David's
dicussion on "Scams"
The Seven Psychological Principles of
Scams:
Protect
Yourself by Learning the Techniques
Good hustlers are excellent intuitive
psychologists. Just like magicians they understand enough about
how the mind works to exploit its vulnerabilities. Our fascination
with hustlers is insatiable and, despite being criminals, they are
frequently portrayed by Hollywood in a flattering light, in films
like
The Sting,
Catch Me If You Can
and the
Ocean's Eleven
trilogy.
Of course the reality is
nowhere near as romantic, especially if you've fallen for one of
the cons. Here are
Seven major psychological principles used in short cons to part
people from their cash).
1. Distraction
Attention is like
spotlight,
which means when it's pointing in one direction it pretty much
ignores everything else.
Except people don't
realise how little information coming in from the outside world we
actually process. Naturally you don't notice what you don't
notice, plus the mind is designed to fill in the gaps for us. But
hustlers do know and almost every con uses some kind of
distraction.
The classic
example is 'Three-card
Monte'
sometimes called 'Find the Lady', a rigged card game in which the
aim is to find one card out of three after the hustler shuffles
them around.
At the heart of this
hustle is the orchestration of a crowd of onlookers who the mark
(that's you and me) thinks are all fellow punters, but who are
actually in on the game. Marks are distracted by the situation in
the street—the banter, laughter and excitement—and don't realise
the whole thing is a setup: no matter what the mark thinks they
know, there is no way to win. The hustler is always one step
ahead. They let their
fellow accomplices win a lot and then when the mark steps up to
bet, they take their money.
Stajano and Wilson call
Three-card Monte 'polite mugging'.
2. Social compliance
The classic study
showing how compliant we are, especially when told to do things by
an authority figure, was carried out by
Stanley Milgram.
Hustlers know all about
this and happily exploit our automatic deference to authority
figures. People will hand over credit cards to people they think
are waiters, car keys to people they think are car park attendants
and give access to their house to people they think are from the
water board. The best known online example is a 'phishing attack'
where people give fraudsters their bank details in response to an
email that purports to be from their bank.
3. Herd principle
People are like sheep:
they can't help following each other.
The classic study
on
conformity
was conducted by Solomon Asch in the 1950s showing that people
will deny evidence from their own eyes to fit in with others. In
the Three-card Monte con, the crowd of shills around the game
creates the herd for the mark to follow.
Online there are all
kinds of tricks people can use to make others think there is a
herd when actually there is only one person. The practice of
'astroturfing' means creating multiple online identities to fake
grass-roots support for a politician. In peer-to-peer networks the
multiple identities created by people trying to influence them are
known as Sybils.
Whether online or
offline, though,
groups exert an enormous influence
over us.
4. Dishonesty
Fear is the mind-killer.
Hustlers know that
people are fearful and play on this fact. Some cons involve
selling goods to marks that are used for illegal purposes. For
example one scam described by Stajano and Wilson involves selling
people 'cancelled banknotes', actually just pieces of paper which
have been spray-painted, then telling marks they have an amazing
gadget which will clean off the ink and make the notes usable
again.
Marks are discouraged
from reporting the scam because they fear they would be
implicating themselves, so the hustler wins both ways.
5. Deception
People are easily
tricked, even when they think they are being careful. Hustlers
take advantage of the fact that most people go along with their
expectations of what will happen in any given situation. If the
hustler's behaviour fits the situation then people will accept
what they say.
One classic is 'van
dragging' where hustlers target a warehouse from which they want
to steal the goods being delivered. They hang a sign saying the
door is broken and those delivering should call a mobile number.
The hustlers, hiding nearby, answer and steal all the goods from
the delivery driver, all the while complaining that they've called
the locksmith and he hasn't turned up yet. The delivery driver
often helps the hustlers load their van.
6. Need and greed
Once hustlers know what
people want, even if it doesn't exist, they are in a position to
manipulate them. They will play on people's desperation;
unfortunately the more desperate people are, the easier they are
to con.
A classic short-con that
works people's greed is the 'ring reward rip-off'. A female
hustler enters a bar and shows-off a new ring to the barman (the
mark) claiming it cost thousands (actually it's a cheap fake). The
female hustler leaves to be replaced by a male accomplice. The
female hustler then rings the barman to say she lost her ring. The
male hustler then claims to have found it but asks if there's a
reward. Over the telephone the female gives a price but the barman
realises he can make a profit so tells the male hustler a much
lower price. The barman hands over the money and, of course,
neither of the hustlers are seen again.
This con relies on the
barman's greed or it won't work. In reality it works surprisingly
often.
7. Time pressure
A
classic study
of how people make decisions under time pressure demonstrates what
hustlers already know: when there's no time to think people rely
on short cuts and emotional responses to a situation.
So hustlers make sure
the mark is under time pressure so they will respond in a
predicable fashion, i.e. by being greedy, or giving in to the herd
principle, or by bending to the will of an authority figure.
Who are the marks?
And if you think
no one falls for these tricks then think again. A recently
published UK report found that each year 3.2 million people in the
UK fall for mass marketed scams (OFT,
2009).
That's 5% of the population,
each year.
Collectively they lost £3.5 billion. £3.5
billion.
The OFT report
investigated those who had been conned and reached some insightful
conclusions:
