'Nobody's Fool' explains the science behind falling for scams – and how not to

NPR's Book of the Day

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Arts, Books

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 26 July 2023

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

In their new book, Nobody's Fool, psychology professor Daniel Simons and cognitive scientist Christopher Chabris make the case that people don't just fall for scams because they're gullible. The way our brains work – the way they reason and trust – can often lead us to believe a piece of misinformation or to click on a phishing scam. In today's episode, the authors explain to NPR's Sacha Pfeiffer why truth bias and familiarity can work against us, but that skepticism and fact-checking can help us fight back.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey all, I'm Glenn Weldon, and this is NPR's book of the day. Nobody thinks they're an easy mark.
0:07.7	We all believe we can spot a scam a mile away. But a new book argues that any of us can fall for a con because our brains are just wired to trust other people.
0:17.5	It takes work to train them out of that habit, work that far too few of us bother to do,
0:22.0	and the scammers out there know all this very well and have developed increasingly
0:25.2	efficient techniques to exploit it. The book is Nobody's Fool, why we get taken in and what
0:30.3	we can do about it, and its authors, Psychology Professor Daniel Simons and Cognitive scientist
0:34.8	Christopher Shabree, talk to Sasha Pfeiffer of Weekend Edition Sunday.
0:39.0	In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life. Distant wars, murky
0:45.1	conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new show, Sources and Methods. NPR reporters
0:50.9	on the ground bring you stories of real people helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.
0:57.9	Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:03.6	Don't feel too bad if you fall for someone's con game.
1:07.7	Just listen to Daniel Simons, a psychology professor at the University of Illinois.
1:12.5	It's really easy to assume that everybody who falls for a scam is just gullible or naive or
1:18.3	clueless. That's easy because in hindsight, once the scam's been revealed, you can spot what
1:23.3	was wrong with it in the first place. But in the moment we tend not to, and that's the real
1:27.6	challenge. Simons wrote a book with cognitive scientist Christopher Shabree called Nobody's Fool,
1:33.8	why we get taken in and what we can do about it. They look at all sorts of scams, from
1:39.5	investment swindles to fake news on social media, and what's similar about them. I asked them what is at the
1:46.3	root of all these hoaxes? Dan Simons answered first. When we interact with other people, we have a
1:51.6	truth bias. We, by default, tend to assume that what other people are telling us is true, and it takes
1:57.3	effort and time to question that. So if we by default assume somebody is telling us the
	...

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