Advertisement
Maria Konnikova: You are absolutely right. Few things throw us off our game as much as so-called cognitive load: how taxed our mental capacities are at any given moment. And few things create as much cognitive load as that constant companion of hyper-connectivity, multitasking. A con artist doesn't even need to do much to capitalise on it. All he has to do is approach us when our attention is distracted – we're texting a friend, checking Twitter, posting the view of the park on Instagram – and we become far more likely to believe what he says. Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert points out that we understand the world in two stages: First, we believe everything, and only then do we verify and confirm or disconfirm. Cognitive load disrupts that verification step, so we end up remaining in the "believing" state, which is precisely where the grifter wants us.
Advertisement
I do think that's part of it: Who has too much to lose by admitting they fell for my wiles? The other part, though, is that con artists are expert at creating such a situation in most any victim – almost all of us can be held back by pride in certain circumstances. If you've been strung along long enough, and have invested enough emotional and material resources, you become far less likely to admit it. Because admitting it would mean admitting you're a sap, and no one wants to believe that.Do you think there are some people who don't really want to know if they are being conned?
Oh, absolutely. I think most of us would rather not know. We love having a positive image of ourselves in our heads. We love to think of ourselves as intelligent, discerning people. We want to believe we're good judges of character. Being a victim of a con goes against all of that. Far better to keep believing it was simply bad luck.On VICE Sports: How Frauds and Con Artists Crippled Scotland's Greatest Soccer ClubAre there any particular cons you predict will become more common in the future?
I think we're in the midst of huge technological changes, some of which we can't even begin to imagine. We're living in a con artist's dream land. It's like the Wild West of yore (and it's no coincidence that cons absolutely flourished in the days of westward expansion). Honestly, we are all becoming more vulnerable along with every rapid technological advance.
Advertisement
Technology breeds crime in two ways: First, it has expanded the possible ways for grifters to approach us – social media, dating sites, and the like – so that our area of vulnerability, so to speak, is far greater. All it takes is for one weak link to bring down an entire network. And second, it has made us feel safer. We think we are terribly sophisticated because we've created all of these tech advances, so we let down our guard. Technology makes us feel invulnerable, and it shouldn't.Right – you have a great story in the book about the evolution of the Nigerian prince scam. Do you think that will continue to evolve with new technology?
Yes, the original Nigerian scam was perpetrated through the newspapers. I'll leave the particulars in the book, but it looked remarkably similar to what we get these days in the 419 scams that pepper our inboxes. All you need is to give a small advance amount, and lo and behold, countless riches are yours. It's the good old Spanish Prisoner, one of the oldest scams of all time.How will it evolve? We will always want something for nothing, huge returns with little investment – and so, we will always be susceptible to different ways of framing that same basic request. It might be via email, or maybe a Facebook request, or perhaps a Twitter follower, or through a platform not yet invented, but the basic contours of the story won't change. Someone will be able to offer us a lot of money, and we won't have to do all that much for it.Unlike old media, which was largely run by publishing houses and other corporations, the internet has few gatekeepers. How have scammers manipulated this impulse to believe what might seem credible because it is published online?
There's a lot of [research] that shows that people don't really discriminate between outlet quality online. Many are just as likely to believe some shady site as the New York Times. It makes it much easier for con artists to beef up their credibility – create a few links, a few profiles, a few pages, and suddenly you seem totally legit. One con artist I write about, Matthew Brown, loves to create Wikipedia entries and social media profiles, all linking to one another. It's easier than ever to build up a paper trail that's difficult to distinguish from the original.Follow Elizabeth Nicholas on Twitter.