What Do Con Artists and Religious Leaders Have in Common? With Maria Konnikova

Psychologist and writer Maria Konnikova looks at the mechanisms of human nature that have allowed con artists, religious authorities, and cult leaders to prevail for thousands of years. Konnikova is the author of The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It... Every Time
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Maria Konnikova: I think humans really have a deep desire for meaning. And it's something that is really hardwired into us. So if you look at an infant who is just learning about the world, that infant needs to learn rules of cause and effect. What happens – you sometimes see babies and they keep dropping objects so you think it's so incredibly annoying. You say stop dropping that, you know, I just picked it up for you. They're learning about physics. They're actually really curious to see that every time they drop it it falls. That is a totally amazing and mesmerizing new concept if you think about it. So we start looking for cause and effect right away. That's how we make sense of the world. And as you grow older you're still looking for that cause and effect that same if I cry mommy comes back. Cause leads directly to effect. An event leave directly to what that event causes.
We are really uncomfortable when that's not the case. And the world is really, really messy. It's not all about the dropping a ball and it falls. The world really is all about uncertainty. It's ambiguous. Causes don't lead to effect, things just happen without any action on your part. Sometimes you take an action and nothing happens, even though you want it to happen. So there are lots of gaps in meaning because that meaning that we want to be there it's not there and we still search for it. And so we still want that meaning to be there. We want certainty. We want to resolve that ambiguity. And con artists that's what they do they resolve it for us. They give us the meaning.
That's why I think the same principles that underlie cons are the principles that organized religion follows because you have spontaneous organized religion in societies throughout the world. You see it throughout history over and over. Religion just keeps popping up because, once again, it also gives meaning and explains things and gives people a purpose. And that's what con artists do they sell meaning; they sell purpose.
There's a saying that's kind of out in the ether and there are lots of varieties of it but it goes something like this: “Religion emerged when the first scoundrel met the first fool.” And this has been attributed to Voltaire, to Mark Twain, to Carl Sagan, I mean it's been attributed to just about anyone who had a problem with organized religion.
And it seems to make a lot of sense because here you have someone who wants meaning, who wants some sort of depth to life. And then you have someone who sees that and says uh-huh that's an opportunity for me. I'm smart. I know that life is meaningless. I know that all this stuff doesn't mean anything. I know that there's no afterlife, there is no this, others know that, let me see what would make this person feel better. And if that person feels better you know what's going to happen? That person is going to give me money because he's going to be so grateful for feeling better that I'll be able to elicit donations. I'll be respected. I will be a person of great esteem in society and there you have an opening and there you have the first priest, and I say priest in a very broad way, priest of any religion or any spiritual movement or a cult leader, by the way.
Cults are the most profound and terrifying cons there are because that's your spiritual con. That's someone who tricks you into joining something that's going to take over your life, even though you have no idea that that's what you're joining.