Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Both those are be true, but they're also good, so to speak, at
perceiving ill will where there isn't.
  

    
Inspiring dislike may make detecting dislike simpler, and doing so
might then save one the trouble of having to sort out anything subtler
and less dependent on one's own behavior. 
  

    
I think maybe we've gotten a little bit off topic. When I suggested
intuitive responding may tell us that a person is trustworthy, I didn't
mean to suggest that intuition is always a reliable guide to reality.
In BLINK, Gladwell argued that intuition works well mainly when it is
based on true expertise. Intuition per se is more often than not a
basis for irrational (and gullible)decision-making
  

    
Which returns us to your (and Yamagishi's) point that without trusting
in the first place, one is unlikely to acquire the expertise necessary
to develop useful intuition.  Without social intelligence, though, is
one less likely to be able to extract relevant information from
experience?  And to what extent is our expertise applicable outside of
the environments in which we acquire it?
  

    
(That should be social skills, not social intelligence.)
  

    
Social intelligence involves cognition (processing of cues indicating
a person may be safe) while social skills involve isolated behaviors
(smiling) that make you liked or verbal heuristics  (deflection words)
that let you escape from a situation that you sense may be unsafe

The problem with a paranoid (perennially protective) response is that
you can never check it against reality. So you justify every
unnecessary escape behavior by thinking that it saved you from a danger
that in fact never existed So actually taking the risk of say letting
a  meter guy in your house might have enabled one to modify the overly
suspicious response of not trusting anyone. 

I tend to err on the overly trusting side, as when I interviewed a
contractor for some home repair projects. In the interview, the guy 
told many pretty obvious tall tales (being a CIA guy in Honduras with
his sidekick, who it turns out he had met in a bar two weeks earlier).
Although I sensed right off the bat he was a liar, I considered the
behavior harmless, maybe even a little charming.

He turned out to be a major sociopath who sucked me into his chaotic
life (bailing him out of jail, etc) and ripped me off big time. In
spite of being a psychologist, I had very little prior experience with
sociopaths, and I stifled my doubts and hired him, a decision I came to
regret.  

Today, I have a simple heuristic (call it a social skill) which is “if
someone lies unnecessarily about everything, run don’t walk away from
any relationship with him.” That is a bit of wisdom that I attained as
a result of erring on the side of being too trusting. An expensive
lesson but one I intend to use in my next boom ANATOMY OF FOOLISHNESS.
(might as well get some value out of the story). 
  

    
Oh ouch!

There's a kind of gullibility that I find particularly interesting. 
The kind that exists in someone who might believe that there's no we
can know with so little research the truth about climate change, but
who will otherwise readily believe conspiracy theories.  

What do you think is going on there?
  

    
It may be that some matters resonate better in our imaginations than
others.  Then, too, the initial source of the concern may play a role. 
Conservatives tend to dismiss liberal conspiracy theories and vice
versa.
  

    
I did mean social intelligence up there, then.  I have some personal
interest in the question, as I, too, tend to be overly-trusting.  I see
two factors that play into this.

The first comes from social conditioning.  Distrust is not nice, kind,
or gentle.  One might hurt the feelings of a sincere person with it,
after all, and gentleness is particularly prized as a feminine virtue.

The other factor is less broadly relevant, although more so these days
than in the past, if the new UC Davis report is to be believed.  There
appears to be a solid genetic foundation for presuming some of my
gullibility is hardwired.  Although I would not claim to be autistic,
certainly some of the traits have manifested themselves in my
generation of the family.  The next generation is, to a one, diagnosed
on the spectrum.  To what extent, then, can social intelligence be
taught?
  

    
Well I have an autistic brother and probably some autistic
(Aspergerish) tendencies myself. One reason why Pinocchio interests me
is because it is a story of a child who starts off with zero social
intelligence and, as the result of various gullibility episodes,
finally learns enough about people and their deception games, and
acquires enough escape verbal escape heuristics, to survive in the
world.

I come to the topic of gullibility from a long-time background in
developmental disabilities, especially mild mental retardation. Such
individuals are at extreme risk of being deceived, sometimes in the
most serious of circumstances (coercive police interrogations, for
example). A failure of social intelligence (to see through implausible
threats) and lack of social skills (such as the formula “if I’m not
under arrest, then I’m out of here”) results sometimes in false
confessions to crimes of which an individual is innocent. 

People with extreme cognitive limitations (such as elderly adults in
early stages of dementia) will always be at risk of gullibility, in
part because one personality adaptation to things one doesn’t
understand is to fake it by complying with whatever is asked of one.
That is why protective arrangements (such as guardianships) are often a
good idea. 

For such individuals, where judgment limitations and lack of verbal
skills create extreme vulnerability, a rigid paranoid-like heuristic
(such as “never accept favors from strangers”) may be needed. However,
the extreme friendliness (reflecting loneliness and social neediness)
of many such individuals may make effective use of such a tactic
ineffective.

So there are biological limitations (not necessarily genetic, as brain
damage is often the culprit) to how socially effective one can be,
although even people with mild mental retardation can and do grow from
experience. For participants in this conference, most of whom likely 
qualify as “normal” or even “above average”, the potential for becoming
more socially competent as a result of experience is obviously even 
greater. 
  

    
The tale of the liar above reminded me of my most gullible moment. I
had bought a house from HUD. It had electrical problems. Which BTW is
gullible enough one would think. A person who had been a friend of mine
suggested I hire an electrician friend of hers. This woman did not
have her license because she'd lost it but she needed work, my friend
said. I didn't have a lot of money so I hired her. She asked me to pay
in advance for the supplies. I did. And she disappeared with the money
and that was it. I couldn't fix the problem because I didn't have the
money any more. My friend was SO surprised. I wasn't. If I had trusted
my own instincts instead of listening to my friend, I would never have
hired the woman.She was a lot like the guy up there. A lot of
implausible tales.
  

    

The situation that Gail referred to in her post about the On-Line Lothario 
(or the Cybercad, as we called him here on the WELL) was the first that 
occurred to me because I was one of the ones who was gulled.  Reading 
along here, I ask myself how in the world did I allow that to happen, and 
I realize that it was because it happened in cyberspace, a new realm, and 
it seemed that the rules of real life somehow didn't apply here. plus, 
because we were a (sort of) cozy, tight-knit community I felt a sense of 
trust, that anyone who could find their way here must be somehow better 
than everyone else.  It was a new universe with, we thought, new rules.

I remember allowing myself to think, briefly, as the con was unravelling 
and more and more women were coming forward, "But he wouldn't do that to 
ME, it must be some fault in those other women that caused it to happen to 
them."  I quickly abandoned that line of thinking, when I realized that I 
had, indeed, been gullible.  I was also vulnerable because I was going 
through a divorce and believing that no one would ever love me again.  
Gulllibility and vulnerability made me a prime target.

I took advantage of what we call on the WELL "AFOG" - Another Fucking 
Opportunity for Growth, studied the lessons, and came up with a set of 
guidelines to protect myself in the future.

Trust until proven untrustworthy.  This was a tough one, because, for a
long time it was extremely difficult for me to trust anyone, but I didn't
want to live like that.  Corollary:  if someone doesn't trust me right
away, it's probably because they are untrustworthy.  I think that most
people want to trust, if someone doesn't, it's because they know what they
are themselves are likely to do, something that would never occur to me to
do.  I now pay attention to these red flags.

If someone claims to be overly smitten with me right away, they are either 
married or trying a scam.  Men who are truly available are much more 
cautious because, being sincere, they have more to lose.  Married men or 
scammers have nothing to lose, because nothing they offered was genuine to 
begin with.

Run for the hills if you meet anyone who wants you to keep secret what no 
genuine person would have reason to hide.

Slam the door on anyone who tells lies for no apparent reason, as Stephen
also learned.  I met a guy on a dating site - who ultimately turned out to
be married, which was the first big lie - who lied about the strangest
things, but had a terrible memory so I was always catching on to them.  
(For example, he lied about his age, but got tripped up when he said he'd
never heard of the Beatles White Album.)  On another occasion I was
looking for a body shop to work on my car.  I spoke to three of them.  
One of them told me stories of his adventures in the Viet Nam war.  He
pointed to a troll doll on his desk that he claimed he had carried with
him throughout the war, and kept on his desk as a good luck charm.  He had
to leave the room at one point, so I picked up the doll and noticed the
copyright date on its back was 1984.  Why tell me that stupid lie, I
wondered.  And then I imagined what stupid lie he would tell me when he
worked on my car, and crossed him off the list.

People will tell you everything you need to know about them if you pay
attention.  I was recently looking for a roommate by running an ad on
craigslist.  In my earlier days, I might have just chalked up the failure
to return phone calls or the failure to show up for appointments as people
just dealing with life.  Now I know better.  If they don't show up now,
they won't show up when the rent is due, either.  In the case of looking
for the body shop, I tried two others.  At one, the place was dusty and
dirty and the guys were all sitting around reading the paper and smoking
cigarettes, with a very low-energy, not-very-interested attitude, and
apparently, not much business.  At the other, the place was bright, clean,
and bustling.  The walls were covered with letters from satisfied
customers, pictures of charity events they had sponsored, the owner came
out and looked me in the eye, and took me on a tour of the premises,
showing me what would happen to my car at every stage of the way.  Guess
which of the three I chose?

I've been gulled more often than I want to admit by falling into stupid
traps at car dealerships.  I read Confessions of a Car Salesman at
edmonds.com:  
http://www.edmunds.com/advice/buying/articles/42962/article.html where I
learned to my chagrin how gullible I had been, and I won't be making those
mistakes again.

I've learned never to fall for anything where part of the pitch is, "This 
is a limited offer.  The price will be going up tomorrow.  We can't offer 
this price after today.  You have to make a decision now."  Walk away, 
walk away.

I'm sure there are tons more.  Am I still gullible?  Unfortunately I 
probably am, but I hope I am much less so, thanks to the Pinocchio method 
I've been using to become more fully human.  Thanks for that image, 
Stephen!
  

    
I was reading something recently about one of the old philosophers, I
can't remember if it was Hume, or Adam Smith.  Anyway this philosopher
pointed out the amount of trust that underpins any economy and without
which it could not function.  And the other night there was Niall
Ferguson's PBS documentary which noted that the root of money -- of
credit -- is trust.  Without trust, complex human society (maybe even
simple human society) is impossible.

I have been thinking for a long time about cleaner fish.  People will
observe this amazing sight, of smaller fish swimming around bigger
ones, and not being eaten by them.  Instead, the smaller fish freely
range around the bigger fish's scales, making a meal of its parasites. 
There are even "stations," where the cleaner fish hang out, and the
bigger species of fish swim up to the cleaner fish to get "serviced."

But there are other species of fish which mimic (in visible features)
the cleaner fish, and which take a bite out of the scales of the fish
they pretend to be "cleaning."  Call them the confidence tricksters of
the fish world -- or call them the "cheater fish."  

I wonder if it has been calculated the maximum ratio of cheater fish
to true cleaner fish for the whole system not to fall apart.  And what
the mechanisms are ecologically to keep this ratio from exceeding that
maximum.

And for the economic system of Homo sapiens contemporaneous, whether
we have exceeded that ratio.  It has been known since the dawn of the
modern world, if not before, that complex economic systems can only run
on trust.  Has the current breakdown of trustworthiness within our
financial system exceeded a threshold of disaster?  How can we rectify
it?

The gullible thing may have been that we trusted in the system to be
able to withstand the people who were gaming it -- even when we were
skewing our incentive systems and our social prestige mechanisms to
honor the gamesters as much or more than the regulators.  The gullible
thing may have been that we conned ourselves into thinking that more
and more brilliant and innovative gamings of the system were somehow
part of its self-regulating process.  
  

    
But that's the thing, though, isn't it?  We are at greater risk in
every day normal activity than we can stand knowing.  And so we force
ourselves into a position of credulity in regards our safety because we
need to function.  If we, just running errands, say, were aware of all
the dangers from traffic or possible random accidents from failures of
urban infrastructure, or bacteria or virus, or someone who wants to
rip us off, or the potential harm of information theft or that might
come from what we're buying--we would drive ourselves mad.  Indeed,
those of us who aware of all the risks are thought, rightly, to have
excess anxiety.  Chances are we'll be ok.  But in fact, odds are pretty
high that one day, in fact, several days those chances will run dry. 
But we can't think that way, and so coerce ourselves into not. 
Children cope with their fears by magical thinking, or investing
parents and other adults with powers to protect them which are vastly
exaggerated.  But once adult, we have our own versions.  We are open to
gullibility because we need to believe.
  

    
The metaphor of cleaner and fake cleaner fish is pretty wonderful. It
is analogous to Richard Dawkins' notion of memes and toxic memes. 

A meme (a concept invented by Dawkins) is a unit of cultural
information that children absorb in order to develop into competent
adults. Dawkins believes that we are hard-wired through natural
selection to be gullible, in that non-gullible children ignore
important memes (such  as "don't run in front of cars") and are killed
off. 

Even if one doesn't buy the natural selection part of it, the idea
that gullibility (trust) has a positive function for child development
is pretty compelling. However, this gullibility/ trust has a dark side,
and that is that it makes children (and adults who maintain vestiges
of unquestioning trust) vulnerable to bad (toxic) members masquerading
as legitimate memes. 

Dawkins calls these toxic memes "mind viruses" and (as one would
expect from the author of THE GOD DELUSION)he places religion at the
top of the list of such mind viruses (Dawkins sees little difference
between the Catholic Church--which his ex-wife has indoctrinated their
daughter in, and the Moonies). In fact, Dawkins believes that if one
can believe anything as daft as Catholic religious doctrine, then it is
a short distance to believing anything one is told. 

Anyway, I like very much the notion that human society is based on
trust, just as is fish society, and when the proportion of fakers (or
toxic memes) gets too high, then fiascoes like the US current financial
meltdown (and offshoots such as Madoff) become inevitable. 

By the way, banks are often called "trust companies"  Does anyone know
the etiology of that and does it come from the term trust as used in
everyday parlance?  
  

    
> when the proportion of fakers (or toxic memes) gets too high,
> then fiascoes...

Or when the average gullibility of society climbs too high?

Seems you've got non-gullible children ignoring good advice trimming the
gene pool from one direction, and gamers of one sort or another applying 
pressure from the other.

What happens when gullibility becomes the price of admission to a mutual 
protection society?
  

    
A "mutual protection society" relies on trust.  I don't think it
necessarily has to rely on gullibility, unless someone is gaming it, in
which case, the "protection" aspect is not going to be operative for
much longer.

I looked in the OED for the word "trust" and found that just around
Shakespeare's time, though not in Shakespeare, the word "trust" was
sometimes used for "credit."  1650, some law book: "Those who are able
to pay downe ready money...know to expect a better pennyworth, than
those that runne upon trust." 
  

    

This seems like a good time to bring up the issue of the perception of 
violation of trust and the perception of having been gulled.

In other words, Stephen, have your studies included instances of when 
people have actually had their trust violated versus instances when they 
perceived it that way, when, in fact, it had not?

I bring this up because earlier in this discussion, you asked for us to 
tell our stories of having been gullible.  In response, <clotilde> and I 
presented some examples.  Afterwards, the conversation continued with 
discussions of trust and the economy, as if neither of us had spoken.

Now, I've been on the WELL for 17 years, long enough to know how quickly
conversational tides turn from one thought to another, and it's not always
easy to incorporate replies to a train of thought that has past while also
continuing to respond to newer ones, so I'm inclined not to have my
feelings hurt about this.

However, this topic is readable by the world at large, not just WELL
people, and I can see how a cautious observer, reading along and
contemplating participating would pull back and say, "Aha!  Look at that!  
They were gulled into revealing embarassing things about themselves and 
now they are twisting in the wind with their pants down!  I ain't doing 
that!  And look at what idiots they were to do that in the first place!  
My reticence is correct.  These people can't be trusted with my personal 
information."

Where's the line between having been gulled and believing you have been?  
Is that where trust comes in?
  

    
I was really moved by your post in particular, <castle>, as well as
<clotilde>'s.  I'm sorry for any hurt feelings.  I see that I jumped
the gun too quickly and I hope that we can look again at what the two
of you had to say.

(Thank you for reminding us of the wonderful expression AFOG).
  

    
I too, Linda, was very moved by your self-disclosure. In fact I
thought it was an amazing elaboration on my point. Not much I could
have added. Nevertheless I was going to say something when the
conversation veered off in a different direction. 

I'm new to the Well and unsure of my role. But I am trying not to be
perceived as the one who has all the answers, in part because I have
time for only one or two posts a day, but mainly because I don't want
to stifle participation by others. 

With respect to your question about the distinction between being
gulled and believing you have been, I have not studied that phenomenon
but hope you believe me when I say that gulling you was not my intent. 

Self-disclosure to me is a very healthy thing (in fact it is one of
the definitions of positive mental health--being willing for people to
see you as you are)but sometimes others don't know quite how to
respond. 

One thing that I have noticed after writing this book on gullibility
is that in the last two weeks I have been accused more times of gulling
others than in the preceding two decades. 
  

    
Isn't part of the trust the value of identifying regularities and
depending on them.  A hunter/gatherer example would be learning and
depending on migrations patterns of food animals or the seasonal yield
of berries.  

Of course, a con artist could be considered a hunter/gatherer who can
count on "harvesting" the valuables of the gullible.  Are there others
of this ilk?  Politicians?  Preachers?  
  

    

Really, I know how conversations go here, I was not offended.

But realizing that an outsider might see it that way and conclude that I 
had been gulled, led me to wonder about the distinction between being 
gulled and believing you had been.  It could be an interesting topic for 
future study since you haven't yet looked into it.

I agree that self-disclosure is healthy, although there is a fine line
between self-disclosure and which leads to another acronym:  TMI!  Too
much information.

Robert, I think that's an interesting idea about how those with less than
honest intent can take advantage of expectation of regularities to create
an illusion of trust in order to perpetrate a scam.
  

    
Robert and Linda raise good points about the skills of the victimizer
in recognizing the vulnerabilities (the trust norm, so to speak) in the
victim. Politicians and preachers are both examples of people who know
how to play on the behavioral and belief tendencies of others. 

Politics and religion are both topics addressed in my book that we
haven't gotten into yet, but my focus there as in other areas has been
more on the victim than on the victimizer. 

My emphasis reflects my interest, but it also is a conscious
corrective against the fact that 99% of the scholarly and popular
literature on lying and fraud is on the victimizer (as example look at
Frankfurt's books on BS and Lying and see if you  can find more than a
sentence or two on the person who is lied and BS'd to)

But I realize that I am going to have to start paying more attention
to the victimizer and his ploys if I am going to be able to do a better
job of giving readers better answers to the question "what tips can
you give me to protect myself against being gulled?" That is because a
big part of the social intelligence that helps to protect someone is
learning what the ploys are that he or she should watch out for. 

So I will start delving into the literature on scam artists and their
tricks if I am to be able to write a book financial gullibility. That
is because scam artists, whether or not they have made a study of the
topic, have a pretty good understanding of human psychology and of how
to exploit it. 

One such understanding is what Cialdini in his book INFLUENCE called
the "reciprocity rule", namely if you do someone a favor they will feel
obliged to give you what you want. why resort developments offer free
weekends, why charities send customized mailing reply labels, and  scam
artists offer to help old ladies load groceries into their car (an
elderly friend of my late mother lost all of her jewels to someone who
kindly helped her in that way and told her she could get her insurance
premiums lowered if she would let her take the jewels to get appraised)

Interesting stuff. I would be interested in looking at politics (one
of the few areas in my book where I address the message sendersS and
not just the message recipients). I assume there are not too many
political conservatives in the Well, as I have a lot to say about
gullibility towards the conservative message 

(however, I also address the  gullibility towards communism and the
Soviet Union so rampant in the 1930s and 1940s (part of that was due to
idealism and the hope for a more perfect and egalitarian society, part
to the tendency to believe that a huge lie must be truer than a small
one, and part to the reciprocity rule--travelers whose are the
recipient of hospitality are reluctant to cme home and find fault with
their host)


PS   Cialdini wrote his book INFLUENCE  to protect people from being
exploited by say telemarketers (one tip: never respond to the question
"how are you today Mrs. Jones?") but to his dismay he found that it was
being used by (and he was being offered big bucks to address) the
marketers. So he inadvertently created a text book for scam artists. 
  

    
I found Cialdini invaluable in running my political campaign.
  

    
How so Sharon?