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Why Are We Duped so Easily?

Robin Hanson, writing at Overcoming Bias, discusses Paul Maliszewski's new book, Fakes, and has a new observation about confirmation bias.

"In news, social science, and fiction consumers mainly want more vivid impressive detail to support pre-existing abstract conclusions. To produce as much as possible, ambitious writers must be as sloppy as they can get away with. "

Michael Dirda writing in the Washington Post as a longer review of Fakes.

While Maliszewski does talk to a number of the fakers he discusses, for the most part he acknowledges that others before him have done the primary sleuthing.

His own essays and interviews are not so much potted versions of sometimes familiar stories as attempts to understand the psychology of deception. Why are we so readily duped?

The short answer is that con games confirm what we already want to believe.

The made-up news stories and fudged memoirs fit certain "forms," as Maliszewski calls them:

"Fictional journalism is essentially a careful imitation of journalistic forms. That is, the articles are convincing because they adhere closely to the unstated conventions, assumptions, and predilections of a particular publication, a particular kind of article, or a particular editor. Journalists who fake are extraordinarily sensitive to the ways in which their stories are a series of sometimes conventional, often routine forms."

I agree with both claims. The con criminal does pitch to the converted. But there is more to it that mere faking. The con criminal has hit the exact note of familiarity, urgency, and no risk. We have built in bs detectors that work fairly well, until we are rushed to judgment.

Rushed to judgment, we pick the stories that are most appealing instead requiring evidence for the stories presented to us.

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Full post as published by Misleading Advertising Law on January 19, 2009 (boomark / email).