Good scammers are excellent intuitive psychologists. Scammers also tend to be very confident and arrogant. “They overvalue themselves,” Brennan says. “They`re incredibly arrogant and can be really emotionally violent if they don`t get the treatment they think they deserve. You can see that it comes out a little bit in The Tinder Swindler, and also in that other really almost incredible documentary, The Puppet Master, which was a real psychological manipulation. Each of these scammers has one thing in common: persuasion to deceive their victims. Those who succeed exhibit three similar traits—psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism—that psychologists have called “dark” personality traits. Scammers have recently made a small comeback on our screens thanks to Inventing Anna, The Puppet Master and The Tinder Swindler. However, the question everyone wants an answer to is how do they work? Dr. Sabina Brennan, psychologist and neuroscientist at TCD, and Samantha McCaughren, economics editor of the Sunday Independent, joined RTÉ Radio 1`s The Business to talk about the psychology of scammers (this article includes edited excerpts from the conversation for greater length and clarity – you can listen to the discussion above in full). Some famous scammers were at the top of their game – until they finally got caught. Along with impersonator Frank Abagnale and international career jewel thief Doris Payne, they are the epitome of fraudulent gambling. With their own rights, they became experts in the art of fraud and managed to evade prosecution for years.
Two centuries earlier, Jeanne de la Motte, a cunning Frenchwoman, staged a diamond chain affair that was one of the many scandals that led to the French Revolution and contributed to the destruction of a monarchy. From a personality perspective, psychologists researching this area refer to the black triad of personality traits, narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism, and these three traits are overrepresented among cheaters. Well, these traits may serve people who engage in non-illegal activities well, but in general, people with this combination of traits tend to be manipulative and insensitive and do whatever they can to impose their own will. They have an exaggerated self-image, and they are really shameless in their self-promotion. They can also be impulsive: they behave dangerously and obviously commit crimes, regardless of the impact that may have on others. “But scammers know this and almost all scammers use some kind of distraction. A crook can show remarkable expertise in his tricks, as with the Czechoslovak Victor Lustig, who, in a devious plot, sold the Eiffel Tower for scrap – not once, but twice. Scammers know that people are afraid and play with this fact.
Some of the biggest fraudsters, McCaughren says, operated in the business world, like Bernie Madoff. “He was a trader and president of NASDAQ in the United States, but he was really a crook among everything. He had a $65 billion scam that lasted for decades, and he wasn`t caught until the crash hit and people wanted to get their money out. By definition, a con artist is a manipulator who deceives or deceives others into believing something that is not true. By cheating, they trick people into believing that they can make money easily, when in fact, it is the scammer who ends up taking the victim`s money. The criminal and legal consequences of such leaks may be insignificant or significant, depending on the circumstances and laws of the country. As co-author of The Crime Book, which covered over 100 crimes, I researched and wrote a chapter on fraudsters. Their crimes are manifold, as is their behaviour. But the only thing they all have in common is the persuasive power to take advantage of unsuspecting people. Do the victims who fall under the spell of these scammers have psychological traits? “We`re all open to scams,” Brennan says. “We`ve probably all been ripped off in a very small way. Who hasn`t bought an item on sale that you later realize wasn`t really on sale? It doesn`t matter if someone is bright and worldly or stupid and naïve – everyone is susceptible to scammers.
“Scammers can recognize this and they can take advantage of it, because what they`re selling is meaning and security. They`ll tell you the story that makes sense, that makes you say, “OK, now I have something meaningful at this particular time in my life.” How scammers and scammers trick people into giving billions every year, sometimes over and over again. “There`s one thing that makes anyone, smart or not, a good victim,” she told Business Insider. “And it`s not a personality trait. It is not a demographic group. It`s a question of situation: where are you at this stage of your life? People who go through life transitions become more emotionally vulnerable, and cheaters can recognize this. Maria Konnikova: One of the characteristics of the good scammer is that he never feels like he`s taking advantage of you. They never take anything away from you. You gladly give it to them. Thus, the term trusted artist comes from a man from the 1800s in New York, who walked the streets of Manhattan dressed as a very neat gentleman and approached other equally neat gentlemen and said, “Do you trust me to lend me your watch until tomorrow?” What a strange request, isn`t it? It`s such a loaded question. What kind of person are you? What kind of world and society do we live in? Do you follow the code of conduct for gentlemen? Will you trust me? Will you trust me? Well, people gave them their watches and he obviously had no intention of ever returning them.
When he was finally caught, he had many watches to his name and gave birth to the name Trustee. Cheaters and predators alike love to jump on these opportunities for emotional vulnerability. These traits allow scammers to scam people without feeling remorse or guilt. Another thing that most scissors have in common is their ego. These blackmail sellers strengthen the psyche of the perpetrators and make them even more confident, so the description of the scam has been referred to as a game of trust. Frank Stajano, a security expert at Cambridge University, worked with Paul Wilson, a con artist and author of the BBC`s The Real Hustle, to identify the top 7 psychological principles used in short inconvenience to separate people from their money (Stajano & Wilson, 2009; PDF, 308K). Why do people become scammers in the first place? While money is one of them, Brennan says it`s also about power. “There`s probably some financial motivation, but it`s also a matter of strength and thrill, excitement, kicking that they get out of it. You obviously get some kind of dopamine hit from the act of deceiving people. The game of trust, as the art of fraud is called, is one of the oldest tricks in trading. It taps into people`s trust. Human nature is on the side of these fraud masters when it comes to ripping off their brands or victims, thus contributing to the lasting success of fraud.
The perpetrators were referred to everything from Flimflam operators, coughers, scammers, and scammers. The victims were called markers, millers and seagulls. And while the media audience has again romanticized the scams and brought their crimes to the public, their actions are anything but glamorous. “Basically, people have confidence. We want to believe that the other person is telling the truth. What often happens is that scammers exploit this tendency to trust, but it also involves a series of carefully orchestrated steps to build that trust. You saw this on The Tinder Swindler. On the first date, he took her in a private jet. Who will not believe that this person really has money? He told her he loved her. He asked her to look for apartments where she could live.
There is this confidence-building. The history of the term “fraudster” highlights some essential characteristics of this deplorable profession. Maria Konnikova explains that the first scammer was a Manhattan watch thief who took advantage of the goodwill of his victims and asked to borrow their watch until the next day. Of course, the watch was never returned, and the trust the victim had placed in the thief was also lost. In fact, the scammer is more of a psychologist than a thief. Scammers will never steal anything from you, Konnikova says, they will convince you to hand it over freely. On the phone, the woman gives a price, but the bartender realizes that he can make a profit, so he tells the male scammer a much lower price. → Read more: How cheating magicians know how to exploit our mental vulnerabilities, discover 3 critical techniques in the psychology of magic. One of the characteristics of the trusted artist is what is called Machiavellianism. It has to do with manipulating people for your own ends; to get them to do what you want, but without their knowledge, so that they do not realize that they are being manipulated; so that they think that everything they do is of their own free will.
