How scammers like Anna Delvey and the Tinder Swindler exploit a core feature of human nature

{{featured_button_text}} Anna Sorokin, better known as Anna Delvey, during her trial in April 2019. Sorokin is the subject of a new Netflix miniseries. Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty ImagesThat’s how Anna Sorokin’s marks explained away the supposed German heiress’s strange requests to sleep on their couch for the night, or to put plane tickets on their credit cards, which she would then forget to pay back.

As a social psychologist who has written a book about our surprising power of persuasion, I don’t see this as an unusual glitch of human nature. Rather, I view the stories about Sorokin and Leviev as examples of bad actors exploiting the social processes people rely on every day for efficient and effective human communication and cooperation.

Yet psychologists have watched participants hand over their money to complete strangers for many years across hundreds of experiments. In these studies, participants are told they are taking part in various types of “investment games” in which they are given the opportunity to hand over their money to another participant in the hopes of receiving a return on their investment.

Lies are the exception, not the normOf course, Sorokin’s requests were often accompanied by elaborate explanations and justifications, and you might wonder why so few people seemed to doubt the veracity of her claims. Yet just as trust is a default of human interaction, a presumption of sincerity is a default expectation of basic communication.

Researchers have found experimental evidence for what is sometimes called the “truth default.” In one series of studies, researchers asked participants to evaluate whether statements were true or false. Sometimes the participants were interrupted so they couldn’t fully process the statements.

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