Saalfield was adamant. By this time, she was back in Florida. But the loss was too great. She couldn’t afford it, and neither could her children. It was worth an extra flight. She returned to the city, anxious for the return of her $27,000. Her calls went unanswered. So she went in person. One time, she recalls, she stood in front of the parlor for the better part of a day, ringing the buzzer some fifteen times. No one answered.
Debra alerted the police, and in short order hired a lawyer and private investigator. If she couldn’t get her money back herself, maybe they would be more persuasive.
* * *
“Most people are intuitive psychologists in their daily lives—wondering why people think or behave as they do,” says Nicholas Epley, a University of Chicago psychologist who studies how we perceive others and what can make some of us more accurate than others in those perceptions. From the moment we see someone, we form impressions of who they are, what they’re like, whether we’re likely to get along with them or not. The process happens almost instantaneously—some research shows that we make certain judgments, like trustworthiness or likely level of power, within fractions of a second, and that those judgments then endure no matter how much longer our conversation lasts—and it happens unconsciously. Unless we’re actively people-watching and trying to make predictions about strangers’ backgrounds, lives, and desires—a vaunted pastime—we don’t do this for any particular reason except that it’s the perfectly natural thing to do. We’re curious. And who knows when we might have to use the insight we’ve gleaned. Whether we mean to be or not, we are all of us intuitive psychologists.
For con artists, though, intuitive psychology, the process of sizing up who someone is, what they’re made of, what they desire, isn’t a nice evolutionary by-product or a fun way to pass the time. It’s their livelihood. One of their great skills is to discern details of a victim’s life without her knowledge, so that she doesn’t even realize how much she’s given away—and then, to use those very details to impress the victim with their insight. That ability is, indeed, the first step of a con: the put-up. The moment when a confidence artist investigates and chooses his prey. And it is, in more senses than one, the most crucial step of the entire operation. Size someone up well, and you can sell them anything. A magic crystal. An Egyptian curse. The Eiffel Tower. Fail to do so, and the most elaborate or attractive master plan will fall on deaf ears.
Since the late 1990s, Epley has been exploring the underpinnings of intuitive judgment. We come up with instinctive explanations for other people’s appearance, actions, and words all the time—but how are we actually doing it? he wondered. And how accurate is our intuition? The process, he posits, is twofold. There’s person perception—being able to tell who someone is, or what psychologist Daniel Gilbert terms “ordinary personology.” We look at basic physical features, like gender, age, and height, at facial structure, at skin tone, at body language (standing tall? hunched? leisurely? hurried?), and, of course, at clothing. And then, there’s what Epley terms, borrowing from Daniel Wegner, mind perception—being able to tell what others feel, what they desire, what drives and motivates them. We listen to their words and their voice, read their gestures and their tone, infer between the lines to get a sense of their inner world.
When someone gestures with her hand, we can almost immediately tell whether it means, “I don’t care,” versus “I’m angry,” versus “I’m thrilled.” When someone activates her zygomatic major, a muscle on either side of the mouth that is almost impossible to control consciously, we can tell she is genuinely happy. When someone moves quickly, expansively, and with determination, we can tell that she’s either angry or exceptionally thrilled, depending on context; if she’s more lethargic and closed, it could signal boredom. Our faces are capable of some three thousand expressions, according to Paul Ekman’s estimates. And we can reliably read at least seven of the basic contours (and multiple permutations of them). From our posture to how we hold a glass of water, from our choice of outfit to how we’ve styled our hair and how we open the door, we throw off cues about ourselves and our minds with every step, every flicker of the eye, every choice of phrase.
That is, if, like the grifter scanning the room for his prey, you’re ready to catch them. While we laypeople are good at the broad strokes basics, we tend to fare worse when it comes to reading nuance. While we’re good at the overt bodily cues, we are not so great at the cues of the mind. We infer entire belief systems from one rogue statement, craft personalities and backstories with no bearing on reality from one surface clue. We simplify when we should caveat and gloss where we should elaborate. Often, we use snap judgments—what Daniel Kahneman calls heuristics—when we meet someone new, and end up with a superficial, highly stereotyped version of what they are like. Take Saalfield’s impression of Mitchell: charming, comforting, pretty. And indeed, Mitchell is always elegant, impeccably dressed, well coiffed and manicured, with an enticing, open smile. She relies in part on those surface cues to inspire the type of trust she will need to lure her fortune-seekers.
We know, theoretically, that we should pay more heed and exercise caution, that we should incorporate other people’s perspectives into our own, walk a mile in their shoes, or whatever other cliché we want to invoke. But practically, we remain superbly egocentric in all our judgments. In his book Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Its Limits, the philosopher Bertrand Russell observed, “The behavior of other people is in many ways analogous to our own, and we suppose that it must have analogous causes.” We are our own prototype of being, of motivation, of behavior. People, however, are far from being a homogeneous mass. And so, when we depart from our own perspective, as we inevitably must, we often make errors, sometimes significant ones. In one series of studies, Epley and his colleagues found that people were far slower to discern a different perspective from their own, and that under time pressure they were unlikely to do so at all. He called it “egocentric anchoring”: we are our own point of departure. We assume that others know what we know, believe what we believe, and like what we like.
For the layperson for whom conning is far from mind, the frequent inaccuracy in judgment isn’t silly or stupid. It is, quite often, adaptive. As with white lies, it is not always helpful to our sense of self and well-being to correctly discern someone else’s negative feelings or nasty thoughts. It’s likewise not helpful to think their views at opposing ends from our own: we like people who are more similar to us more than those who differ, and isn’t it better that the world be filled with friends rather than strangers? In a study of married couples, psychologists Jeffry Simpson, William Ickes, and Minda Oriña videotaped married couples as they addressed a problem point in their marriage. After, each spouse viewed the interaction, recorded her own feelings, and tried to decipher her partner’s at each point in the conversation. Accuracy, it turns out, was overrated. Those who were better at reading threatening cues also felt worse about their partners and marriages by the end of the study. The less accurate actually came out ahead—as did their relationship satisfaction. We never learn to be expert people-readers because that expertise can backfire spectacularly. Why form accurate judgments when the inaccurate ones make our lives far more pleasant and easy?
For a con artist, however, accuracy is paramount, and feelings of self-worth, far less so: for him, self-worth is ingrained in his very ability to ferret out social nuance and personal vagaries better than anyone else. And there is one central factor that can override most shortcomings and make us far more accurate at figuring out who someone is and what makes her tick: motivation. People who are motivated to be accurate, whether financially or personally, suddenly become far more adept at reading faces, bodies, and minds alike. In one set of studies, people in powerful roles failed spectacularly at reading others. But when the researchers, Jennifer Overbeck and Bernadette Park, gave them a motivation for accuracy—make your subordinates feel engaged and included—they were suddenly far better at person-reading than they’d ever
been. They were more accurate in judging employees’ personalities and abilities than their counterparts who’d been instructed to pay attention to efficiency and productivity.
Con artists are motivated, always. They are us, as our best, most perceptive selves—who’ve also had years of practice. They are masters of the put-up: they can read our background, our beliefs, our emotions and their shifts, even the desires we thought we’d hidden so well. When Saalfield walked into Zena, Mitchell likely knew before she even opened her mouth that she was emotionally vulnerable. She was attuned to her every gesture, from the way she moved to the way she shook her hand. Saalfield didn’t even need to mention a troubled love or work situation. To a discerning eye, it was all written on her face.
On a winter evening, I made my way to a mind reading of my very own, this one from tarot cards. I knew all about the cold read—the signs that I would be giving out that would tip the reader of my future off about my inner life. And I agonized over how much to leave in the open and how much to omit. Should I take off my wedding band? Arrive without a purse? What should I wear? In the end, I opted for looking like myself (minus my name), to give the experiment an air of authenticity. Did I have any one question I wanted to focus on? my reader asked. I opted for a take on my career. Soon, the man was busy telling me all about the woes of the publishing industry, the instability, the career uncertainty, the changes that the digital world had brought with it. He was discussing my job insecurities—but made sure to temper them with optimistic interludes: somehow, despite all the uncertainty, it would all work out. He even knew that at moments of deep panic, I thought about dropping it altogether. If the industry was crumbling, would I be able to get out in time?
Of course, Mr. Tarot wasn’t actually talking about publishing. He had no idea I was a writer. He was using lines that would fit most any job description, and dilemmas that most any youngish woman in the earlier stages of her career would likely ask herself. Who doesn’t worry about the future of their career path? Who doesn’t think these days that their industry is in a state of flux? Who hasn’t thought about leaving it all behind? Each statement could have applied just as easily to any number of jobs, but to me it seemed as if he actually had an insight into what, precisely, I did. He left me with a reassuring message. It would work out, and I didn’t have to panic about losing my ability to make a living—as long as I didn’t let my self-doubt get the better of me. I was my own worst enemy, and I could at any moment sabotage my own success. I had to stop those corrosive thought patterns and think instead in a more constructive, positive light. Then the world would be mine for the taking. Not bad advice. I nodded appreciatively as I walked back out to the street. Maybe there was something to this after all.
The psychic—and the con artist more broadly—isn’t just a master cold reader and psychologist. He is someone who has endless practice getting things right, and is endlessly motivated to avoid making a glaring error. An error in the put-up, after all, is a costly one indeed; it could render the entire con ineffective. As it turns out, our best, practiced selves can tell quite a bit about others, even things that might seem unbelievable. In 1988, psychologist Linda Albright and her colleagues at the University of Connecticut ran three studies to test how well motivated individuals could read one another in what she termed zero acquaintance conditions—that is, the first time they ever met. She found considerable accuracy in judgments of both extroversion and conscientiousness: not only did observers tend to agree, but the people they were judging thought the impression representative of themselves. In another series of studies, highly motivated individuals were better at discerning the facial emotions and tone of voice of a stranger. They were, as well, more accurate at determining the stranger’s internal emotional state.
In 2010, Nicholas Epley and Tal Eyal of Ben-Gurion University published the results of a series of experiments aimed at improving our person and mind perception skills. The title of their paper: “How to Seem Telepathic.” Many of our errors, the researchers found, stem from a basic mismatch between how we analyze ourselves and how we analyze others. When it comes to ourselves, we employ a fine-grained, highly contextualized level of detail. When we think about others, however, we operate at a much higher, more generalized and abstract level. For instance, when answering the same question about ourselves or others—how attractive are you?—we use very different cues. For our own appearance, we think about how our hair is looking that morning, whether we got enough sleep, how well that shirt matches our complexion. For that of others, we form a surface judgment based on overall gist. So, there are two mismatches: we aren’t quite sure how others are seeing us, and we are incorrectly judging how they see themselves.
If, however, we can adjust our level of analysis, we suddenly appear much more intuitive and accurate. In one study, people became more accurate at discerning how others see them when they thought their photograph was going to be evaluated a few months later, as opposed to the same day, while in another, the same accuracy shift happened if they thought a recording they’d made describing themselves would be heard a few months later. Suddenly, they were using the same abstract lens that others are likely to use naturally—and so, they were much more perceptive about how they came off in reality, and not just in their own minds.
For an enterprising mind reader—that is, the grifter mid-put-up—this skill is crucial: you have to know what cues others are using to judge you, and what cues simply don’t matter. If you think you look tired that day, your confidence might go down, and your persuasiveness along with it, but if you realize that no one else will notice and instead your overall demeanor will make a much bigger difference, you can focus on the big picture, confidence fully intact.
In a second series of studies, Epley and Eyal looked at the opposite effect: do we become better at reading other people when we approach them at the same intimate level of construal as we naturally do ourselves? This time, they gave photographs of other students to their subjects, telling them that the picture had been taken either earlier that day or a few months prior. Sure enough, those who thought the photographs had been taken hours earlier became much more nuanced in their judgments than those who thought they were a few months old—they were looking at others for the same fine level of detail they did in themselves. It was a relatively simple change in thought, but one that came with a high payoff. A con artist looks at everyone at that fine level. When it comes to the put-up, accuracy matters—and con men don’t just want to know how someone looks to them. They want to correctly reflect how they want to be seen.
What’s more, confidence artists can use what they’re learning as they go in order to get us to give up even more. We are more trusting of people who seem more familiar and more similar to us, and we open up to them in ways we don’t to strangers: those like us and those we know or recognize are unlikely to want to hurt us. And they’re more likely to understand us. If your new acquaintance shares your taste for comedy clubs and favors the same everyday style of dress, it’s a good indication that you may also be compatible in other respects. After all, tastes, habits, and lifestyle choices have to come from somewhere. Those who are very different from us, however, may have motives that aren’t quite as friendly. My own psychic dropped a seemingly unrelated “You’re not originally from New York, are you?” early in our reading. No, I’m not, I told him. Neither was he, he assured me, but he wouldn’t live anywhere else. I nodded in agreement. Throughout the reading, many more such “similarities” came to light—he, too, had been uncertain about his career; he wanted to make some changes; he was actually far more artistic and felt, at times, that he was selling out, but he had to pay the bills. By the end, I thought him a kindred spirit. (As I’m sure do most of those who emerge from his readings—much like Sylvia Mitchell’s clients saw her as a friend, someone quite like them, with problems and aspirations similar to their own.)
In one study, psychologist Lisa DeBruine asked people to play a sequential trust game, a game
where the way you act depends on how you think your partner will act. (The most famous example of the genre is the prisoner’s dilemma, where everyone benefits from staying silent but if someone talks and you don’t, you fare worst of all.) No player’s partner, however, actually existed. What she thought was a virtual teammate was in fact a photograph that had been subtly altered in one of two ways: it was morphed to resemble either a stranger or the player herself. The more similar to her own face the picture became, the more trustworthy a player judged it to be. Look at that face; how can someone not trust and respect it? Even more surface similarities, like shared birthdays (even birth months) or names, create an effect of greater liking—and greater willingness to help and comply.
But both similarity and familiarity can be faked, as the con artist can easily tell you—and the more you can fake it, the more real information will be forthcoming. Similarity is easy enough. When we like someone or feel an affinity for them, we tend to mimic their behavior, facial expressions, and gestures, a phenomenon known as the chameleon effect. But the effect works the other way, too. If we mimic someone else, they will feel closer and more similar to us; we can fake the natural liking process quite well. We perpetuate minor cons every day, often without realizing it, and sometimes knowing what we do all too well, when we mirror back someone’s words or interests, feign a shared affinity for a sports team or a mutual hatred of a brand. The signs that usually serve us reliably can easily be massaged, especially in the short term—all a good con artist needs.
“Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view,” Dale Carnegie advised in his treatise on winning friends and influencing people, a sort of unwitting bible for cons in training. And if you’re having trouble? “Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.” Someone mentions something in passing? Latch on to it and mirror it back multifold. Did you read one cue correctly—a Floridian address, perhaps, from an unseasonable tan? Seize on it. Do so masterfully, and you become better liked and seem more interesting yourself. Our defenses drop away. And suddenly you have all the interests and beliefs you can work with, making the put-up a matter of a moment.
The Confidence Game Page 7