Scam Operators and Other Instrumental Liars
“While the scale of their maneuvers may have been exceptional, their apparent willingness to lie, cheat, bluff and deceive most emphatically was not.” So wrote New York Times science writer Natalie Angier in “A Highly Evolved Propensity for Deceit” (December 22, 2008), shortly after authorities arrested Ponzi scheme operator Bernard Madoff and Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.
As we considered the behavior of these purported scam operators, Angier suggested appropriate responses. “Feel free to express a sense of outrage, indignation, disgust, despair, amusement, schadenfreude. But surprise? Don’t make me laugh.”
Scientific research does show that many forms of deception are commonplace. A study which Angier summarized shows that adult Americans tell on average one lie every day. These lies, however, are mostly “little lies of little consequence”—for example, a friend’s muffins are the best ever, you are very sorry to be late, an acquaintance undergoing chemotherapy looks better than she did a few weeks ago or you did not drink beer in college. When people tell such lies, they intend to benefit someone other than themselves about a quarter of the time, the intended benefit is most often psychological, not material, and the lies do not involve deep breaches of trust.
Psychologist Bella DePaulo and her associates provided these examples and findings in “Lying in Everyday Life.” In this and a follow-up investigation, “Serious Lies,” the researchers noted that serious, consequential lies may have appeared in their everyday lies study but “at a very low rate” and are not a fact of everyday social life in America.
The serious lies study examined both the most serious lies participants had ever told, which adult participants had told an average of 14.8 years in the past, and the most serious lies others had ever told them, which had happened more recently on average, 8.9 years in the past.
Many people, especially women, reported having become more negative about lying as a result of having themselves told serious lies in the past.
Participants described many very serious lies, including “lies told under oath, lies that resulted in murder, and lies about physical and sexual abuse, abortion, alcoholism, sexually transmitted diseases, thefts, cheating, and distributing drugs.”
Thirty-five percent of the reported lies, however, struck the researchers as so minor that they wondered at first whether these were really the most serious lies participants could have reported, including lies participants had told to conceal childhood misdeeds such as stealing coins from a sibling or eating all the icing on a cake. Despite their initial doubts, the researchers’ final opinion allowed that even the lies told to conceal childhood misdeeds were “sufficiently meaningful” to the participants for them to regard these lies as their most serious ever, many years later.
The participants who reported the relatively minor lies took them more seriously than the other participants regarded the lies they reported. Thus people appear to differ not only in the most serious lies they have ever told or been told, but also in their judgments about these lies.
Classifying the collected lies, the researchers described seven kinds which varied by motive, including avoiding punishment or blame (for instance, denying damaging the family car), protecting oneself psychologically from confrontation or other stressors (telling a friend you would lend him money when you really would not) and protecting another person from harm or distressing information (saying a dying grandfather is going to the hospital just for tests).
One kind, however, stood out as exploitative, the most interpersonally damaging and difficult to justify: instrumental lies. These are the highly consequential lies which scam operators and other people tell in order “to attain material rewards or other personal pleasures or advantages.” These lies are often about money, jobs or affairs—for instance, a salesman misleading a customer about a deal he is making on a car or a man lying constantly to his wife to conceal an affair. People who tell such lies do so with intent to gain something from others under false pretenses, such as money or a marriage.
Instrumental lies fit our “most damning portrait” of lies. When we discover people have told us these lies, we often feel defiant and angry.
Almost a quarter of adult participants had told instrumental lies as their most serious lies ever. About twice as many had been targets of instrumental lies as the most serious lies others had ever told them.
The study identified two unusual traits of instrumental liars. First, these liars “are cold.” When telling these most exploitative lies, they feel less distress than most other serious liars.
Second, instrumental liars are indiscriminate in their lying, collectively targeting strangers and acquaintances, as well as people in close relationships, and lying regardless of their targets’ relative status.
Scam operators are instrumental lie specialists. They are practiced instrumental liars who have honed their skills and may readily and with complete composure tell the most exploitative lies to their spouses, parents, children, siblings and other family members and to lovers, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, strangers and the public alike. They may tell highly consequential lies to victims, who may or may not be their peers, and to law enforcement authorities and observers who might report their scams. Over a lifetime, a single scam operator could coldly tell dozens of people—or hundreds or more—the most serious lies they have ever been told and sleep easy about it. This makes their willingness to lie, cheat, bluff and deceive unusual.
Many Americans from diverse walks of life learn about scam operators the hard way, after naively supposing that others’ actions stem from underlying motivations similar to their own. Victims lose money and other assets, sometimes vast amounts of wealth or life savings to the point of personal ruin. They do not fake surprise when they discover their losses. Some come away deeply troubled, unable to account for the often friendly face and ingratiating personality of the person who coldly and intentionally betrayed them.
Scam operators also surprise people whom they do not directly target but need to fool to perpetuate their scams and avoid arrest. Madoff surprised federal examiners and investigators, including four who testified to being shocked when news of his scam broke. Securities and Exchange Commission staff are supposed to know about fraud and, in the course of five major examinations and investigations, encountered numerous anomalies—red flags, suspicious information, contradictions and inconsistencies, as well as secretiveness and lies, yet failed to uncover Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. They had difficulty grasping how he thought, what he felt, what he was doing to them as well as to his many victims, undermining their efforts and enabling him to outmaneuver them. He then used their examinations to allay suspicions of potential investors.
If you have little or no personal experience telling instrumental lies, what can you do to protect yourself and others from scam operators and other instrumental liars? Your personal experiences, your attitudes towards others, your feelings and ways of thinking differ considerably from theirs. Simply putting yourself in their shoes will not enable you to recognize them, penetrate their facades, gain insight into their way of life or anticipate their behavior. That approach will rather make you susceptible to their maneuvers.
You cannot, by looking inward, come remotely close to understanding how they operate. If you limit your perception of other people to what you experience yourself, you will remain deeply ignorant of scam operators and vulnerable to their schemes.
We may look in ourselves, but most of us will not find a scam operator there. To protect ourselves and others, we must look outward, at scam operators, and learn how they experience themselves, us and the communities in which we live. We fail to do so at our peril.
