Book SummaryThe Confidence Game, by Maria Konnikova

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of The Confidence Game

Psychologist Maria Konnikova claims that con artists have existed for as long as human communities have. Con artists are people with an uncanny ability to gain someone’s trust, swindle them, and disappear before the victim even grasps what’s happened—a ruse known as a confidence game, or “con.”

In The Confidence Game, published in 2016, Konnikova uses social psychology to reveal the inner workings of cons: What makes a good con artist, and what makes a person an easy target, or “mark”? Through her analysis of common human biases, Konnikova demonstrates that a con artist doesn’t just rely on their own wiles—**they rely on our instinctive confidence in the stories we tell...

The Confidence Game Summary Characteristics of a Con Artist

Konnikova writes that the terms “confidence game” and “confidence man” likely date back to 1849 in the description of a legal case for a man named William Thompson. Thomspon would approach people in public in New York City, asking “Have you confidence in me to trust me with your watch until tomorrow?” (Shortform note: Konnikova doesn’t explain the specifics of this con, but it’s famous partly for its simplicity. Thompson would dress elegantly, strike up a conversation with a wealthy-looking person, and then ask to borrow their watch. The victim, assuming Thompson was an acquaintance they’d forgotten about, would hand it over and never see Thompson again.)

The case demonstrates that Thompson’s success depended partly on the victims’ confidence in a certain kind of person (in this case, affluent people) and partly on Thompson’s ability to prey on the right person and manipulate them. (Shortform note: One reason that perceived affluence often plays a role in cons may be because of the [halo...

The Confidence Game Summary Step 1: Identify and Size Up the Mark

This first step requires the con artist to read you (the mark) accurately. Konnikova says this might include detecting your mood, making observations about how you like to be perceived (like noticing if you seem to have spent a lot of time on your appearance), or keying in on details, such as your occupation or where you’re from.

All of these details help the con artist with the subsequent steps by revealing your unspoken desires, which the con artist can then leverage to gain your confidence. For example, if the con artist observes that you’re a low-income college...

The Confidence Game Summary Step 2: Gain the Mark’s Trust

The next step of the con, Konnikova explains, is using the information from the first step to gain your trust. The con artist uses three main tools that automatically make us more likely to trust someone: similarity, familiarity, and appeals to emotion.

When leveraging similarity, the con artist might mirror back the traits, interests, or experiences they observed in you. For example, they might pretend they graduated from the same university as you or lived in the same town. This subtly nudges you to trust the con artist because you’re so much alike—in other words, if you think of yourself as trustworthy, then you assume this other person just like you must also be trustworthy.

(Shortform note: Some researchers refer to the tendency to trust people who are similar us as the “similar-to-me” effect and argue that it can have both positive and negative effects depending on the circumstances. For example, it can cause managers to hire people who have similar life experiences, personality traits, or physical characteristics as them, leading to less diverse staff and perpetuating gender disparities...

The Confidence Game Summary Step 3: Persuade the Mark to Do Something

Konnikova writes that once the con artist has sized you up and gained your trust, they will persuade you to do something. They achieve this by making an action seem more appealing as well as removing any potential reasons not to take the action—tactics that psychologists refer to as alpha and omega, respectively.

Alpha and Omega Tactics

An alpha strategy a con artist might use is making an ask they know you’ll reject, then taking advantage of the subsequent guilt you feel by making another smaller ask. Konnikova cites psychologist Robert Cialdini’s claim that this appeals to your natural sense of obligation to reciprocate and increases the likelihood that you’ll accept the second request. Other alpha techniques are when the persuader poses as an authoritative or powerful person or when the persuader makes an opportunity or item seem scarce—increasing your desire to not miss out.

Omega strategies try to convince you that there’s no good reason not to do something. For example, they might use a statement like, “What’s the harm in giving it a try?” to make it seem low-risk.

Alpha and Omega Strategies in Sales Tactics and How to Resist Them

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The Confidence Game Summary Step 4: Get the Mark to Double Down

In the next part of the con, Konnikova explains, the con artist will see exactly how far they can push you and try to get you to recommit or double down. At this point, something might seem slightly off or go awry—for example, you might notice evidence that the con artist isn’t who they say they are, or you’re starting to lose money rather than earning the money you were promised. During this step, the con artist relies on your self-serving bias, your natural instinct to reduce cognitive dissonance, and the sunk cost fallacy.

Konnikova claims that when you’re influenced by the self-serving bias, you help the con artist by focusing only on rationales and evidence that justify the choices you’ve already made—trusting the con artist and taking some sort of action, like investing your money. In other words, you focus only on the good because you want to avoid thinking about loss and facing regret.

According to Konnikova, cognitive dissonance is a similar phenomenon where you re-frame the story you tell yourself to reconcile contradictory information about reality versus what you thought was true. For example, you thought you met a great new friend and business...

The Confidence Game Summary Step 5: Escape and Ensure Silence

Konnikova writes that in the last part of the con, the con artist completes their trick and in most cases simply escapes with the money or goods they’ve swindled you out of. However, a key part of ending the con is making sure you won’t make an official complaint or tell others about what they’ve done. At this point, Konnikova explains, the con artist relies heavily on your sense of shame and embarrassment that you were fooled and the fact that you likely don’t want to tarnish your reputation or self-image by admitting fault. She writes that these tendencies are often enough to ensure that people stay silent, thereby enabling the con artist to keep playing the trick on new marks.

(Shortform note: Some research suggests that in addition to allowing con artists to continue their tricks without facing consequences, internalizing shame is destructive to your emotional well-being. In Daring Greatly, Brené Brown asserts that shame makes you conflate your identity with the behavior you believe was bad. For example, experiencing shame over being conned...

Shortform Exercise: Reflect on the Con Artist’s Traits

According to Konnikova, there are three personality traits (the dark triad of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism) that make people more likely to become a con artist. In addition, there are two environmental factors that encourage con artist behavior: opportunity (such as being in a place where this is normal) and rationale or justification, such as external pressure from an authority figure. In this exercise, we’ll explore your experience with these factors.

Even if the dark triad traits don’t manifest in your personality in an extreme way, what are some aspects of these traits that you observe in yourself or that you’re most likely to exhibit when you’re at your worst? For example, you might tend toward being overly confident, struggle to empathize with others, or seek self-advancement at other people’s expense.

Shortform Exercise: Resist the Con Artist’s Tactics

Konnikova explains that con games rely on many manipulation strategies that target people’s natural instincts and biases. These include things like con artists gaining people’s trust by appealing to similarity, familiarity, and appeals to emotion, persuasion techniques, the superiority bias, and people’s instinct to maintain a good reputation and self-image. In this exercise, reflect on how these strategies have impacted you in the past and how you might resist them in the future.

Think of an instance when you were conned or deceived by someone in the past. Explain what manipulation tactics might have contributed to your trust in the other person.