Would you be a grifter—even a mild one—if given the chance? Try this short test. Take your index finger, raise it to your forehead, and draw the letter Q.
Done? Which way is your Q facing—tail to the right, or tail to the left? The test, described in detail by Richard Wiseman, a psychologist and famed skeptic, is a way to gauge your "self-monitoring" tendency. If you drew the letter with the tail to the left, so that others could read it, you are a high self-monitor.
That means you are more concerned with appearance and perception—how others see you.
To achieve the desired effect, you are likely more willing to manipulate reality—even just a bit—to make a better impression.#633•
It wasn't the people who saw the world most clearly who did best; it was, rather, those most skilled at the art of seeing the world as they wanted it to be. And the world-as-we-want-it-to-be is precisely what the con artist sells.#635•
It ends up that the more you know about something, the more likely you are to fall for a con in that specific area.#598•
CHAPTER 2: THE PUT‑UP
When we're feeling pressure, we grow far less able to think logically and deliberately. When we're feeling more powerful, we tend to feel as if we don't need others quite as much, and our ability to read their minds and the cues they throw off falters#600•
Adam Galinsky and his colleagues asked people to draw an E on their foreheads. If you'd just thought about a time when you were in a high-powered position, you drew the E from your own perspective (prongs facing right). If, however, you'd just been reflecting on times when you had relatively little power, the letter flipped toward your conversation partner's point of view.
A flipped letter, in turn, signals a greater willingness and ability to take others' point of view into account, and a better ability to read the social signs they throw off#594•
Worlds, Jerome Bruner, a central figure in the cognitive revolution in psychology during the second part of the twentieth century, proposes that we can frame experience in two ways: propositional and narrative. Propositional is the part of thought that hinges on logic and formality. Narrative, on the other hand, is more like a story.
It's concrete.
It's imagistic.
It's personally convincing.
It's emotional.
And it's strong.#632•
The Marc Antony gambit, taken from Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, is a particular favorite of con men. "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him,"#609•
One thing, he found, was central in a commercial's success: whether or not it had a dramatic plotline. "People think it's all about sex or humor or animals," he told the Johns Hopkins Magazine. "But what we've found is that the underbelly of a great commercial is whether it tells a story or not." The more complete the story, the better#639•
Increased oxytocin makes us more generous—with our money, our time, our trust, ourselves#621•