Published: March 7, 2016, 8:38 p.m.
\nWhat is it about human behavior that allows con artists to pull off elaborate scams in which they fool thousands? Moreover what is about those thousands of people \u2014 many of them intelligent and sophisticated \u2014 that make them so vulnerable them to being scammed?
New Yorker contributor Maria Konnikova joins us today to talk about her new book,
The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for it Every Time.\n\xa0\n
\nKonnikova analyses the tactics that con artists use to appeal to our sensibilities, gain our trust, and lower our defenses, and she explores what motivates these fraudsters to do what they do. Some cons are so complicated that they can actually be more difficult than accomplishing the same thing when playing by the rules. Konnikova posits that a combination of entitlement and power spurs con artists to jump through hoops most of us could never imagine.\xa0\n
