The Confidence Game

by Maria Konnikova

  Here’s the most pernicious part: when you try to be reflective, you only tend to polarize your existing beliefs. Langer found that initial optimism grew only stronger with some “rational” thought. Yes, people seemed to decide. I really am that good. In other words, if Ann Freedman were to stop and reflect on her tremendous commercial run in Abstract Expressionism, she would become more likely to conclude that she was an exceptional gallery director and judge of quality—not that she might be the victim of a massive fraud. And so she would play right into the send, selling more and more paintings, until the touch left her with all the downside and no one to blame.

  And it’s not just gambling. In one classic demonstration of the effect, clinical psychologists were asked to give confidence judgments on a personality profile. They were given a case report in four parts, based on an actual clinical case, and asked after each part to answer a series of questions about the patient’s personality, such as his behavioral patterns, interests, and typical reactions to life events. They were also asked to rate their confidence in their responses. With each section, background information about the case increased. As the psychologists learned more, their confidence rose—but accuracy remained at a plateau. Indeed, all but two of the clinicians became overconfident, and while the mean level of confidence rose from 33 percent at the first stage to 53 percent by the last, the accuracy hovered at under 28 percent (where 20 percent was chance, given the question setup).

  Why is the illusion of control so persistent? Often, it can be quite beneficial for our health and success. It helps us deal with stress and keep going instead of giving up in frustration. Individuals who feel in control are more likely to recover quickly from illnesses and be healthier, both physically and mentally. Just like our other optimistic biases, this one comes with a dose of positive reinforcement.

  Unfortunately, an unwarranted illusion of control can have the opposite effect: worse, more out-of-control performance. One study followed 107 traders in four London banks and found that those with the highest illusion of control performed the worst, as measured by managers’ ratings of performance and the total compensation they received. In another, people pursued worse investment diversification strategies the higher their perceptions of control. In a third, the more illusory control a group of financial analysts experienced, the more overconfident—and wrong—they were in their market predictions.

  And that notion that you can get out anytime you want? It’s just as illusory. The more invested we are, the less likely we are to exit. The psychological promise of that possibility makes us think we can actually take it, long after we have ourselves cut off the route. We persist in thinking things are under control even when they aren’t. That sense lends us confidence. And that confidence is misplaced.

  If she’d ever seen a red flag, Freedman told me, she would have immediately called the whole thing off. She never felt—not once—that it was too late. Her commitment was to the art—and if the art came under question, well, she would never let that stand. Even after the lawsuits started coming in, though, she remained firm. There were no red flags. There was no reason to doubt. The paintings spoke for themselves, and the paintings were real.

  The day that stands etched in her mind: the morning her lawyer called her to tell her that Glafira Rosales had confessed. The paintings were all forgeries. Stunned into silence, Freedman replaced the receiver. It couldn’t be. The paintings were real. She knew it in her heart. She would have known. She would have sensed. She would have seen. But Rosales’s confession was something she could not control. And in the end, it was unequivocal. All those years, all that work, all those masterpieces: it had all been a lie. The send and the touch had gone off without her knowing she was even in a game.

  It was evening, the night before her birthday. Ann Freedman sat alone on a hotel bed in St. Louis. She was there for an alumni meeting at Washington University. As always, she was staying at the Ritz. She stared at her cell phone. Each year, since at least 1995, Glafira had never failed to wish her a happy birthday. She had never failed to get her a gift—something tasteful and restrained, nothing over the top, but always something with meaning. She knew she shouldn’t dial. Her lawyers had warned her of that often enough. But she couldn’t help herself. They needed to talk.

  Glafira picked up on the first ring. Ann hadn’t actually expected to hear her voice. She had, she knew, been warned to stay far away as well. They were in the middle of a criminal suit.

  “You ruined my life.” That was all Ann had wanted to say. “I hope you know, you’ve ruined my entire life. I trusted you, and you ruined me.” Glafira didn’t respond. She muttered something incoherent, something that sounded like an apology. Maybe. But Ann thought she detected a sob. The line went dead.

  CHAPTER 9

  THE BLOW-OFF AND THE FIX

  Regard your good name as the richest jewel you can possibly be possessed of.

  —SOCRATES

  One hot summer afternoon in 1915, Sudie Whiteaker and Milo F. Lewis approached a farm in rural Iowa. Madison County, just southwest of Des Moines. Mrs. Hartzell saw them approaching from afar. They were dressed modestly, with faces she at once deemed earnest. But what were they doing in the middle of farm country? They weren’t from ’round those parts—that much was clear from the most cursory glance.

  Could Mrs. Hartzell spare a bit of water? They had come with a proposition for her own benefit, you see, but they’d walked a long way and it was mighty sweltering out there.

  In a sparse living room, Mrs. Hartzell sat her guests down. She called in her sons, Oscar and Canfield, who’d been working out back. The family assembled, they sat down to listen to what the two strangers had to say. They had a remarkable proposition. You see, they told her, back in the late sixteenth century—January 28, 1596, to be precise—the famous Sir Francis Drake died aboard his ship, the Defiance, just off the coast of Nombre de Dios. This was the Sir Francis Drake, they helpfully pointed out. The famed buccaneer who’d raided the seas for Queen Elizabeth.

  But they knew something most historians didn’t. Drake may have perished, but one thing didn’t die with him: his astonishing fortune, accumulated over years of buccaneering and careful collection. Its scope was so large that few could comprehend the enormity. But that’s not all. Drake had an heir, they continued. His childlessness was a rumor started to protect the most devastating secret of all: that the commissioned pirate had an illegitimate son. That son was sired with none other than the queen herself.

  Seeing the illegitimacy and potential scandal, naturally, the heir had never received his inheritance. But for centuries now, the fight to free the fortune had raged on. Any individual who helped provide the capital necessary for the legal fight—a fight that was to near its climax very soon—would make back his original investment multifold, as a thank-you from the current heir. For “every dollar you invest to help free this treasure,” the couple continued, “a hundred will be returned to you.” It would all be there the moment the bureaucratic red tape was cut, at long last.

  Day turned into evening. The strangers showed no signs of slowing down, and the more details emerged, the more alluring the treasure became. Mrs. Hartzell looked at her sons. They nodded assent. Go to the attic, she told Oscar. There, take the tin box and bring it down. That box contained the entire family’s life savings: $6,000. Everything went to the visitors—you couldn’t skimp when great opportunity called. Milo wrote out a receipt, and the two departed with many a reassurance. As soon as there was any news of legal progress, they would be in touch.

  There the story would have ended—just another iteration of one of the oldest running cons in history, the promise of a fabulous, nonexistent inheritance dangled in front of unsuspecting suckers—had Whiteaker and Lewis been just a bit more careful in their choice of victim. They’d failed, however, in that most fundamental stage of the con, the put-up. When they should have been reading all the signs and employing all their skills at assessing their would-be mark
s, they were too busy counting the money. And sure, they’d made off well with the lady of the house. But she wasn’t alone. And as any good con artist will tell you, everyone who bears witness to the take must be equally taken.

  Oscar Merrill Hartzell was a shrewd salesman. Heavy-jowled and slightly bug-eyed, he could nevertheless manage to ingratiate himself with most any client. Together with his brother, he’d been working the farm circuit for years, before quitting to join the sheriff’s department, selling equipment and seed all over his native Iowa, into Illinois, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. He knew a sell when he saw one. And the more he thought about it, the more something about the Drake fortune didn’t sit quite right.

  The next morning, Oscar made his way to Sioux City. It was a long trip, going on two hundred miles, but it was also the closest town with a library. And a library is what he was after. For hours on end, Oscar scoured the stacks. He was looking for any book, article, record that touched on Drake. He wanted to know what he was dealing with. Soon enough, his suspicions were confirmed. There was no direct heir, and no fortune to speak of. Drake had died without leaving much of an estate behind. The little he had had gone to a cousin. That’s all Oscar needed to know.

  He rounded up his law enforcement network. Working as deputy sheriff, he’d made a connection or two. He needed to find the duo who’d taken their money. It took no more than a few inquiries to zero in on Des Moines. There, he learned, was where Sudie and Milo made their home. Lucky. It was almost on his way home. Oscar was on the next train.

  A question here. A tip there. A bit of luck. There were Ms. Whiteaker and Mr. Lewis in the flesh, intent on relating the story of the marvelous fortune to an enrapt hardware merchant. Then they saw Oscar. Surprise was quickly replaced by fast patter as the pair realized they were face-to-face with a past victim—something they tried to avoid as much as possible.

  “We were about to send you a letter about the inheritance,” Sudie gushed.

  Oscar cut her off midstride. “I know all about that inheritance.” He suggested the three of them retire somewhere private for a little chat.

  It didn’t take long for a full confession to come tumbling out. Over two months, the pair told Oscar, they’d taken Iowans for over $65,000. They meant no harm, they assured him. And if he would just—

  That’s when the story took another strange turn. Oscar started laughing. And then he did something else: he called them “rubes.” He’d learned a thing or two about the history of the “Drake fortune,” and Whiteaker and Lewis didn’t know the half of it. “The field is untapped,” he told them. “You took small pickin’s.” He didn’t want his money back: “Why, my mother still believes your scheme will come through. So does everyone else I talked to who fell for your line.” They’d been settling for thousands. The promise of the Drake fortune was a scheme worth millions, if only they played their cards right.

  The Drake con wasn’t new. It had been practiced in England since Drake’s death, and in the United States since at least 1835. In the 1880s, Robert Todd Lincoln, the American ambassador to the Court of St. James, even issued a warning to would-be investors that the so-called shares in the fortune were worthless, and the treasure itself nonexistent. Its very resilience was proof of its genius. Warn all you will; the treasure was simply too alluring, and seemed all too plausible. Hartzell, however, would take it to the next level.

  In short order, Oscar had established himself as head of the Sir Francis Drake Association. With the air of legitimacy, and the background knowledge to match, he was soon bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars. For the next fifteen years, he inveigled over seventy thousand investors spanning multiple continents; for nine years, he operated out of London to be closer to the “action,” as he put it to his investors. (Really, he just wanted a financed stint abroad.) Disposing of Whiteaker and Lewis early on—“a couple of crooks,” he called them, “who have been reneging on donations and secretly lining their pockets with our honest collections”—he went on to earn over $2 million for the enterprise, more than half of that going into his own pocket. He took in entire towns, and many people invested multiple times over despite never seeing a dime in return. So convincing was his story that they were sure the eventual return would far outstrip the nonexistent one, even if they had to wait years.

  What may be even more remarkable than the con itself, however, was how it ended: somehow, over years of deception, despite having received no return whatsoever on their investment, almost every last person he’d conned remained loyal to Oscar Hartzell. To the very end, hardly a one of those seventy thousand marks would go to the police—and most all would vocally deny that any deception had even taken place. When Hartzell was apprehended at last, he easily made his $78,000 bail and defense money: it was provided by the very people he had conned. During the long trial, they would pay $350,000 more in his defense, convinced as ever that he had been wronged.

  * * *

  Our reputation is the most important thing we have. It determines not only how we’re seen by others, but also how they will act toward us. Will they trust us? Will they want to do business with us? Do they consider us responsible, reliable, likable, effective? In medieval Europe, fama meant two things: what people said about others’ behaviors, and reputation. The fact that both ideas were represented in a single word signals a fundamental truth: our reputation, in effect, is what others say it is. Financial ruin is often the least part of the confidence game; in fact, many con artists aren’t even after money. The deepest scars come to our reputations—to how we’re seen by others and how that perception will, in turn, affect our future.

  That is precisely what the confidence artist is counting on, even after, despite our best efforts at self-delusion, it becomes apparent that we’ve been taken for a ride: that our reputational motivation will be strong enough to keep us quiet. In the touch, we’ve finally been taken for all we’ve had: the grifter has gotten all that he’s after, and is ready to disappear from our lives. But how to do that without getting caught, so that he can easily go on to play the same game he’s just played with some new mark? In the blow-off, the confidence artist has one main goal: now that the touch has been taken, get the mark out of the way as quickly as possible. The last thing you want is for someone to complain and thus draw attention to the whole enterprise. The blow-off is often the final step of the con, the grifter’s smooth disappearance after the game has played out. Sometimes, though, the mark may not be so complacent. If that happens, there’s always one more step that can be taken: the fix, when a grifter puts off the involvement of law enforcement to prevent marks from making their complaints official.

  Humans are members of the catarrhines: the intensely social primates that make up the Old World monkeys and the apes. Like our primate ancestors, we depend on living in groups for our basic survival; without one another for protection and sustenance, we wouldn’t survive very long at all. But sociality comes at a cost. We fight. We displace others and are ourselves displaced in the relative food chain. We lie. We cheat. We steal. We quarrel. We betray. We backstab, literally and figuratively. As Thomas Hobbes put it best, life in its natural state would be nasty, brutish, and short. And so we must have ways of keeping one another in check to keep our social groups functional enough to successfully avoid predators and stay alive.

  In the nonhuman primates, the task of group maintenance falls on a behavior known as grooming, a process in which monkeys physically touch, pet, and nitpick (in the best possible way) to signal to one another that they are invested in the relationships they have. Grooming is one of the most effective methods of bonding. The physical touch itself releases endorphins, and endorphins flood us with feelings of pleasure, warmth, and well-being. The time we invest in that touch signals that we have nothing more important to do than spend time maintaining our relationship. The more primates groom, in fact, the larger their possible social group. Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist at Oxford whose work
for over four decades has centered on social bonding in primates, has found that grooming time along with the size of the neocortex (the part of our brain dedicated to higher-order functions) is a perfect proxy for how large our social groups can get.

  That neocortical size, in turn, signals something very specific. The largest nonhuman social group tops out at about eighty connections. In humans, however, close connections have taken a qualitative jump, to almost double that, coming in at an average of 150—Dunbar’s eponymous number. Presumably, such a leap in social group size would also signal a leap in grooming time. Our fellow catarrhines spend about a fifth of their waking hours engaged in grooming. Humans would theoretically need to spend proportionally more to get to their larger group size. But, Dunbar found, that doesn’t happen. Instead, we spend roughly the same fifth engaged exclusively in grooming-like actions. So what changes?

  In simple terms, language. We don’t have to rely on grooming alone to maintain strong social bonds and forge large functional groups capable of withstanding the stresses of life. We have words. And just as grooming signals investment and trust, creating a sense of mutual obligation between groomer and groomee, so, too, can our words (combined, of course, with our actions) send very specific messages that guide how we are seen. When we speak, we not only groom—I’m invested in this conversation; here is what I can do for you and how I can help you—but share news about others—who did what, behaved how, said what. Language, in other words, allows us to establish our own reputation and share news about others that, in turn, establishes their reputation. That, in a very basic sense, is the entire premise of gossip. Gossip doesn’t actually signal anything negative in itself. All it means is that we can use our interactions to share socially relevant information—information that can make society flow more smoothly. “In short, gossip is what makes human society as we know it possible,” says Dunbar. It’s also the reason the blow-off is usually the easiest part of the con—and the fix, so rarely necessary.