The Science of Gullibility

How People Get Duped (Audio Link):

This is an audio report from NPR with author Stephen Greenspan, who wrote The Annals of Gullibility. There are some interesting tid-bits from the point of showing what makes a person skeptical about these types of schemes. The biggest factor is based off a quip that Eric Hoffer made: "When people are free to do as they please, they often imitate each other." (Paraphrased).

Take the infamous (dot)com crash. The main factor influencing the bubble that developed in the first place was the tendency of people to see and hear that online investments were going up and up and up, and so people who didn't buy them were considered foolish. You can spot this on most pages of books, on advertisements, and many other places. A typical book that is any good will have four pages of paper telling you just how good that book is. Then there's an acknowledgement at the beginning that tells you how good that book is. Finally, a person will write a preface vouching even further that the book is REALLY that good.

In the case where multiple people are vouching for the effectiveness of something, it actually seems foolish to pass it up, regardless of the fact that there may be very good logical evidence to counter that assumption. I like this book because outside of Michael Shermer's Why People Believe Weird Things, this is a subject most people have not touched on.

So, you wonder how this relates to seduction? Not all that much really, but this is the importance of social proofing and pre-selection. The strongest thing that vouches for you is NOT what actually exists, your money, your job, your personaltiy, but the fact that other people act as if you have it. Many of the famous seducers in Robert Greene's Art of Sedution were masters of manipulating this, and scammers are masters of manipulation in this as well.

A lengthy prelude about the book can be obtained on Shermer's e-skeptic website:

http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/08-12-23.html#feature