Rationally Speaking #151 - Maria Konnikova on "Why everyone falls for con artists"

Rationally Speaking Podcast

New York City Skeptics

Society & Culture, Skepticism, Science, Philosophy

4.6 • 787 Ratings

🗓️ 24 January 2016

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

You've probably heard about victims of con artists -- like the people who hand over their life savings to sketchy gurus or psychics, or the people who wire thousands of dollars to a "Nigerian prince" who just needs some help getting his far bigger fortune to you. And you've probably thought to yourself, "What a sucker. I'd never fall for something like that." But are you sure? In this episode of Rationally Speaking, Julia interviews Maria Konnikova, science journalist and author of "The Confidence Game: Why we fall for it... Every time," who explains why con artists are so effective that even the best of us are vulnerable. Along the way, they explore questions like: Why do people refuse to believe they've been conned? Are con artists getting more sophisticated over time? And how do con artists view themselves -- do they rationalize their actions, or are they impassive sociopaths?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Rationally Speaking is a presentation of New York City skeptics dedicated to promoting critical thinking, skeptical inquiry, and science education.
0:22.5	For more information, please visit us at NYCCEceptics.org.
0:30.8	Welcome to Rationally Speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense.
0:40.9	I'm your host, Julia Galef, and with me is today's guest, Maria Konnikova.
0:45.3	Maria has a PhD in Psychology from Columbia University.
0:48.7	She's a columnist for The New Yorker writing about psychology and culture, and she also writes for numerous other
0:54.2	publications. Maria is the author of Mastermind, How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes, which she
1:00.0	discussed on an earlier episode of Rationally Speaking, and which is now a New York Times bestseller.
1:04.7	And she's returned to the show to talk about her new book, Hot Off the Presses, The Confidence
1:09.6	Game. It's about con artists, how they operate,
1:14.1	why we fall for it, and what this says about human psychology in general. Maria, welcome back
1:20.3	to rationally speaking. Thanks so much for having me, Julia. So I'm sure you've been asked this
1:26.0	question before, but nevertheless, I expect many of our listeners are wondering just how personal the origins of this book are. Have you, Maria, been conned?
1:38.0	Honestly, I have no idea. And the reason I say that is one of the things I learned at searching this, but a lot of times,
1:48.7	in fact, I would say the majority of times, people don't realize whether or not they've been conned
1:53.1	because we really don't like feeling like we're suckers or like we've been duped. And so a lot of
1:58.9	people will rationalize away a con as a simple matter of bad luck.
2:04.9	And so they'll never realize that they even fell for a scam. They'll just assume that, oh, something happened.
2:10.7	So I honestly don't know the answer. I'm assuming the answer is yes, at least on a scale.
2:16.4	I'm sure that at some point someone I've given
2:18.2	money to hasn't actually needed it for a train ticket or a bus ticket or whatever it is I gave
2:23.6	the money for. But there's a part of me that would like to think that they were all very
	...

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