The Gullibility Episode

Being gullible is a weird thing. But are you born with it? Is it learned? Can you be trusting and not gullible? Listen in to find out. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 0:45Josh Clark?

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• 1:04Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:14Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and we're flying solo again, which means we hopefully won't crash this joint. And this is Stuff You Should Know.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:26Josh Clark?

  That's right. How are you, man? You still sick, huh?

• 1:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, and this is kind of, I mean, I don't like playing it this close, but it's kind of fun to be a little more current with like listener mails and updates and stuff.

• 1:39Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it keeps us on the edge where we need to be.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, so this will be out on Tuesday, I guess, and in real time, this is the day after the automat oyster stew debacle.

• 1:50Josh Clark?

  I don't know if it was a debacle. That turned out to be a pretty good up.

• 1:53Speaker 02

  And Aaron Cooper already came through.

• 1:55Josh Clark?

  Oh, good. I haven't seen it yet.

• 1:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's funny.

• 1:58Speaker 02

  I'm OK. I'm, you know, things subside in the early afternoon, so I'm actually feeling a little better than I was like 20 minutes ago even, but.

• 2:05Josh Clark?

  Man, that's crazy.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just, I gotta go to the doctor and just get it over with.

• 2:09Josh Clark?

  You do? I heard that there's a really bad norovirus going around and that's gotta be what you got, man.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  It going around Mexico City?

• 2:18Josh Clark?

  Going around the world.

• 2:19Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 2:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah, Mexico City's included.

• 2:22Speaker 02

  This feels bacterial diverticulitis related.

• 2:25Josh Clark?

  Oh, that's true. I forgot you got that.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:27Josh Clark?

  Well, there's still a norovirus going around, so don't catch that, too.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  I'll try, but I'm hanging in there. I am working on less than 300 calories a day for five days now. So I am a shell of a human.

• 2:41Josh Clark?

  You're gonna look lean and mean, buddy. Have you been doing pushups?

• 2:45Speaker 02

  I can't do one pushup right now. There's no way.

• 2:48Josh Clark?

  Well, Chuck, I guess it's entirely possible, since I haven't seen you, I've just, you know, been talking to you while we record. I have no idea whether you're actually sick or not, and it's entirely possible that you're fooling me right now.

• 3:02Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 3:03Josh Clark?

  And if you are, I would argue that doesn't make me gullible, because I generally believe you're trustworthy.

• 3:11Josh Clark?

  There's no reason to believe that you're not sick. So really, you'd just be a shameful, dirty liar, and I would be the hero in this situation.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  That's right. This is on gullibility, and this, you know, we were just talking offline that there are, I think, 100 different ways to approach this kind of topic, and sometimes that's like freeing, and sometimes that's really frustrating. And I think this one is a little frustrating. Olivia put together a great article, I think, but it's just a hard one. When I pitched it to her, I was like, you know what, I feel like, especially here in America, we're at peak gullibility as a nation. And like, I just wondered, like, is there any science to that? Are like, are people more gullible than others? And can science be gullible? And this is what we came up with.

• 3:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah, interestingly, yes, science can be gullible. On the other hand, you could argue that Americans aren't more gullible than usual, that there's actually just different factors involved that make people want to believe things.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Maybe.

• 4:14Josh Clark?

  It's weird. I think one of the reasons why it's so hard to wrap our head around is social psychologists are still trying to wrap their head around it.

• 4:23Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 4:23Josh Clark?

  And you know what happens when social psychologists get a hold of something.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. It's an oyster stew party.

• 4:29Josh Clark?

  It's a little unsteady as they figure it out. That's right. It's an oyster stew party. So I think- It's not, it's not us is what I'm trying to say. And you, dear listener, if you're like, what is going on? It's not you either. It's social psychology.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  That's right. Uh, I guess we can start by talking about, um, I mean, we're gonna talk about a different, a lot of different people, a lot of different people that study this kind of stuff. A lot of different studies, some of which make more sense than others. But this guy, Stephen Greenspan, is an author. He wrote a book, he wrote the book on it, um, Annals of Gullibility, colon, Why We Are Duped and How to Avoid It. And one sort of important thing he does upfront is say, hey, there's a difference between credulity and gullibility. Uh, credulity is if, you know, you'll believe something just without looking at all the evidence. And gullibility means you're, you have an active response to perhaps being conned.

• 5:24Josh Clark?

  I take issue with this right out of the gate.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  I kinda did too.

• 5:27Josh Clark?

  I, I think that's a terrible distinction because I think you can totally fall for something and be duped.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:34Josh Clark?

  And you be the only person who knew that, who knows it, you know, somebody could say something that duped you and then they don't stop and focus to get like that, that, um, that question of whether they duped you or not answered, they just keep going on. But you know, you've been duped. You don't have to respond to a Nigerian prince email or send somebody a bunch of Walmart cards to get out of some random federal case that's against you. To, to have been gullible, you just have to believe it. Uh, and, and usually in the absence of any kind of supporting evidence, and sometimes in the presence of contradictory evidence. That's gullibility in my, in my understanding.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 6:18Josh Clark?

  You're, you're believing something without bothering to go check it out. And that to me is the baseline of gullibility.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  I totally agree. I, I thought that definition was really weird and I'm glad both are in here though, cause sometimes it's a nice contrast, but uh, along the lines of what you were saying, there's a, uh, a group of researchers, um, social psychologists from Macquarie University. There can be a lot of Aussies in this.

• 6:43Josh Clark?

  You can say that name better than that.

• 6:45Speaker 02

  Macquarie? Oh, like Aussie style?

• 6:48Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 6:48Speaker 02

  Macquarie?

• 6:50Josh Clark?

  Although anytime you do that, you sound like Murray from Flight of the Conchords to me.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  Murray, present. Alessandra K. Tanis, maybe?

• 7:00Josh Clark?

  That's what I'm going with.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Defined it much in the way you would and I would, and I think a lot of people would, which is simply the propensity to accept a false premise in the presence of untrustworthy clues.

• 7:13Speaker 02

  That's it. That's it. You don't have to act on it.

• 7:15Josh Clark?

  No. You can just believe.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  What's up with Greenspan?

• 7:18Josh Clark?

  And no one in the world could know beside you that you believed in, you're still gullible in that sense. The thing that really stood out to me that we'll talk about a lot more, though, is you could make a really good case that people aren't as gullible as other people think they are. And I found that kind of reassuring. We'll talk about that later, but I don't want anybody to get the impression that we're just like, yep, people are generally stupid, and here's how they fall for stupid stuff. And you're probably stupid, too. That's not actually what the science of gullibility has turned up.

• 7:51Speaker 02

  No, and there's a lot of factors. And this is where I think Greenspan did kind of hit on something. His four factors of gullibility, situational, like if there's a lot of, if everyone else is doing it and there's a lot of social pressure, like all the bros are investing in the same cryptocurrency, and it's at a great price, and you're like, oh, man, I gotta get in there. All the guys are, you know, everyone's in on that. So there's social pressure where you can fall for something. Cognitive issues like, well, as we'll get to later with, you know, our senior friends, sometimes there's like legit brain cognitive issues. That's a different thing than this. But this is just lacking expertise, and, you know, you can't evaluate what you're being told

• 8:32Speaker 02

  because you're just not, I don't want to say smart enough, you're just not an expert in whatever that is.

• 8:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah, you're not informed enough in that particular thing.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. What else?

• 8:41Josh Clark?

  Personality is another one. If you're impulsive.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  This is a big one, yeah.

• 8:44Josh Clark?

  It's a big one. If you're low in curiosity, you're like, I don't care. Just tell me what to think. I'm too lazy to go figure it out myself. I got better things to do than think. Or if you have a high need for independence.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:57Josh Clark?

  This struck me quite a bit because if you're if you're independence minded, you don't need smarty pants, pencil neck, college boys telling you what's right or what's wrong or what's true or what's false. You can figure it out yourself.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:14Josh Clark?

  And those people are actually at high risk of being duped, which is really surprising. Um, but if you stop and think about it, it makes total sense. They're overconfident and that's a huge factor in being gullible.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I totally think it makes sense. Um, you know, because it happened to his cousin.

• 9:32Josh Clark?

  That's right.

• 9:34Speaker 02

  Uh, emotion can play a big factor, uh, in a lot of ways. And we'll talk about some of those with some studies later on. But, um, one way is like if, if, let's say we're specifically talking about being conned. If it gives you a positive feeling, whether it's a, uh, somebody catfishing you and making you feel loved or, um, you know, some sort of financial thing that you think might provide for your long-term security. Or like, oh, man, I, no one else knows about this deal but me. I'm so smart for getting in on the ground floor here. That kind of thing.

• 10:05Josh Clark?

  Right. And strangely ironically, almost as if he did it on purpose because it supports everything he wrote about. Um, Stephen Greenspan, the author of that book about gullibility. Um, he finished his book and shortly afterward, he was informed by, I guess, his stockbroker that he had lost a bunch of, a bunch of money by investing in Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme.

• 10:26Speaker 02

  With the ironies, huh?

• 10:27Josh Clark?

  So he was like, even the guy that researched this and wrote the book on gullibility can fall for it. That's a really great little tidbit.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:35Josh Clark?

  But I think it also goes to show just how specific gullibility is. Because I don't get the impression that Stephen Greenspan was like, this Madoff guy is making a lot of really great points and this is incredibly high risk. But I'm going to go along with it anyway. Like he went through a stockbroker and everything. So yeah, there's only a certain amount of gullibility. It's just. Bernie Madoff is like shorthand for fooling people. You know what I mean?

• 11:03Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 11:04Josh Clark?

  Not to pick on Stephen Greenspan or anything like that.

• 11:07Speaker 02

  No, I feel very bad for him despite his poor definition.

• 11:13Josh Clark?

  So some other people have said, well, we really want to show off as social psychologists. We're going to create a gullibility scale. And in fact, Alessandra Tunis from Macquarie University, I'm not even going to try that one. But it's Australian for university.

• 11:31Josh Clark?

  Sorry, Australians. There's this beer called Foster's that here in America, we think you drink a lot of. And in America, the ad campaign says Foster's. It's Australian for beer.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  I love that you barely use an accent. You just say it seriously and that gets the point across.

• 11:51Josh Clark?

  It makes people pay attention.

• 11:52Speaker 02

  Australian for beer. Got it?

• 11:55Josh Clark?

  That's the best I can do. That's how I think Australians talk.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. So this gullibility scale was self-reported. Basically like do you self-reported, meaning do you think others, do you perceive yourself as gullible? And do you think others perceive you as gullible?

• 12:14Speaker 02

  And then they, you know, they filled in with some other questions like how persuadable are you and stuff like that? And it actually, for a self-reported study, which, you know, a lot of those can be tough. This seemed to work out pretty good for them. Don't you think?

• 12:27Josh Clark?

  It did because they backed it up. They, I can't remember what it's called, but they tested the validity. They tested the validity of the self-reporting panel and found that the people who reported themselves or scored the highest on gullibility on this test were more likely to click a link on a phishing email than people who scored low.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 12:52Josh Clark?

  So it seems like a valid test. And one of the things I went and looked it up, Chuck, and one of the questions wasn't even a question. It was you are very persuadable and the only option to check was yes.

• 13:03Speaker 02

  Ah, what?

• 13:04Josh Clark?

  No, I'm kidding.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  Oh, man. This is so upsetting.

• 13:09Josh Clark?

  It's all right. You're not at 100% at all.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  I didn't think you would take advantage of this today.

• 13:14Josh Clark?

  It was more of the joke. I wasn't trying to take advantage of you, although I realize now that I did.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  It's okay, buddy. All for the show. On that scale, they found some traits that were common among those that scored high in gullibility. Social intelligence was one of them. That'll keep coming back over and over. Vulnerability, emotionality, which we've talked about a little bit. A weak sense of self, which also comes up in different ways. I think you found an article about how parents can wreck kids by not giving them self-confidence, right? And they'll end up gullible.

• 13:48Josh Clark?

  Yeah, pretty much. And depending on, and it doesn't even have to be like, you're such a stupid kid every day. It can just be things like where your, your opinion is not really heard or validated, or just all sorts of little missteps that parents can make that make parenting a living nightmare. You can carry on as an adult and it can make you doubt your own opinion. So you're not going to speak up. It can make you be afraid of looking stupid. So you don't ask questions because you don't want to seem like, oh, I don't, I didn't immediately get it. So I'm going to look dumb if I ask these questions. There's a, like, it just sets you up for being more likely to be a victim of being duped than somebody who has a lot of confidence.

• 14:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have a good friend who had a pretty bad stepfather and the abuse in this situation was exclusively, he made him feel stupid at every opportunity.

• 14:40Josh Clark?

  That is so wrong. Like, I should be in jail.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  He's passed on now, but it's, I can't think of any, I mean, there are all kinds of things that are worse, obviously, but something so damaging for such a small person to do that to a child.

• 14:56Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 14:57Speaker 02

  And literally like, oh, you think so? Like, you know, just that's how he was talked to his whole life growing up. It's awful.

• 15:03Josh Clark?

  That is rough.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  And he's super gullible.

• 15:06Josh Clark?

  Oh, is he really?

• 15:07Speaker 02

  No, actually, I don't think so.

• 15:08Josh Clark?

  Oh, you got me back. There you go. We should just do that to one another like every minute or two.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  One thing we should mention though, because this pops up a couple of times, and I think it's super fascinating, is another trait they found on the gullibility scale, if you're very gullible, was belief in paranormal activity.

• 15:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 15:25Speaker 02

  Just park it right there.

• 15:27Josh Clark?

  But I guess that depends on whether paranormal activity is real or not, you know?

• 15:31Speaker 02

  Well, I guess so.

• 15:33Josh Clark?

  I mean, that's described from a point of view where yours like that's all fake anyway. So.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:39Josh Clark?

  Duh. Um, one of the things about social intelligence that's worth pointing out. So that's basically a package that you can have. Some people are much better at it than others, but basically everyone alive in a society has some degree or other of this package of skills that form social intelligence. Like whether or not you're good at conversation, um, whether you are good at effective listening, what your knowledge of like social roles and social scripts are. Um, and then awareness of like what make other people tick. And then what people think of you and you put all this together. And if you have like high emotional or social intelligence, you're going to be able to navigate

• 16:20Josh Clark?

  interactions with other people much better than somebody with low intelligence. Part of that is not getting scanned by somebody by being able to be like, you're a scammer. And I'm not going to send you a Walmart gift card now.

• 16:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it's a trait, I think, that you can't necessarily teach, but is really beneficial to have as a human.

• 16:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I admire people with high social intelligence because it's not just, you know, being able to, um, spot a scammer. It's, it's being able to see the best in other people. And I think to bring out the best in other people and let them bring out the best in you. That's just, it's maybe in another life, maybe in the next lifetime.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  Oh, buddy. I think you're great. They did another study at the University of Leicester where, um, they found that, um, childhood traumas can really affect you later in life in terms of gullibility, like any kind of bullying, uh, death of a family member or something like that. It leads you more susceptible to fall for, uh, tricks later in life. And apparently they say it could be because that kind of trauma just makes it hard to trust your own judgments and, you know, I guess everyone else's intent.

• 17:28Josh Clark?

  For sure. And then some people, because it's actually kind of counterintuitive. You think if you've gone through the school of hard knocks, I think is the way that the study put it.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:38Josh Clark?

  You would think that they'd come out like much more world wary and like suspicious of people. And so they'd be less likely to fall first game. But no, instead, like you said, they they just they question their own judgment for having gone through what they went through. So

• 17:51Speaker 02

  That's terrible.

• 17:52Josh Clark?

  It is. It is very terrible. Childhood is just fraught, you know?

• 17:56Speaker 02

  It really is.

• 17:58Josh Clark?

  It's a wonder any of us can function in any like real way.

• 18:01Speaker 02

  Oh, I know. I mean, we're pretty good parents, but I often think like, how are we messing her up? Because I know we are in some way.

• 18:09Josh Clark?

  Yep. I mean, I can't, I can't imagine like, that's got to just keep you up at night sometimes if you think about it too much, you know?

• 18:15Speaker 02

  I sleep pretty good.

• 18:17Josh Clark?

  Good. You just wake up to throw up every hour.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think just try to limit that stuff as a parent. Like there's, you can't be perfect. I mean, my brother's a perfect parent, but there's only, there's only one.

• 18:31Josh Clark?

  Scott.

• 18:32Speaker 02

  Another thing I thought was interesting, and this makes total sense, is if you rely on your intuition a lot, you're a lot more vulnerable, vulnerable to being duped by something. Just like, you know, some people have a good gut. And some people think they have a good gut, but do not.

• 18:48Josh Clark?

  Yes. Another one that really stood out to me, though, that this, this I would not have predicted is the more cynical you are, studies have found.

• 18:56Speaker 02

  I like this.

• 18:56Josh Clark?

  That the likelier you are to be gullible or duped. And the reason why actually makes tons of sense. Again, if you're cynical, you think you've got everything figured out.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 19:08Josh Clark?

  Like you're just, you think the world sucks and everybody's trying to take advantage of you and the government's constantly screwing you over. And everyone's going to try to get an angle on you. That's cynicism, right?

• 19:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:20Josh Clark?

  At least in the modern sense. And it's actually a lazy shortcut to experiencing reality, because on the one hand, you lose out an opportunity cost. You miss a lot of great stuff. Like you might not make friends that you could have made because you were suspicious of this stranger chatting you up at The outset or something like that.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:40Josh Clark?

  But as far as gullibility goes, you're, if somebody comes along and talks to you in your language, they can pull one over on you much more easily because they are tapping into your cynicism, which again is just lazy shorthand for experiencing reality. It's based largely on intuition and supposition and not necessarily taking each experience and looking at it based on the facts as a unique thing. It all has this one cast to it that's the same. And that's just not how the world actually works.

• 20:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think, you know, that kind of suggests that if there's like a country with an authoritarian leader in place, like the, the, the simple sort of easy to understand radical solutions that are pitched out oftentimes in those situations are very easy to fall for if you're a gullible person because that itself is a mental shortcut. Well, we just got, we just got to do this.

• 20:37Josh Clark?

  For sure. And then conversely to not being cynical requires way more brain power and thought and just participation than being cynical does. Like you have to actually like ask yourself like, is this true? What kind of source is this coming from? I might need to go do some research. I might need to ask people. It's just so much easier to be like, nope, they're screwing me over. I don't even need to bother to look into that. Because it's, you're also defending yourself at the same time from getting taken advantage of. Again, until somebody comes along and is talking your language and then you will oftentimes fall for whatever they're saying.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, should we take a break?

• 21:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 21:20Speaker 02

  All right. We'll take a break and talk about mood right after this.

• 21:44Josh Clark?

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• 24:03Speaker 02

  All right, we're back. We promised to talk a little bit about mood because the fact is you are not always gullible or always not gullible. Everybody could get duped at any time. That changes from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour, depending on a lot of factors like mood. If you're really, really tired, if you're super distracted, if you're upset, you may not notice something that can make you fall for a scam. Also, the same holds if you're in a really good mood. If you're just feeling great about everything, you're like, yeah, yes to life, yes to everything. There was a study in 1938 by a researcher named Gregory Razran, who found that giving a free lunch made people more receptive to

• 24:48Speaker 02

  a political message. And apparently, that is sort of where the sales lunch started. Taking people out to sell them something and feeding them, you're more likely to close a deal. And I'm sure the same thing, like golf course sales things, like the salesperson's not out there beating the person in golf that they're selling to. I guarantee it. I don't know how that works, but I imagine you're letting them win and feel good about stuff.

• 25:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah, think about how good you have to be to purposefully lose at golf.

• 25:20Speaker 02

  Oh, I could play bad golf on purpose, and I'm not good.

• 25:22Josh Clark?

  Oh, really?

• 25:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:24Josh Clark?

  Okay, well, I take that one back.

• 25:26Speaker 02

  And I'm exited.

• 25:28Josh Clark?

  So, yes, but on the contrary, if you are upset, if you're sad, if you're depressed, if you're mad, if you're in a low mood, you are actually more likely to pay attention to granular things. I think it actually kind of ties into rumination.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:47Josh Clark?

  Where you're just thinking about stuff. You're turned inward. So if somebody comes along and tries to sell you something.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, that makes sense.

• 25:53Josh Clark?

  It's going to be harder to slip it past you because you're paying attention more than somebody who's like, yeah, whatever, let's have another round.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  So overall, if you think about people who might be gullible, you might think, you know, if you're going to stereotype it, like people like kids, very young people, very old people, and people that aren't very well educated.

• 26:16Josh Clark?

  Obviously.

• 26:17Speaker 02

  But it's not necessarily true.

• 26:19Josh Clark?

  What?

• 26:22Speaker 02

  There is a lot of factors, one of which I mentioned earlier, you can get, you know, a lot of skewed studies about the gullibility of someone who's older, because if you're older, you're more likely to have a cognitive ability that's literally keeping you from being able to determine whether something is true. But they've also conversely found that sometimes they're a little more protected because they're constantly have their children and everyone else saying like, no, no, no, watch out for scams. They're trying to scam you. Everyone's trying to scam you.

• 26:51Josh Clark?

  Right. Yeah. So it's like a self fulfilling prophecy that they are less likely to be scammed because they're so vigilant. That's amazing to me.

• 27:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:01Josh Clark?

  So there was this one study that kind of backed all this up from the University of Piranha. And they found, they looked at adults 60 to 90 who handled their own finances. They didn't have any diagnosed cognitive issues. And they found that people who had reported being victims of a fraud, there was nothing that really happened, or there was no characteristic demographically, anything like that, that made them different from anybody else. The only thing that seemed to really kind of stick out was that they, the people who had been scammed before were, had low conscientiousness, one of the big

• 27:46Josh Clark?

  five.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:48Josh Clark?

  They were less honest, humble, which is another, another kind of personality trait from a different scale.

• 27:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:56Josh Clark?

  And that, from what I could see, the honesty thing means.

• 28:02Josh Clark?

  They they explained it like you're if you are low on honesty, you're more likely to try something that might be a scam because you you might get rich quick or something like that. You're more willing to take a shortcut, say, than somebody who would score higher on honesty, which you put you at greater risk.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:20Josh Clark?

  But that was about it. There wasn't like, you know, the older you get or the less educated you are in this group, you're more likely to get scammed. It was some other stuff entirely. But they found also that people who do experience cognitive decline do tend to get taken advantage of more, which is really messed up.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:43Josh Clark?

  And sad, but it's true. And as a matter of fact, they've started to some people have started to push this idea like, if you fall for a scam, you should immediately be tested for Alzheimer's or dementia, because there's a high correlation with getting scammed as an older person and the early, early developments of cognitive decline.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 29:06Josh Clark?

  You gotta feel terrible. I mean, it's bad enough to feel like you're getting scammed, but then to stop and be like, well, is this it for me in my mind?

• 29:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, thankfully, nothing like that's ever happened to my parents. But it's you hear the stories all the time and it's just, you know, it's tragic and shameful.

• 29:23Josh Clark?

  For sure.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  There was a study in 2018 that I thought was pretty interesting. A woman named Monica T. Witty, another Aussie, when talk about like being catfished, which is if I guess I threw that word out, assuming everyone knows it. That's like when you get scammed in a sort of a romantic thing online by someone who's pretending to be someone they're not generally.

• 29:46Josh Clark?

  We should do an episode on that sometime because I just don't I don't I mean, I get it, but I don't understand like where it started or anything like that.

• 29:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's put that down. That would be super interesting.

• 29:57Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 29:57Speaker 02

  Do you remember the Notre Dame football player?

• 29:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I thought he was. Isn't he like the Dolphins quarterback now or?

• 30:03Speaker 02

  No, he I don't think he's in the league anymore. He played in the NFL for a little while, but he was a linebacker for Notre Dame that.

• 30:08Josh Clark?

  Oh, gotcha.

• 30:09Speaker 02

  Was famously catfished and like, you know, smart, handsome, young athlete guy. So it's not like just, you know, the lonely loser in the basement that falls for stuff like that.

• 30:19Josh Clark?

  Have you heard about the lonesome loser?

• 30:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, he still keeps on trying.

• 30:25Speaker 02

  Oh, man. Little River Man. So good. 2018 Monica Witty did one on sort of catfishing, but really just romance scams is what they called it. And she said, if you fall for something like that, you obviously will be a little more impulsive and sensation seeking.

• 30:40Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 30:41Speaker 02

  And so if someone's building up about all these great stories and these big travels and you know, it's always, it's never just like, well, I just kind of sit around at home like they always present themselves as offering some new, exciting life, it seems like.

• 30:54Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  But she also found that they were more highly educated than average. And Livia, I think is on the money, kind of speculates that could be, and I think it's true when we did our thing on online dating, it's generally people that are college educated that participate in online dating a little more.

• 31:11Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  Statistically, but also maybe that if you're more educated, you just think like, I'm not going to fall for catfishing. I know all about that. And this is not that.

• 31:21Josh Clark?

  Right. Overconfidence, right?

• 31:23Speaker 02

  And then you're on that hook.

• 31:25Josh Clark?

  And then another thing about being online too, the Better Business Bureau back in 2015, I think they looked at a, I guess, a bunch of their like scam complaints that came in just to see who reported them. And they found that people between 25 and 35 were more likely to lose money on a scam than older people, which is totally contrary to what people think of when they think of people who get scammed. And one of the, one of the explanations that they came up with is in part, younger people are just online more. So they're just more likely by the numbers to have scams presented to them, which means that they're

• 32:06Josh Clark?

  more likely to probably go for a scam than say, people who are online less, right?

• 32:12Speaker 02

  I, I agree with that. In the old days, I think that's changing because I've, I've never seen a generation as phone addicted as boomers are.

• 32:20Josh Clark?

  Oh, really?

• 32:21Speaker 02

  Oh, man. You don't hang around a lot of boomers, do you?

• 32:25Josh Clark?

  They have Gen Z beat?

• 32:26Speaker 02

  Every boomer I know just obsessively stares at their phone and looks things up and, and yeah.

• 32:34Josh Clark?

  I thought they all had like flip phones that only dial numbers.

• 32:38Speaker 02

  No, no, no. They want to show you all the information in the moment.

• 32:43Josh Clark?

  I got you.

• 32:44Speaker 02

  Right in the middle of dinner at a nice restaurant even.

• 32:46Josh Clark?

  I guess I've not experienced that.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  But I do think that that generally is true.

• 32:53Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 32:54Speaker 02

  I just wanted to take a shot at boomers.

• 32:56Josh Clark?

  Well, then that makes it that makes it even less understandable that 25 to 35 year olds would be more likely to be scammed. I don't know, maybe that generation is just more trusting these days or something like that, or I actually, I got to take that back because as we'll see, trusting, being trusting is not necessarily correlated with being gullible.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, which I think we'll get to in a minute before or after the next break, but can we talk about science? Because this is one thing when I sent Liv the idea, I was like, I think I'd read an article about scientists being gullible. And I was like, no, not scientists. But it turns out they they very much can be because a lot of times when you are that

• 33:40Speaker 02

  well versed in a field, you might, you might kind of think you know it all. And like, oh no, I know what I'm doing. And so you might be more apt to to believe

• 33:53Speaker 02

  a result that isn't accurate because you think you did it the right way. Like, that's just one aspect of it.

• 33:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah, another aspect is, like you said, people, people in science typically know a tremendous amount about their field, but they can make a mistake and think that that understanding, that depth of understanding will just apply to other fields as well that they just don't know as much about.

• 34:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:16Josh Clark?

  And that's another way they can fall prey to it. But also scientists like to be right as much as anybody else. And, you know, I don't remember what episode we did this in. I think it was about the

• 34:30Josh Clark?

  the just reproducibility crisis in science papers, if I remember correctly. But just how like the scientists don't set up experiments to disprove their hypothesis. They set them up to prove their hypothesis. That's how you get published. That's how you get celebrated. Like, nobody wants to hear about you. Failing, even though that's what science is meant to be. That's a, that's a, a part of it as well, just wanting to be right. So if somebody comes along and is like, yep, you're right. Let's, let's, uh, let's use that to explain this other thing that's actually not true. The scientist might go along with it because if it is true, then it will prove their, their hypothesis and make them very famous and they'll probably end up having an HBO movie made about them.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  Well, that was probably a scientific method, huh?

• 35:20Speaker 02

  Maybe?

• 35:20Josh Clark?

  Maybe, but I mean, we definitely talked about papers just being, some of them just being outright fraudulent because their experiments are set up incorrectly. It could have been scientific method.

• 35:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, or like the, the little student in Rushmore that faked the results. I always liked that part.

• 35:37Josh Clark?

  I don't remember that part.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  You know, Max has his sort of little budding girlfriend at the end. And she's, he says something about she won some science award and I think she had to give it back or something. And she said, he's like, why? He's, she said, I faked the results. It didn't work, so I faked it.

• 35:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I thought that was so, her line where she tells Bill Murray that she won't dance with them. It was a little out of nowhere.

• 35:59Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting. Yeah. I, I get that.

• 36:02Josh Clark?

  A little harsh, I think, is what I'm trying to say.

• 36:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. Who doesn't want to dance with Bill Murray?

• 36:07Josh Clark?

  I do.

• 36:09Speaker 02

  You and Lucy Liu. All right.

• 36:12Josh Clark?

  Wait, Lucy Liu doesn't or does want to dance with Bill Murray?

• 36:15Speaker 02

  No, I don't think she does. They, they were on Charlie's Angels together and had some words.

• 36:19Josh Clark?

  Oh, that's right. I remember that.

• 36:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I doubt she's dancing with Bill.

• 36:22Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 36:24Speaker 02

  All right, should we take a break?

• 36:25Josh Clark?

  Wait, I just, before we go to a break, I was saying I would like to dance with Bill Murray.

• 36:29Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:30Josh Clark?

  Okay, just want to make sure that no one walks away to this ad break thinking that I don't want to dance with Bill Murray.

• 36:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was being sort of a opposite with my Lucy Liu joke.

• 36:40Josh Clark?

  Gotcha, okay.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  This, you know, I'm not firing on all cylinders, I'm doing my best.

• 36:43Josh Clark?

  I'm not either, apparently.

• 36:45Speaker 02

  All right, we'll be right back and Joshua will lead off with a little bit on trust.

• 37:07Josh Clark?

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• 38:11Josh Clark?

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• 39:39Josh Clark?

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• 40:30Josh Clark?

  Okay, we're back, everybody. And I mentioned before that trust is not necessarily correlated with gullibility, and I love that. That just makes me feel good about the world again, you know?

• 40:42Speaker 02

  You can trust people and think the best of people and still not be gullible.

• 40:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and so we'll kind of explain why, but there have been study after study after study that basically say, yeah, that's actually true. Like, you can have a high level of trust, be tested for that kind of thing, and you're not more likely to be gullible. And in fact, it seems that if you are a higher trusting person, you're actually less likely to be gullible compared to, say, like, the cynic.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 41:11Josh Clark?

  Like, there's this researcher named Toshio Yamagishi, who's considered one of the most prominent researchers in gullibility and trust out of Hokkaido University. I know how to say Hokkaido. I don't know why I had trouble with that at first. But one of the things that Yamagishi did in the 1990s was to tell people who scored high in trustingness and other people who scored low.

• 41:38Josh Clark?

  About the story of Bill, and Chuck, I think you should take it because Bill's got a great story.

• 41:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I kind of understand this, but not 100%, but I think I get it. So what he would say is Bill, your friend Bill, stayed at a hotel for a week. He was only charged one day. Do you think he would tell the cashier about this, even though there's like no chance, let's say there's no chance of him getting caught later on? Do you think he would do that? And people who scored high on their trustworthy score, like people who were trustworthy, they were more likely to say that Bill would do the honest thing. But when he added in a twist here, which is to tell them some negative things about Bill, like, by the way, just want to let you know, Bill also cut in line the other day.

• 42:22Josh Clark?

  He also makes his stepson feel stupid.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  Makes his stepson feel stupid. But if they, if they added in a couple of nuggets like that, negative things about Bill, the people who had a high trust in people generally, put a lot more weight on that additional information

• 42:39Speaker 02

  than the other people did, the people that were low in trustworthiness.

• 42:42Josh Clark?

  Right, but the bottom line was even with positive information, like Bill littered, but he also cut in line. If you took all of the tallies, you would see that people who were low in trusting others and people who are high in trusting others, they had about the same scores. So the, this, this research from Yamagishi and others shows that like you can trust other people and it doesn't open you up to being taken advantage of. And that just doesn't make any sense because just the, the idea of being gullible means that you're trusting what somebody else is saying. That's the popular conception of it. But as we've seen, really, the idea of gullibility is trusting what somebody says

• 43:25Josh Clark?

  because you either don't care enough to go figure it out yourself, because you don't feel like thinking for yourself, because what they're saying confirms your biased beliefs, not that you just trust people in general. And the explanation that I saw that really kind of drives it home for me, Chuck, is that people who have high- Trust are also more discerning.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 43:51Josh Clark?

  So they would have probably a better social intelligence than people who don't trust as much. And that makes sense because if you don't trust people like the cynic, you're actually protecting yourself. You're guarding yourself. You know that that you are probably not as discerning as other people. And so rather than get yourself into trouble time and time again, you just keep people at arm's length. You don't really trust them. Whereas if you were high trusting, you are better at discerning. And that either means that because you're good at discerning, you have the freedom to trust other people. Cause you can be confident in your judgment of other people and you're probably not going to take it, be taken advantage of.

• 44:30Josh Clark?

  Or if you are just a trusting person by nature, you have to have a higher discernment or else you're going to be taken advantage of. Either way, high discernment and high trust go hand in hand.

• 44:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. And that, that can be a very freeing thing. And that's how Yamagishi sort of thought about it. When he talked about his emancipation theory, which is if you're trusting, you're kind of. Or if you're untrusting, I guess you're kind of shackled in a way because you'll, you may just be stuck in a place. Because why, um, why hire a different person to do it? Cause they're just going to be a scammer too. Um, and so you can get stuck in this cycle. Um, but if you free yourself from that, uh, with his emancipation theory. And you break those shackles and you start trusting people, it makes you much more apt to, to make a positive change in life. Because you trust somebody or something or some situation.

• 45:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Because at base, you can go through life not trusting other people and you can make it all the way to old age and die. It's pretty much the same, the same age that you would have had you trusted people. But you're, again, you're missing out. There's opportunity costs to not trusting other people. That people who do trust other people are, are not missing out on. And you're just not connected as socially and research after research after research. So it shows that social connections are like the number one predictor of living to a healthy, older age. So you're actually robbing yourself by just not trusting other people. But again, it's kind of understandable. If you were taught that your judgment is questionable, either through trauma,

• 46:05Josh Clark?

  through a jerk stepdad or whatever, it's understandable. And I'm not, I'm not sure if that's something that you can learn to break out of, although I sincerely hope it is.

• 46:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. There are people that think we are actually not as gullible as everyone thinks. There's this writer Hugo Mercier, who wrote a book in 2020 called Not Born Yesterday. Great title for a book like that. And he's like, people are less gullible than we think.

• 46:36Speaker 02

  And there are a lot of like criteria people use to work out if they're, if they believe something or not. And we're better at it than, than we all think we are. Like, a lot, most people, or I guess in his idea, most people are actually looking for well-informed or well-intentioned information. Or if it's, has logic to it, if it's logically strong. Or, you know, maybe people are less like this, which is, I'm just gonna accept something, or I'm sorry, I'm not gonna accept something as a new piece of information, because it's not something that I have found to be true. He argues that people are less like that than they say.

• 47:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and people also judge other people to be more likely to be duped than they are, more gullible than they are. But yeah, his whole message is like, no, we're actually, as a, as a group, as a species, not all that gullible. What appears to be gullibility is actually just somebody not caring enough to argue a point. Or they're accepting information, but they're hanging on to it loosely. Olivia, I thought this is awesome. She pointed out that if you are shown like an AI-generated baby peacock that looks super cute and has huge eyes and is colorful and is nothing like what a baby peacock really looks like.

• 47:59Josh Clark?

  If you're not like a peacock researcher, or your job doesn't depend on positively identifying baby peacocks, it doesn't really matter if you think that that's what they look like, because you're holding on to it loosely enough that if somebody comes along and it says, that's not what baby peacocks actually look like, you're not gonna like, that's not the hill you're going to die on. You're gonna be like, oh, that's crazy what AI can do, or, oh, it got me.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 48:25Josh Clark?

  Or just be like, great, I now know what baby peacocks are, look like. And that's his point, is that's not gullibility, that's just not stopping to analyze, you know, whether it's true or not, because it just isn't that important right then.

• 48:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. He also points out in the book when it comes to like propaganda that propaganda isn't something that can usually really completely change someone's mind.

• 48:49Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 48:50Speaker 02

  Uh, what propaganda is good at is taking someone who already has those beliefs and putting them on turbo speed and reinforcing them. Uh, even like the Nazi propaganda machine, um, you know, he contends probably wasn't making someone anti Semitic. Uh, but if you were anti Semitic, then it really drove you down that road at a pretty fast pace.

• 49:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because it came at your beliefs and said, yep, go for it. Like, that's what that's the official line now is is antisemitism.

• 49:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And also similarly, political ads, uh, don't, don't really work.

• 49:25Speaker 02

  That's what they say.

• 49:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And that makes me wonder, though, if that's just being suspicious of the messenger because of polarization, that you're not going to be like, hmm, let's hear what this, uh, opposing political party has to say about Medicare. I'm really interested. I'm going to keep an open mind. No, it's like this message is from the opposing party. I'm just going to laugh at it because it's just so full of it.

• 49:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I think political ads are terrible and ridiculous and so overvalued, but I, I feel like these days it's less like, it's more just beating that drum of like, aren't you mad? Aren't you mad? Go vote, go vote.

• 50:00Josh Clark?

  I know, man.

• 50:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:02Josh Clark?

  The thing is, though, is this, none of this is to say that they're like, people don't get scammed. There is a, there's a group called the Global Anti Scam Alliance, which sounds like a scam itself. They came up with a report, don't they? They came up with a report that found that worldwide, people lose a trillion dollars to scams every year.

• 50:24Speaker 02

  Man.

• 50:24Josh Clark?

  That's a lot of money, but some of these same researchers are like, hey, there's actually some short, like, easy stuff you can walk around in your head with, um, to use to apply to new information, to protect from being gold, which is actually a word.

• 50:41Speaker 02

  Let's hear it. Do you have a list?

• 50:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah. One of them is, uh, the first step is to admit that you're susceptible to being scammed as anybody else.

• 50:48Speaker 02

  Okay, yeah, just a reality check.

• 50:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Well, it also puts the kibosh on being overconfident, which again can increase your chance of being duped.

• 50:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 50:57Josh Clark?

  Don't make emotional decisions like we, we talked about. Keep a lid on impulsivity.

• 51:02Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 51:03Josh Clark?

  Don't respond to like, act now, supplies are running out, kind of like come ons. Don't respond to false scarcity, like remember people hoarding toilet paper?

• 51:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, oh yeah.

• 51:14Josh Clark?

  Those are emotional decisions. You want to just stay cool and level headed. Another one is ask questions, ask for more information. Don't be afraid to look dumb. That's a

• 51:23Speaker 02

  That's a big one.

• 51:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's a big one. And then consider the source. Is there any supporting information? And when you put all this together, you are probably going to come up with a good decision or understanding. And if you're being galled by somebody, that's a real word. You are probably going to say, I don't believe what you're saying. You, sir, are a cad and a scoundrel.

• 51:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 51:48Josh Clark?

  Please get out of my face before I smack you with my glove. And we have to duel.

• 51:52Speaker 02

  We get, I'm sure anyone who works for big companies get these, and maybe even small companies do this. But when they send out the the test, like the test phishing emails. And then like the next day, you'll get an email that's like, did you fall for it?

• 52:06Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 52:07Speaker 02

  It's always, I'm always nervous. I'm like, oh God, did I click on that thing that, you know, from, you know, facebook dot gold dot AU.

• 52:18Speaker 02

  It's usually there in the email address, you know?

• 52:20Josh Clark?

  Well, at least the next day when they sent out the email, they ask if you fell for it. They don't show like a list with pictures of all the people who did fall for it.

• 52:28Speaker 02

  They should do that, just pictures of everyone.

• 52:31Josh Clark?

  You got anything else?

• 52:33Speaker 02

  I got nothing else. I think, you know, we did a pretty good job on this one.

• 52:36Josh Clark?

  I agree. And that is no fooling.

• 52:40Josh Clark?

  And if you want to know more about gullibility, go do some research yourself on it. That's kind of the point of not being galled, which is a real word. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail.

• 52:53Speaker 02

  This is a great current listener mail from yesterday's, I'm sorry, Thursday's rather, episode yesterday to us on automat.

• 53:00Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 53:01Speaker 02

  Hey, guys, two friends and I gave each other a graduation present from high school in 1970 and spent a week by ourselves in New York, where we went to the automat and it was still great in 70. Four years later, this gets so good. Four years later, as a senior in college, a group of us did an independent study in humor and music as an excuse to do a concert of Bach stuff. I got to be the soloist in the concerto for horn and hard art.

• 53:26Josh Clark?

  Nice.

• 53:27Speaker 02

  And he sent a video. Unfortunately, it was just audio. I mean, it sounded like a hoot and really it was great, but I wanted to see everything. Because here's what they did. This piece is for orchestra and also a table filled with various household items to play. Ideally, they should have been picked out of an automat on stage in order to play them. However, this is beyond our set construction abilities. We did have the recommended, we did at least have the recommended banner overhead reading in Latin, "less work for mother," along with trying to master the rather challenging music. It involved me running around Gettysburg with a pitch pipe, trying to find bells, pots, uh, auga horns and lots of other items that played specific notes.

• 54:10Speaker 02

  This is so great. Thanks for speaking those wonder, sparking those wonderful memories. I discovered you during COVID and have been an extremely faithful listener ever since.

• 54:19Josh Clark?

  Nice.

• 54:19Speaker 02

  And that is from the Reverend Dr. Mark Oldenburg, Steck Miller Professor Emeritus of the Art of Worship and the Music Chair at Gettysburg United Lutheran Cemetery. Pronounce he him.

• 54:34Josh Clark?

  Wow. Also, the most interesting person we know now.

• 54:37Speaker 02

  Totally. Reverend Mark, write in more, please.

• 54:41Josh Clark?

  The Dr. Reverend Mark.

• 54:42Speaker 02

  The Dr. Reverend.

• 54:43Josh Clark?

  Esquire.

• 54:45Speaker 02

  The Reverend Doctor. Sorry.

• 54:46Josh Clark?

  Either way.

• 54:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:48Josh Clark?

  Pretty impressive. Thanks a lot, Mark. I'm just gonna call you Mark for now because I feel like we're on a first name basis. That was a great email, great story. And if you want to see if you can top Mark, you can send us an email, too. Send it off to [email protected].

• 55:07Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 55:23Josh Clark?

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