Reading people
Maria Konnikova
Why we fall for it
Maria Konnikova (2016 · The Confidence Game) — Why we fall for it.
What actually happened?
The cases she worked through run from fake art dealers and fake doctors to Ponzi schemes and street hustles, and the victims include professors, lawyers and people who work in finance for a living. What repeats is not that these people were careless. It is that each of them needed something at that moment: to recover a loss, to be taken seriously, to have an explanation that finally made sense. Which is why she says raising your guard is the least useful defence available. Wanting is the thing that lowers the guard, so the guard is already down by the time you would need it.
Ask which need it answered
When a proposal moves you, postpone the question of whether it is true and ask why it is landing now. The answer usually names the thing you are shortest of. This comes before checking, because checking gets bent by wanting and you go looking for what supports it.
The people in a hurry to recover a loss are the ones who meet guaranteed high yield. That is selection, not coincidence.
It is about circumstance, not intelligence
I was stupid is both inaccurate and expensive: it is the wrong diagnosis, and it makes the story too humiliating to repeat, so the same trick keeps working on the next person. What was I short of is a question with an actionable answer.
The sentence victims say most often is that they are not normally like this. It is almost always true.
Transitions are the high-risk window
A move, a new job, a divorce, a death, retirement, a windfall. What these have in common is not weakness, it is that no usable template exists for what you are now facing, so any story that hangs together sounds credible. This converts the problem from a character trait into a diary entry.
Newly arrived in a city, you have no idea what a normal price is for anything. That is the window, and it is predictable in advance.
Procedure, not vigilance
Rules are made while you are calm and take effect while you are not: above this figure, sleep on it; a second person has to see it; there has to be an independent source. This works precisely because it does not depend on your state at the time.
Anything over this amount waits a day before I sign. That one rule has rescued more people than any talent for reading faces.
How do I use it today?
When somebody hands you an offer that is hard to refuse and something feels wrong, do not start checking. Start by asking which of the things you are short of it answers, and treat a clear answer as the warning. Then look at the calendar: have you just moved, changed jobs, lost someone, or come into money? If so, put a step in front of every large decision for three months and find one person outside the situation to look at it.
Deep read
Read alongside
Further
Lines to keep
The con artist does not build trust. He uses the need you already have.
What gets used is the wanting, not your judgement.
It turns not being conned from a personality into a calendar.