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The Neurological Basis of Con Games
Hugh Pickens writes "If we humans have such big brains, how can we get conned? Neuroeconomist Paul J. Zak has an interesting post on Psychology Today in which he recounts how he was the victim of a classic con called 'The Pigeon Drop' when he was a teenager and explains how con men take advantage of the Human Oxytocin Mediated Attachment System, called THOMAS, a powerful brain circuit that releases the neurochemical oxytocin when we are trusted and induces a desire to reciprocate the trust we have been shown. 'The key to a con is not that you trust the con man, but that he shows he trusts you. Con men ply their trade by appearing fragile or needing help, by seeming vulnerable,' writes Zak. 'Because of THOMAS, the human brain makes us feel good when we help others — this is the basis for attachment to family and friends and cooperation with strangers.' Zak's laboratory studies have shown that two percent of the college students he tested are 'unconditional nonreciprocators' who have learned how to simulate trustworthiness and would make good con men. Watch a video of Skeptics Society founder Michael Shermer running the classic pigeon drop on an unsuspecting victim and see if you wouldn't be taken in by a professional con man yourself."
I think most fairly successful people in business have to have a little con man in them to some degree.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The trouble is, I have to get to a job interview. I have a client coming around right now with the cash. Can you do me a favour? I'll split the proceeds of the sale with you, but because I have to go, I'll grab my share now. That fine with you?
Cool.
---
I was trying to think of something serious to say, but honestly, I couldn't. I even read the first article and loaded up the video and second article. I guess I could make a random attack on capitalism as an economic system, but that would probably be unsubstantiated, so I won't.
I wank in the shower.
Forget all the babble about neurochemicals. Most con men aren't particularly smart and 99.9% of all cons aren't particularly clever. Con men are successful for one reason and one reason alone -- their victims are greedy and hoping to get something for nothing. This one sentence from the article sums it up perfectly:
"The greed-o-meter goes off in my head, suppressing all rational thought."
If you aren't greedy, if you aren't looking to get something for nothing, it will be nearly impossible for you to be conned.
Doesn't everyone do this subconsciously, when they feel they would benefit from it? I know i have to stop myself sometimes, when i put myself in "vulnerable mode" to make people trust me more. I don't try to con people, i just do it because it... works? On the other hand, I'm into computer security. Maybe stuff like that is just part of the "security mindset" Bruce Schneier et. al. espouses? 2% sounds like a surprisingly small figure though.
If cons work by making us feel good about helping the con man, then how come so many are based on the mark trying to rip off someone? In the pigeon drop, the mark is trying to rip off the con man. In insider-knowledge scams, the mark is trying to rip off honest traders or gamblers. With "white van" scams, the mark thinks he's buying stolen goods.
Con men ply their trade by appearing fragile or needing help, by seeming vulnerable...
Sounds like a few women I've dated. Sometimes, love and romance is also a con game, now isn't it?
Sounds like you have an inherent understanding of Thoreau. "If a man comes to you with the obvious intention of doing you good, run for your life."
Similar to the upcoming US election results
...it's because you're a gullible fool. When I get conned, it's because someone "took advantage of the human oxytocin-mediated attachment system". Well, who wouldn't fall for that?
"If we humans have such big brains, how can we get conned?"
Ummm... if god is so powerful can he make a rock so big he can't move it?
There is a spectrum of intelligence. Some of the more intelligent people are coming up with cons. People of lower intelligence fall for them. No magic here.
When dealing with $3,000 a light has to go off in your head that says "there are procedures for dealing with this". Go to the police. Tell the guy you'll walk to the nearest police station with him, or that you'll call the non-emergency number with your cel phone. The police will hold the money for a statutory limit, and if nobody claims it, THEN you might get it. YMMV on the laws in your jurisdiction and how honest the cops are.
Now, if you're not a totally honest man a different light goes off in your head. That light says "How can I get this money, nevermind the victim or due process".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
With such a black and white perspective, I'd be willing to bet you are just as susceptible to cons as people of "lower intelligence".
There is no doubt that functional imaging such as fMRI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fmri) PET (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positron_emission_tomography) and MEG (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoencephalography) have been a tremendous boon to the field of neuroscience. But seeing localized activity in the brain and then drawing a conclusion about the mechanisms of behavior is the wrong way to interpret the data. I hate Psychology Today for pulling this crap all the time, activity in the brain is simply data to be interpreted, not a conclusion in itself. This is like when a segment of DNA is implicated in some sort of behavior or developmental trait, and we see the headlines "X gene discovered!!!". The question is simply too complex to answer with that kind of analysis.
We cannot view the brain as a simple modular system, which merely needs a circuit diagram drawn to discover its mysteries. Functional specialization no doubt exists, but in an interconnected and complex way that resists simple explanations of "oh, this part of the brain lit up during this therefore this". Localization alone tells us little, it is only in complement with studies of neurotransmitter mechanisms, single cell recordings, computational theories, and numerous other techniques of brain exploration that any real answers are going to be found. THOMAS doesn't explain anything, its just a piece in the puzzle.
Germany during World War II, for example, most believed and followed Hitler. Germany had some smart people, but they made stupid decisions and fell for Hitler's scam.
The same is true of Democratic and Republican US citizens falling for their candidate's scams. Once elected into office, do you really think they will keep every promise they made and do what they told their supporters they would do?
If it sounds too good to be true, most of the time it isn't true at all, it is a scam.
If, for example, you get an email saying you won the UK lottery chances are it is a scam, or Bill Gates giving out millions if you forward this email to 20 of your friends and family, it is a scam, or someone dying in Nigeria with your last name and has $10 million waiting to be wired to you and need your contact info and banking numbers etc, it is a scam.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
At the same time, people can be over confident and what they know can deceive them. I would bet there is a set of cons that hit smart people harder.
On that note, I have meet some very smart but very stupid people.
Im a gamer, not a grammer major. This post is full of spelling and grammer mistakes.
What is the probability of the coin coming up heads on the 10th flip?
0%, since of course you switched out the coin with a two-tailed coin after flip 9.
AccountKiller
With such a black and white perspective
Since GP used the word 'spectrum', your hypothesis is full of fail.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
...just pause a little and wait for the other guy to react with a "no", then follow it up with a "yup, that's mine".
You then put them on the back foot to fight for it, or you get the whole thing, take the moolah and then turn the rest of the card/license etc into authorities. For someone losing their wallet, getting their card and stuff back is the fair-result, not too many would be lucky enough to keep the cash... so you're still a good samaritan for giving back the stuff that's hard to manage :p
And the first AC posted about a "black and white perspective", an idiom indicating two discrete extremes, no middle ground, which runs directly counter to the concept of a "spectrum"
Smart people fall for cons too. I knew a guy back in graduate school, finishing up his PhD in CS, smart fellow. He fell for the Three Card Monte the first time he went to New York City.
Smart != street smart.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
The concept of a spectrum is not "directly counter" to a black-and-white perspective. The spectrum exists independent of his point of view. He's cut the spectrum into discrete blocks (i.e, "more intelligent" and "less intelligent"). That's what people with a black-and-white perspective do. It doesn't matter if they acknowledge a spectrum if they don't actually view it as a spectrum.
You're arguing semantics and ignoring the core of the argument. "More intelligent" as he is using it is just a euphemism for smart. "Less intelligent" is a euphemism for stupid. Yes, he gives lip service to a spectrum, but his argument is black-and-white: Smart people con stupid people.
A Christian may believe that there is a spectrum from good to evil but if they believe all murders go to hell, they are still thinking in black and white terms. So while they acknowledge a spectrum, they are still coming from a black and white perspective. If all people on one side of an imaginary line are damned and all on the other are saved, and never the twain shall meet, how is this anything other than black and white? Just because they say "spectrum", "less", or "more"? No.
But I don't. --It doesn't stop me from endeavoring to be honest, but there are certain types of cons which honest people fall for, perhaps more easily than the corrupt.
Like this whole sham economy we have running around us. Ideas like, paying back the bank interest feels natural because an honest man doesn't want something for nothing. And yet it's arguably one of the biggest, most willfully destructive scams currently going.
Just a thought.
-FL
There's an important difference: "Smart" and "stupid" are absolutes while "more intelligent" and "less intelligent" are not. If I compare two people with IQ 120 and 130 with each other, the 130 one is more intelligent while the 120 one is less intelligent - but the 120 one is not neccessarily stupid. Of course the IQ is just one measure of certain kinds of performance, but it works to illustrate the point.
Also, there are various kinds of smartness. A savvy con man can con a Nobel prize-awarded genius while failing to con an averagely-intelligent cop who simply has seen those kinds of tricks too often to fall for them. Conning people requires a certain kind of interpersonal aptitude (cf. TFA where they mention that 2% of the tested students are capable of simulating trustworthiness), which has little to do with abstract problem solving abilities or other "traditional smart" things.
So yeah, as far as cons are concerned there are lots of constantly shifting imaginary lines and it'd be best if the people on both sides never meet - because when they do someone is likely to get conned.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)