Identifying and Dealing with Con Artists
What I watched: “The Psychology of Con Artists, and How to Avoid Them” by Maria Konnikova for Big Think. Posted July 27, 2016.
Well, the orange wannabe dictator (I try to not say or type his name) has ostensibly thrown his hat into the 2024 ring. Even worse, the Republican party for the most part has remained silent about it. No denouncing of the man who instigated the attempted overthrow of our democracy. No denouncing of the man who stole classified documents. No denouncing of the man who tried to leverage every political opportunity to enrich himself financially at the cost of the nation.
Silence. With rare exception, the entire Republican party is complicit in bolstering the worst and most corrupt President in our nation’s history. They appear to be entirely fine with a con artist at the helm of their party’s direction.
As a result, we must remain vigilant. We must be on the lookup for the con artists among us, and sadly many right-wing and Republican politicians fall into the con artist bucket in my opinion. Not that there aren’t politicians from all parties that deceive and lie a bit, but what’s emanating from the Republican party is off-the-charts bonkers disinformation and deception and we can’t tolerate it and have a civil and functioning democracy.
When I stumbled on this video by Maria Konnikova for Big Think, it seemed immediately relevant to us having to know the mindset of a con artist and what we can do to blunt their influence whether they are politicians or from any walk of life.
There's really no way to tell if someone's lying. So there's no way to spot deception and say you're not telling the truth, and there's no such thing as the Pinocchio's nose of lying, no one sign that will tell you this person is not to be trusted. But we can learn to recognize some of the persuasive techniques that people might use to try to get us on their side.
The first thing we have to realize is that con artists first try to get us to like them. How many times did you hear a former guy supporter being interviewed say something about him speaking at their level, talking like them, seems like a real average guy, and so on. All of that is utter bullshit of course. I have never seen any likability in him, but evidently some with what I see as faulty critical thinking skills relate to him that way. It boggles the mind.
This is also likely why we can hear from a politician who is highly experienced, deeply informed about public policy, and espousing sensible and smart political directions, but if they aren’t “likable” for some reason, we might tune them out. Perhaps this is also why pretty people often get a pass. We like pretty. We tolerate from pretty people things we’d never tolerate from others we perceive as less attractive. This is a sad reality, but it appears to be true much of the time.
When we like someone, it becomes much more difficult to spot con artist personalities and tactics that we might more readily notice if they come from someone we don’t like. When we like someone, our objectivity flies out the window. We immediately fall prey to the subjectivity that blinds us to the fact that we’re being conned.
Avoiding succumbing to con artists is something we need to be on the alert for throughout our lives. It’s not just about politics. So, how do people get us to like them?
Similarity matters. Oh, he’s just an average guy I’d like to have a beer with. That woman comes from my same background so they must be a good person. They’re a fan of that sports team so they must be cool. They hate the same people I hate so I like them. The list goes on. We tend to like in a quick, knee jerk fashion those who seem like us or like what we like.
Familiarity matters. We like those people who seem familiar to us. Maybe we’ve seen them around the community a lot. I recall someone in my own local community who I privately knew was a rather awful person, but because they had been around the community and, I think performatively, done a few nice things publicly, they got a pass anytime someone heard what they were really like. The masses went with the familiar and chose to ignore any facts to the contrary.
Salespeople, for example, know how to foster familiarity in various ways. No disrespect to those in sales positions, but it’s an industry that’s rewarded by only one thing, making the sale. Most salespeople will do just about anything within reason to make that sale. That too often includes lies and deception, even if that’s just a slight nudging of the truth in their favor.
And people who are trying to sell us something, be they con artists or just softer salespeople, they know this, and so they latch on to characteristics about us that are pretty apparent. You know, they might find out that I'm from the Boston area and say, “Oh, the Red Sox,” and try to see my reaction. Am I an avid Red Sox fan? If I am, the conversation will now go in that direction. All of a sudden we're bonding over baseball. This can't be a bad person. And now all of a sudden they're selling me something, but now from a very different point of view, from a point of view of a friend, of someone who's a buddy, of someone who's really cool, rather than the point of view of someone who's a salesperson.
Disheartening, isn’t it? This sometimes rightfully makes us suspect of new people we meet. Do they really like me, or do they want something from me? This can play out in rather overt ways, but it can also play out in subtle and nuanced ways, perhaps in ways even the person trying to utilize creating familiarity to get their way doesn’t realize themselves.
If a new friendship advances extremely quickly in a superficial manner, and then the new “friend” soon requests something of us, as my friend J.D. used to say, “The red flags are not waiving you in.” Caution should be the watchword in such situations.
Hold off on commitments. Don’t say yes immediately. Stick with a policy of taking time to answer anyone requesting something from you, especially something that parts you with your money of an extensive amount of your time.
There are other ways that people can frame requests to more likely result in success for the asking person.
One such approach is the foot in the door technique. Once someone’s foot is in the door with an easy, small request, then they ask for what you really want.
First, someone puts forth a small request. Something that won’t create much resistance. “Can I have just two minutes of your time?” “Sure!” “What do you think of XYZ?” A quick and pleasant exchange takes place with the answering person fulfilling the simple request. That sets the stage.
Later, that same person who made the request now returns to ask for a big financial donation, hours of your volunteer time, writing a letter of recommendation for them to a future employer, or any of a number of heavier lifts when it comes to our attention, time, or money.
But because you've helped me in the past, even though it was a very, very small favor that you were asking, you're much more likely to help me now because we like to be consistent. And if we think that we're nice people who help others because we've already helped someone, we're going to keep helping. Plus, if I'm the type of person who was worth helping once, I'm worth helping again, because clearly you didn't make the wrong decision the first time around. So repeat requests are really hard to say no to.
Ah, saying no. Saying no more often has become a strategy that has improved my life considerably. I still say yes to things, but I intentionally build guardrails into such situations that have served me well. When answering a request, unless it’s something I want to do and can easily do in a few minutes, I try to never reply immediately. I let some time pass before responding. If I’m pressured to answer quickly, then my stock answer is I’m not able to answer so in that case the answer is an automatic no.
Relatedly, I have a 72-hour policy about responding to hot topic posts on social media, especially if I sense any inherent drama or misplaced passion around it. This policy has saved me from saying some things I’d regret or answering without all of the information at hand. Often once the 72-hours have lapsed, the heated topic has died down in light of new evidence or information that reframes the original hot-button issue.
I’m not sure what chain of events or upbringing made me into a people pleaser ready to say yes to most requests no matter what reticence I might be feeling, but it seems to be how I was wired for a long time. Even today, I have to be incredibly conscious of my responses to requests because too often I’ve said yes only to have a wave of regret instantly wash over me. No more. I’m pretty good these days at saying no, or at least saying “Sorry, I need a couple of days to think about that” and taking the time I need.
Sometimes you have to realize that, you know what, just because I said yes once doesn't mean that I should say yes a second time, and it doesn't make me a bad person to say no. It's one of those things that you have to give yourself permission to say no and you have to give yourself permission to exit situations that we don't feel comfortable in.
A technique called door in the face is the opposite of foot in the door. In these cases, the asking person asks for something egregious, something that immediately sparks a response of no. This might be something that asks for an extensive amount of your time, or a lot of money, or an above and beyond effort of some kind.
So, we say no. The asking person comes back to us a while later and acknowledges that the ask was a big imposition or burdensome request. But then comes what is relatively a smaller and easier request to fulfill. Rather than committing a few days of our time, maybe they ask for an hour. Rather than cutting them a check for $10,000 for their project, they ask for $100. A huge ask followed by a lesser ask. Con artists, and I’m aware I’m using con artist in the broadest of senses here, know you’re likely to now say yes. It’s still a big ask of us, but we compare it to the previous bigger ask and it engenders a situation in which we find it more difficult to say no.
If we had been asked the smaller ask first, we probably would have said no. But in light of the bigger ask, now we’re more likely to say yes. We feel guilty about turning down the bigger request and it sets us up to feel obligated to now say yes to the smaller request.
We want to feel like good people. Con artists know this and they take advantage of it by making us do things that will make us feel like good people, and putting us in situations where it's really difficult to refuse because refusing would mean we're not good people, and that's not a feeling that we're comfortable with at all.
Another con artist tactic utilizes the concept of scarcity. There’s only so much of X or there’s only a limited time to take advantage of Y.
When someone puts time pressure on you to commit to a yes or no in any situation, that’s a bad sign.
For example, let’s say a company extends a job offer to you, but requires you to reply immediately or within a very short time period. That’s sometimes referred to as an exploding offer, an offer that’s only on the table for a limited time. Many job seekers will succumb to this tactic and take the job even if they have trepidations about doing so.
I know. We don’t like to think of employers as con artists, but such timebound job offers take a page directly out of the con artist’s playbook. I’m sure some Human Resources people and hiring managers reading this might balk at these types of offers being a con, but I thnk they are. A bad employer preys on the fears and uncertainty they can manifest in a candidate by pressuring them to make a quick decision. Good employers give job candidates time to think about an offer.
This same tactic is used in advertising and marketing all the time. “Just 48 hours to buy this product at 50% off!” “Sign up for this course in the next 24 hours for 20% off.” Those types of tactics are, at their core, a type of con even though again I’m sure advertising and marketing people reading this will probably disagree with me because, well, that’s their job to convince people to buy a product or service.
People who are trying to persuade us, whether they're con artists, whether they're businesspeople, whether they're salespeople, whether they're politicians, they really key in on the human desire to say yes, and the fact that we often just don't want to exit a situation because we don't know how, we don't know how to get out of it and still feel like good people, still maintain our dignity. And so knowing how to say no is, I think, the crucial lesson that we can learn for extricating ourselves out of a lot of these persuasive situations.
I’ll leave you with this article, How and When to Say No, one of many such articles because saying no is so difficult for so many. Perhaps the video I discuss here and this article can empower you to say no more often and build in your own guardrails that give you the breathing room to think about your responses.
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