative mindlessness.
  • Page 125 From the first snake oil sale, cons that play on our anxieties about our health have been among the leading scams of the world.
  • Page 126 Fearmongering knows no expiration date. It is a venerable course for the play to take -- one of many, but one that is endlessly powerful.

    CHAPTER 4: THE ROPE

  • Page 132 The rope, then, is the alpha and omega of the confidence game: after finding a victim and lowering his defenses through a bit of fancy emotional footwork, it's time for the actual persuasive pitch. It's Matthew roping Barrett in by convincing him that he's the perfect person for the job (alpha) and that there's no good reason why he shouldn't do it (omega). What's the worst that could happen? The put-up identified the mark and mapped out his idiosyncrasies, hopes, and fears. The play caught the mark's attention and baited the hook. The rope makes sure he bites and the hook sinks deep -- else, with a bit of wiggling, the almost-sure-deal prey swim hastily away.
  • Page 132 The psychologist Robert Cialdini, one of the leading experts on persuasion, argues that six principles govern most persuasive relationships: reciprocity (I rub your back, you rub mine), consistency (I believe the same thing today as I did yesterday), social validation (doing this will make me belong), friendship or liking (exactly what it sounds like), scarcity (quick! there isn't much to go around), and authority (you seem like you know what you're talking about).
  • Page 136 someone who has already agreed to a small request -- like opening the door for you -- would become more, not less, likely to agree to a larger request later on.
  • Page 136 be perceived as a favor -- picking up a dropped glove (how many con artists love the dropped clothing article!), lending you a quarter for the phone (only a quarter! it's an important call), spending a few minutes on that phone with you in conversation -- that person becomes more likely to keep doing even more on your behalf.
  • Page 137 the foot-in-the-door technique.
  • Page 137 The funny thing is, they later found, the approach worked even if the person doing the requesting the second time around was someone else:
  • Page 137 There's the roper, the one who makes the first request, engaging his chosen persuasive strategies of choice, and then there's the inside man, a second member of the group who sweeps in for the kill, with the real request (the con that will be played out). You are already in a giving mood, and you become far more likely to succumb than you would've been without the initial prime.
  • Page 137 one of the elements that make us more vulnerable to persuasion is our desire to maintain a good image of ourselves.
  • Page 139 But niceness isn't the only way to go. Another effective technique that Cialdini first identified in 1975 is the door-in-the-face, a near opposite of the foot-in-the-door.
  • Page 139 When someone we don't really know asks us for a large favor -- or even someone we do know catches us on an off day -- and we (understandably) refuse, we do indeed feel rude, just as Bem would have predicted. But we don't like feeling rude. And so we also feel something else we don't like: guilty. So what happens when the person we turned down asks us for something else, something smaller, something that seems far more reasonable in comparison? We say yes. Guilt assuaged -- and con artist's mission accomplished.
  • Page 139 Cialdini found, more people agreed to a relatively small request --
  • Page 139 after they'd rejected a much larger one --
  • Page 140 The technique only worked, Cialdini found, if the same person did the asking both times. If you're nice, you're nice to everyone. If you're guilty, only one person can assuage that guilt: the one who caused it in the first place.
  • Page 142 In 1986, Santa Clara University psychologist Jerry Burger proposed a persuasion -- or roping, if you will -- tactic that relied not on a comparison between two separate favors but on a comparison within the favor itself: the that's-not-all technique. An effective approach, Burger found, is to start with a false baseline (that is, not at all what you're planning to eventually propose) and then, in quick succession, make changes and additions to that starting point that make it seem increasingly attractive.
  • Page 143 "That's not all.
  • Page 143 That's-not-all is actually a member of a broader set of persuasive tactics, known as disrupt-then-reframe techniques.
  • Page 143 Here's how it works. Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert proposes that we understand the world in two stages. First we take it at face value, in order to decipher the sense of what someone is telling us. And then we evaluate it, in order to judge the soundness of what we've just deciphered. Disrupt-then-reframe attacks the evaluative part of the process: we don't have a chance to give a proper assessment because each time we try to do so, the situation changes.
  • Page 144 the even-a-penny-would-help.
  • Page 144 as the "legitimization effect." A request for a tiny amount of money legitimizes you in the eyes of others.
  • Page 144 If you're looking for a tiny donation -- a dollar or another inconsequential-seeming amount -- you look like you're working hard for very little.
  • Page 145 A closely related approach is Cialdini's lowball technique. This time, you tell your intended victim that what you want is actually quite small -- and once he commits to doing it, raise the stakes.
  • Page 145 "Actually, sir, this particular model comes with . . ." and so forth.
  • Page 145 Cialdini's principle of scarcity. The scarce is inherently valuable by very virtue of its scarcity: there isn't much to go around, so only the very lucky few can have it. The limited edition. The forbidden fruit. The offer only good till midnight. The members-only sale. The collector's item. Pose something as unique or rare, and takers will line up where there used to be none. It works for goods. It works for information. It works for most anything.
  • Page 149 In their influential 1959 work "The Bases of Social Power," John French and Bertram Raven posited that there were five major bases from which power derives: reward power, or the belief that someone is able to reward you; coercive power, or the belief that someone is able to punish you somehow; legitimate power, or an actual basis of authority; referent power, or power derived from your affiliation with someone (or desire to be affiliated with them); and expert power, from someone's expertise on a topic.
  • Page 149 The grifter will avoid coercion at all costs. That would be unaristocratic.
  • Page 150 in establishing their legitimacy, the victims said, their scammers appealed often and early to trust and authority. The logic is clear. If you know someone is asking for something, you need to know early on who that someone is and why, exactly, you should listen.
  • Page 150 We get authority in two ways: by virtue of what we know (authority based on expertise) or by virtue of who we are (authority based on position). The confidence artist will exploit both. But the second is much easier to fake than the first; indeed, the first, or at least the perception of it, often follows in its wake.
  • Page 154 We often obey power reflexively, without ever quite stopping to reflect on why we're doing what we are and whether it is, in fact, something we should be doing.
  • Page 154 One of the first things a con artist does is establish trust -- often by being the exact type of person he thinks you aspire to be, or at least, want to be associated with.
  • Page 155 Con artists often use communities to quickly gauge character and belief and acquire a veneer of the same.
  • Page 155 The authority we grant someone comes often as more of an afterthought than anything else, by virtue of their belonging to the exact right group, one that we're particularly eager to either join or be liked by.
  • Page 159 The rope depends on multiple elements: not just the persuasive strategy you use and your identity, but how, exactly, you frame the proposition. Power, in other words, can come from the construction of the argument rather than its substance: power through how you phrase something rather than what you're actually saying.
  • Page 161 The psychology of why nudges work forms the entire basis of a confidence artist's soft power. Just as a grifter never coerces in any observable way, a nudge never actually forces one behavior or forbids another -- a smoking ban is not a nudge but a policy regulation -- but rather changes the nature of the choice itself.
  • Page 161 The order effect is the tip of a very large iceberg that includes things like position effects -- where something is located physically. Con artists manipulate this all the time by placing objects or people they want you to gravitate toward in more privileged positions.
  • Page 161 There are anchor effects -- the initial cues you see that then influence your subsequent decision, like the price that first catches your eye on a menu, that then makes other prices seem more or less fair, or a monthly payment plan that forms a reasonable-seeming anchor for a sum you might otherwise question as too high.
  • Page 162 Precisely how something is presented to you matters a great deal.
  • Page 162 Con artists can even influence choice by limiting it -- a take on the default effect.
  • Page 162 We often like to have our choices constricted. Too much choice, and we just shake our heads and walk away -- a phenomenon known as choice fatigue.
  • Page 162 If the statement seems persuasive -- your granddaughter is in trouble and you have no choice but to send money immediately to help her -- we'll be all the more likely to concede the point rather than stop and think about alternatives.
  • Page 163 Information priming works so well because it exploits an effect we've already seen several times: the ease that comes from familiarity. Mention something in passing, and then when you elaborate on it later -- especially if it's a few days later -- it seems that much more convincing.
  • Page 163 It's a phenomenon known as the illusion of truth: we are more likely to think something is true if it feels familiar.
  • Page 163 "Picture this,""Imagine that .
  • Page 163 One of Cialdini's many studies of persuasion had people watch an ad about cable television. Those who were told to "imagine the benefits" were much more likely to actually subscribe to it a month later than those who were simply told about "the benefits of cable TV."
  • Page 164 trick.) And a final construction that can win an argument: it doesn't actually matter what you say, in what order, or how. All that matters is that you say a lot, quickly, and that it sounds convoluted and has many moving parts. Simply put, we tend to make worse decisions when we have a lot on our minds -- even after that "lot" is removed.
  • Page 167 there were all the expected culprits, neat as you'd like. Scarcity (get it while you can!). Credibility appeals (I'm from a legitimate institution). Phantom fixation (the promise of future wealth -- that is, a fixation on a future phantom). And social consensus (everyone else is doing it!). Real scammers, it turns out, operate just as we would theoretically expect them to.

    CHAPTER 5: THE TALE

  • Page 172 At this stage in the confidence game, the mark has been chosen, the play has begun, and the rope has been cast in a very specific way. We're no longer deciding between abstract, cold courses of action that we don't much care about. We're emotionally involved. We've already had the case persuasively laid out for us, in a way that makes it seem like a version of what we ourselves would most want, in the way we most want it. And so when the tale is told -- that is, we're told how we, personally, will benefit -- it's no longer really being told to us.
  • Page 172 "Actually, this makes perfect sense": I am exceptional, and I deserve it. It's not too good to be true; it is exactly what I had coming to me. The chances may be less than 1 percent, but then again, I'm a less than 1 percent kind of guy.
  • Page 172 One of our fundamental drives is the need for self-affirmation: we need to feel worthy, to feel needed, to feel like we matter.
  • Page 173 we systematically represent ourselves and our reality in a way that favors our preferred version.
  • Page 173 Each one of us is exceptional in our own minds.
  • Page 174 And exceptional individuals are not chumps. Exceptional individuals are in charge. They don't get conned. Which is precisely why the tale works as well as it does.
  • Page 176 Professionally, we are also all better than our colleagues at our jobs, despite any potential protests to the contrary.
  • Page 178 When we're asked to select which words better match our personalities and key characteristics out of a list of possible contenders, we overwhelmingly select more positive than negative options.
  • Page 179 When we compare ourselves to others, we tend to emerge ahead for a simple reason: we focus on our own most positive traits.
  • Page 180 The tale tells itself: it's how so many con artists justify their actions to themselves, getting swept up in their own stories so strongly that they forget, at least for a moment, that they are lying. The belief in exceptionalism, after all, applies just as much to the con artist as to the mark: I am allowed to act like this because I am an exception to society's rules.
  • Page 183 Simply put, when it comes to ourselves -- 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.
  • Page 184 Because of our self-serving bias, we tend to rationalize after the fact, focusing on reasons that justify our choice rather than those that went against it. It's a kind of confirmation in reverse:
  • Page 185 One of the reasons that the tale is so powerful is that, despite the motivated reasoning that we engage in, we never realize we're doing it. We think we are being rational, even if we have no idea why
  • Page 187 Not only does our conviction of our own exceptionalism and superiority make us misinterpret events and mischaracterize decisions; it also hits us a second time long after the event in question. Because of this, we rewrite the past in a way that makes us less likely to learn from it, selectively recalling everything good and conveniently forgetting the bad.
  • Page 190 Cons are often underreported because, to the end, the marks insist they haven't been conned at all. Our memory is selective.

    CHAPTER 6: THE CONVINCER

  • Page 201 One of the key elements of the convincer, the next stage of the confidence game, is that it is, well, convincing: the convincer makes it seem like you're winning and everything is going according to plan. You're getting money on your investment. Your wrinkles are disappearing and your weight dropping. That doctor really seems to know what he's doing. That wine really is exceptional, and that painting exquisite. You sure know how to find the elusive deal. The horse you bet on, both literal and figurative, is coming in a winner.
  • Page 202 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.
  • Page 205 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.
  • Page 207 Though few people would think of bubbles as confidence schemes, the line between bubble and con can be a very fine one: they operate on many of the same principles, occur for many of the same reasons, and are so incredibly persistent, despite past evidence, based on much the same rationale.
  • Page 209 was he a hustler, or merely unlucky? Ultimately, we'll never know: it is, for the most part, a question of knowledge and intent.
  • Page 211 One of the simplest short cons revolves around getting people to place bets on outcomes they think either highly unlikely or highly likely because of their recent experience (an experience that, in the convincer, is unerringly positive) -- and then to upend those perfectly reasonable-seeming expectations.
  • Page 211 Prop bets take advantage of what we expect and then do something completely different.
  • Page 214 Each year, Roderick Kramer teaches a class on negotiation at Stanford's business school. And each time he teaches it, he poses a question:
  • Page 214 how good are you at judging someone's trustworthiness?
  • Page 214 About 95 percent of people, he has repeatedly found, think themselves better than average -- and not just any average.
  • Page 219 Anticipated emotion -- that is, the emotion we can anticipate feeling if we take a certain course of action -- strongly favors the status quo. Anticipated regret makes us want to keep doing what we're doing; anticipated stress makes us want to cope proactively, by not doing anything that might provoke said stress; and anticipated guilt makes us likewise want to prevent it from ever happening.
  • Page 220 The possibility of regret loomed so strongly on the chance that the player had given up a winner that it overcame all rational considerations.
  • Page 221 And that is precisely what the confidence artist is depending on in the convincer. That nagging feeling in your gut: what if you scream foul and it ends up that it wasn't a con after all?
  • Page 226 It starts with one word. One quote. One scene. One massaged fact. One altered data point. Did anyone notice? No one? Then let's keep going. Soon the ruse takes on a life of its own and you're fabricating whole fictional worlds as you bring ever more dupes into the fray. You're not a psychopath. You're probably not even a pathological liar. You're just a grifter who got a bit too enamored of his own scheme, and too certain of his own success, to believe he can ever fail.

    CHAPTER 7: THE BREAKDOWN

  • Page 236 Francis Bacon
  • Page 236 "And such is the way of all superstitions, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments, or the like," he wrote, "wherein men, having a delight in such vanities, mark the events where they are fulfilled, but where they fail, although this happened much oftener, neglect and pass them by."
  • Page 236 To reduce dissonance, Festinger argued, we can do several things. We can revise our interpretation of the present reality: there actually isn't any inconsistency; we were just looking at it
  • Page 237 wrong.
  • Page 237 We can revise our prior expectation: I thought this would happen all along, so it's actually not discordant.
  • Page 237 Or we can alter the reality itself: stop smoking.
  • Page 237 Changing your perception or your memory is easier than changing behavior. It's easier to change what we believe about smoking than to actually quit.
  • Page 239 One of the earliest scientific demonstrations of the power of belief to change reality came again not from a lab, but this time from the classroom. In 1965, Harvard psychologist Robert Rosenthal joined with an elementary school principal, Lenore Jacobson, to determine whether how a teacher expects a student to perform would, in turn, affect how she would see the student's performance.
  • Page 240 While Rosenthal's results are most often cited in the literature on self-fulfilling prophecies rather than confirmation bias, they illustrate one of the reasons the bias persists.
  • Page 242 Almost immediately, each juror had constructed a plausible story out of the events, spontaneously filling in uncertain holes to fit into the resulting narrative.

    CHAPTER 8: THE SEND AND THE TOUCH

  • Page 267 The sunk-cost effect gives us a continued, strong motivation to believe in something even when the landscape has changed significantly since we first invested ourselves in it. In theory, we should only care about new, incremental costs.
  • Page 267 What we've already put into something shouldn't matter: it's lost anyway, whatever "it" happens to be -- time, money, energy, whatever else.
  • Page 272 Experimentally, the endowment effect is remarkably well documented. Repeatedly, people who don't own something -- say, a pen or a mug, two items often used in these studies -- will be willing to pay less for it than they would to sell the exact same object.

    CHAPTER 9: THE BLOW-OFF AND THE FIX

  • Page 285 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.
  • Page 285 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
  • Page 285 our reputational motivation will be strong enough to keep us quiet.
  • Page 288 The whole world doesn't in fact lie, cheat, and steal, and life isn't nasty, brutish, and short, because we know that others will know how we act and that we can suffer for it. We care what they think -- and what they think can impact how we fare later on.
  • Page 299 It's not that the confidence artist is inherently psychopathic, caring nothing about the fates of others. It's that, to him, we aren't worthy of consideration as human beings; we are targets, not unique people.
  • Page 299 We must forever be just another statistic -- one in a stream of "jobs" rather than individuals in our own right.

    CHAPTER 10: THE (REAL) OLDEST PROFESSION

  • Page 307 We want to believe. Believe that things make sense. That an action leads to a result. That things don't just happen willy-nilly no matter what we do, but rather for a reason. That what we do makes a difference, however small. That we ourselves matter. That there is a grand story, a higher method to the seeming madness. And in the heart of that desire, we easily become blind. The eternal lure of the con is the same reason religions arise spontaneously in most any human society. People always want something to believe
  • Page 311 It is our need to hold on to belief, to meaning -- logic be damned -- that continues to fuel the great cons of the world, even as their contours shift with the times.
  • Page 317 Meaninglessness is, well, meaningless. It's dispiriting, depressing, and discouraging, not to mention profoundly disorienting and disturbing.
  • Page 318 It's little wonder that so many cons flourish in the world of religious experience -- and, indeed, that religiosity is one of the few factors that consistently predicts susceptibility to fraud.
  • Page 320 In other words, all of us believe, intrinsically and instinctively. We just differ on where we draw the line between "legitimate" and "illegitimate." One man's confidence artist is another man's spiritual leader.
  • Page 320 Nobody joins a cult, Sullivan repeated often and emphatically. People join something that will give them meaning. "They join a group that's going to promote peace and freedom throughout the world or that's going to save animals, or they're going to help orphans or something. But nobody joins a cult." Nobody embraces false beliefs: we embrace something we think is as true as it gets. Nobody sets out to be conned: we set out to become, in some way, better than we were before.
  • Page 321 Ultimately, what a confidence artist sells is hope.