No one who has tried alcohol can fail to wonder about its effects on our thoughts, feelings and behaviours.

We tend to think of alcohol as primarily a disinhibitor, but this can't really explain its varying effects. Sometimes it seems to make us loud and boisterous, sometimes quiet and contemplative, sometimes sad and depressed, along with all the shades and combinations of these, and other emotions.

Similarly psychologists have found that alcohol can have all sorts of counter-intuitive effects. Studies have even shown that after drinking people can become less aggressive and less likely to engage in risky sexual behaviours. Doesn't sound like alcohol does it? So, how can we understand and explain all these different states?

Spiked drinks

Folk psychology (and research) tells us that some of the varying effects of alcohol come from culture and individual differences. There are violent drunks, depressive drunks, sleepy drunks, amorous drunks and all the rest.

Culture and social norms also pitch in with their own influences. We have certain expectations about how alcohol will shift us into parallel states of consciousness and, hey presto, so it does. One study gave participants a fizzy drink and told them it contained vodka (Assefi & Garry, 2003). They were soon acting drunk, complete with inflated egos, despite having had nothing more toxic than tonic water.

The problem with the expectations explanation is that we're not reliably shifted into the same parallel state of consciousness. If culture and personality mostly explained the psychological effects of alcohol, then how come we can have quite different experiences while drinking?

So clearly alcohol's effects must depend on the exact situation in which we drink. But which features of a situation nudge our feelings and behaviour in one or other direction, one time towards depressive introspection, say, and another time towards joyous extraversion?

Alcohol myopia

According to a growing body of evidence collected over the last three or more decades, people's Jekyll and Hyde behaviour while drinking can be understood by a simple idea which has some intriguing ramifications.

The alcohol myopia model says that drink makes our attentional system short-sighted and the more we drink, the more short-sighted it becomes. With more alcohol our brains become less and less able to process peripheral cues and more focused on what is right in front of us. It's this balance between what is right in front of us and what we don't notice around the edges that determines how alcohol affects us in different situations.

Here are a few effects which imbibers will recognise immediately:

• An ego boost: when people drink, they often feel better about themselves. This may be because the attentional short-sightedness induced by alcohol makes all our shortcomings float away and so we feel closer to our ideal selves. This is probably one of the reasons it is so potentially addictive, it is self-actualisation in bottle form.
• Real worries can get worse: if we've had a bad day and we sit quietly with a drink, alcohol can make it worse because all the peripheral cues which are potential distractors are cut out and all we see are our problems.
• Pleasure in the moment: the flip-side of this attentional focus is that if, while drinking, we are doing something enjoyable, we find it easier to ignore any nagging doubts or stray worries wandering through our minds. We can be totally in the moment listening to music, watching sports or talking with a good friend.
• In the zone: it's even possible that for some types of task it may increase performance as we let go of our insecurities. Perhaps that's why so many writers wrote with a glass of whisky at their side.

More than just disinhibition

The fact that the effect of alcohol on the human mind is more than just disinhibition is supported by studies showing how, when environmental cues are manipulated, alcohol can have counter-intuitive effect. Here are three neat studies:

1. Alcohol can lower levels of aggression: participants were asked to administer electric shocks to a fictitious opponent (Giancola and Corman, 2007). Those who were intoxicated and moderately distracted from the task were less aggressive than participants who hadn't been drinking. In certain circumstances, then, alcohol can make drunk people less aggressive.
2. Alcohol can induce less risky sexual behaviour: people in a nightclub were asked whether they would engage in unprotected sex (MacDonald et al., 2000). Those who had been drinking indicated they would be less likely to do so when they had the following message stamped on their hand: AIDS KILLS.
3. Alcohol can increase anxiety about giving a public talk: intoxicated people about to give a public presentation were more nervous about their upcoming ordeal than those who hadn't been drinking (Steele & Josephs, 1988). This is the complete reverse of the received wisdom.

So the effects of alcohol come down to how our minds interact with the situation when our attentional systems have started operating with a kind of tunnel vision.

Free from distraction

This model doesn't explain everything and it would be wrong to say that psychologists agree that it does. But what the alcohol myopia model does provide is a very intuitive and easily understood way of thinking about how alcohol affects us, for better and worse.

The next time you have a drink, see what you think: does your attention narrow to what's right in front of you? One of the reasons so many people enjoy its effects when socialising is that it allows us to live in the moment, without distraction, focusing purely on the conversation we're having together, freed from our own negative self-evaluations and the intrusive minutiae of everyday life.

While alcohol may well cause disinhibition under certain circumstances, there is more going on than just that. Attentional tunnel vision provides a useful way of thinking about the many and varied effects of the demon drink.

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Back in the 60s and 70s, before the sexual revolution had really taken hold, the standard dating advice for women was play hard to get. In some quarters it still is.

Like the Roman poet Ovid 2,000 years earlier, social scientists in the 1960s accepted the cultural lore that women could increase their desirability by being coy. When interviewed, men seemed to agree: they said that hard to get women were probably more popular, beautiful and had better personalities.

Unfortunately every time psychologists used an experiment to test the idea that playing hard to get is a good dating strategy, their results didn't make any sense. At least not until 1973 when Elaine Walster and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin finally hit upon a method that teased out the subtleties (Walster et al., 1973).

Here's what they did.

Easy for you to get

Single young men were given a folder containing details of five fictitious single women with quite similar descriptions. They were told the computer had matched them and that three of the women had already seen and rated their own details and those of four other rival suitors.

This was all a ruse, however, to set up a series of experimental conditions related to how hard to get each of the women appeared to be. Each woman fell into one of the following categories:

• Easy to get: had apparently given high ratings to all five men, including the participant.
• Selectively hard to get: liked the participant but not the other four men.
• Always hard to get: didn't like any of the men, including the participant.
• No information: there was no information provided about two of the women.

Each man saw the women's ratings, including of themselves, then chose one to date.  One woman was far and away more popular than the others, and it had nothing to do with the small variations in their descriptions:

• Easy to get: 5
• Selectively hard to get: 42
• Always hard to get: 6
• No information: 11 and 7 for the two women for which no information was provided.

The woman who was apparently selectively hard to get, i.e. easy for you but hard for everyone else was the runaway winner for the men. Not only that but men thought the selectively hard to get woman would have all the advantages of the easy to get woman with none of the drawbacks of the hard to get woman. They thought she would be popular, warm and easygoing, but not demanding and difficult.

Forbidden fruit

We have to be careful what conclusions we draw from this experiment: crucially it didn't involve anyone meeting face to face, or address what happens when men play hard to get, plus it only looked at heterosexual matches. But a subsequent study on speed-dating has also found that showing selective interest is the best strategy (Eastwick et al., 2007).

Despite these drawbacks, once you've heard the results it's difficult to imagine how it could have turned out any other way—after all, everyone wants to feel special.

So this experiment suggests that playing hard to get only works in the sense that it signals selectivity. But for the person you are after, you should be easy to get because otherwise they'll assume you're hard work.

In the light of this experiment we can remix Ovid's quote to:

"Easy things are tempting, but only if they are forbidden to others."

There's a maxim to live by.

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If you're so inclined, you might like to add yourself as a fan. You might also feel a sudden burst of generosity towards me and spread the word about PsyBlog to your friends on Facebook.

The Facebook fan page for PsyBlog will contain the same updates that you can already receive by RSS or email and through PsyBlog's Twitter account.

If you're not a Facebooker and/or hate it, there's good news: the next post will have absolutely no mention of Facebook!

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There are now over 700 million people around the world with profiles on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. In the US 75% of those between 18 and 24 who have access to the internet use social networking sites. And over the past four years, across all adult age-groups, their use has quadrupled.

But do these profiles tell us anything about people's real-life personalities? Online it is very easy to display an idealised version of the self to others so surely the temptation to exaggerate or even give a completely misleading impression is just too great?

Actual versus idealised personality

To find out psychologists recruited 236 US and German students who use social networking sites and had them complete personality measures (Back et al., 2010).

These measured first their actual personalities on what psychologists call the 'Big 5' personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to experience). Secondly it measured their idealised personalities: who they would like to be.

Then independent observers were shown their real social networking profiles and asked to rate participants' personalities.

The surprising truth

After comparing the actual personalities with the idealised and observed, the researchers found that, on average, people were much more likely to display their real personality on the social networking sites rather than their idealised selves.

Overall people were remarkably honest in representing themselves. People were honest—we don't read those words often enough.

In line with other findings, this study found that, when looking at a stranger's profile for the first time, some aspects of personality are more difficult to discern. Neuroticism in others is particularly difficult to gauge, whereas people find extraversion and openness to experience relatively easily to assess, even in strangers.

Lying online?

This study is another blow for that old stereotype that the web is some kind of scary hinterland, an untrustworthy place where anything goes and nothing is what it appears, peopled by adolescent boys pretending to be anything but adolescent boys.

Contrary to the received wisdom, as well as academic theorising that the internet encourages people to project an idealised self, this research suggests that people are remarkably honest in displaying their true personalities online.

Whatever the cause, this fact may help to explain the phenomenal popularity of social networking sites: the truth draws people in.

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Conformity is such a strong influence in society that it's impossible to understand human behaviour without it. Psychological experiments show that people will deny the evidence of their own eyes in order to conform with other people.

But as Professor John C. Turner says conformity is not always the norm:

"Anyone who looks outside the window at daily events around the globe will find that [...] resistance, conflict and change are as normal as the sun rising." (Turner, 2006; p.42)

Understanding when we conform has all kinds of practical real-world benefits, depending on your aims: it can help you understand your own behaviour as well as understand how others will behave under a variety of different situational pressures. Everyone should be aware of these factors and how they affect the most important areas of their social life.

Here are the ten timeless influencers of conformity:

Group size

One of the most important factors affecting whether or not people conform is the size of the group around them. Maximum conformity is seen when groups reach between 3 and 5 people.

Add more people and it makes little difference, less than 3, though, and conformity is substantially reduced (Bond, 2005).

Dissent

As soon as there's someone who disagrees, or even just dithers or can't decide, conformity is reduced. Some studies have found conformity can be reduced from highs of 97% on a visual judgement task down to only 36% when there is a competent dissenter in the ranks (Allen & Levine, 1971).

Dissenters must be consistent, though, otherwise they'll fail to convince the majority.

→ Related: how to fight groupthink with dissent.

Are they one of us?

People conform much more strongly to others who are in the same group as them. These influences are even stronger for attractive people who we like. Group size and dissent make little difference when the people themselves are not part of 'our' group. In fact we may even go out of our way to do the opposite of an outgroup (David & Turner, 1996).

→ Related: ingroups, outgroups and prejudice.

Your mood

Moods can have complex effects on conformity, but there's some evidence that we're more likely to conform when we're in a good mood than a bad mood (Tong et al., 2007).

One dastardly emotional technique for increasing conformity is using fear-then-relief. Make someone afraid of something, then relieve that fear, then they're more likely to do what you want (Dolinski & Nawrat, 1998).

Need for structure

While personality might not be as important as the situation in which people are put, it none the less has an effect. Some people have more of a 'need for structure' and consequently are more likely to conform (Jugert et al., 2009).

Social approval

People use conformity to ingratiate themselves with others. Conforming also makes people feel better about themselves by bolstering self-confidence. Some people have a greater need for liking from others so are more likely to conform.

Have you noticed that nonconformers are less likely to care what other people think of them? Nonconformity and self-confidence go hand-in-hand.

→ Related: the chameleon effect.

Culture

Collectivist cultures (typically East Asian) conform more because nonconformity is more strongly associated with deviance (Kim & Markus, 1999). Western cultures have more individualist attitudes so people from those cultures are less likely in general to conform.

Studies have shown average conformity rates in collectivist cultures of between 25% and 58% whereas average conformity in individualist cultures is between 14% and 39% (Smith & Bond, 1993).

Authority

When faced with an authority figure mere conformity can be transformed into obedience. Milgram's studies of obedience show that people will administer dangerous electric shocks if told to by a white-coated authority figure. People don't always blindly follow authority figures though, studies show a huge range in obedience, from 12% to 92% depending on the social context (Smith & Bond, 1993).

The abuse of people's deference to authority figures is central to the psychology of scams.

Social norms

Other people affect us even when they're not present. Whether or not we recycle, litter the street or evade tax often comes down to our perception of society's view. Most of us are strongly influenced by thinking about how others would behave in the same situation we are in, especially when we are unsure how to act (Cialdini, 2001).

The higher we perceive the level of consensus, the more we are swayed. We are also more easily swayed if we know little about the issue ourselves or can't be bothered to examine it carefully.

→ Related: group norms can kill creativity.

Reciprocation

The power of reciprocation is frequently undervalued, but it is incredibly strong and influential across all human cultures. On an everyday level it means that if I give you something, you feel compelled to give me something back.

When invited to a dinner party or wedding, we feel a strong compulsion to reciprocate, sometimes against our better judgement.

The power of conformity

So, that is the power of conformity, as it occurs every day, between every single one of us (even hermits are conforming with other hermits!).

Conformity is not in itself a good or a bad thing. For example, creativity is built on some of the pillars of nonconformity: ignoring social norms and authority, eschewing social approval, rejecting structure and cultivating dissent. On the other hand many of societies most basic institutions—government, finance, transport, education—would collapse if people didn't conform.

This list gives you all sorts of ways to think about your own and other people's conformity. You need to be creative to think about how these processes can help you achieve your aims, whether it's in business, your personal life, online or elsewhere

Whatever your goals are, remember that conformity affects everyone, whether we know it or not. Understanding how and when puts you one step ahead of the pack.

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The media may well be biased, in fact it would be a miracle if it were permanently and perfectly balanced, that isn't what this post is about.

Instead this is about how you and I perceive the presence or absence of bias in the media.

This study, conducted in the 1980s, helps to explain a lot of the heat and light that gets produced by those commenting on media bias across the political spectrum, including the remarkably vitriolic outpourings often seen in the comment sections of newspaper websites and across the internet.

The Beirut massacre

Robert P. Vallone and colleagues from Stanford University invited 144 Stanford undergrads who held a variety of views on the continuing Arab-Israeli conflict to watch some of the news coverage of the Beirut massacre (Vallone et al., 1985). The Beirut massacre was the killing of between 328 and 3,500 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians by Lebanese militia forces in September 1982.

At the time the story received huge media coverage around the world with much speculation about whether Israeli forces had allowed it to happen (a subsequent commission held the Israeli government indirectly responsible).

Some of the participants recruited for the study were moderate in their initial views, others were specifically recruited from both the pro-Arab and pro-Israeli student associations. Each was asked for their views about the conflict, its history and where their sympathies lay. Here's what they found:

• 68 were pro-Israeli,
• 27 were pro-Arab,
• 49 had mixed feelings.

All the participants then watched a series of news segments taken from US networks (NBC, ABC and CBS). Afterwards they were asked to rate whether overall it was for or against Israel. They used a scale of 1 (heavy pro-Arab bias) to 9 (heavy pro-Israel bias) where a rating of 5 was fair and impartial.

The results

Here are the average ratings for the news coverage from each group:

• Pro-Israeli: 2.9 (perceived a marked pro-Arab bias)
• Neutral: 3.8 (perceived a slight pro-Arab bias)
• Pro-Arab: 6.7 (perceived a marked pro-Israeli bias)

As you can see the pro-Israeli participants thought the news reports were biased against Israel while the pro-Arab participants thought the news reports were biased against Arabs. This is impressive because everyone was watching exactly the same news reports. Even more surprising was that each thought that when someone neutral saw the coverage, it would persuade them to side with the opposite position.

Notice that those who claimed to be neutral thought the coverage had a slight pro-Arab bias. This could be a hint of actual media bias or could be just an unacknowledged bias in those initially declaring themselves neutral.

Causes of the hostile media phenomenon

The study demonstrates what the authors call the 'hostile media phenomenon': people's tendency to view news coverage about which they hold strong beliefs as biased against their own position.

There were two mechanisms at work here:

1. The truth is black and white: partisans generally thought that the truth about the Arab-Israeli debate was black and white. Any hint of shades of grey in the news reports was interpreted by partisans as bias towards the other side. In other words: any balanced report will seem biased to partisan viewers.
2. The news report was too grey: as well as thinking the Arab-Israeli issue was either black or white, partisans also perceived that the specific news report they watched was too grey.

Put simply: when we care about an issue, we tend not to notice all the points we agree with, and focus on the ones we don't.

Admitting bias

Whether the news actually is biased in one particular outlet about an issue that you care about can be very hard to quantify.

What we can say from this study is that people who care about a particular issue will tend to find media bias everywhere, whether or not it really exists. Not only that but they are unlikely to admit this fact to themselves since this study, amongst others, also shows how remarkably resistant we are to admitting to our own biases, even when they are categorically demonstrated to us.

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• Are you currently feeling a little under the weather, fed up or stressed?
• Do you live in the United Kingdom?
• Are you over 18?
• Would you be interested in participating in an expressive writing study?

If so, read on...

About this research

Many studies have found that when people write about past emotional events in their lives they can show improvements in physical or mental health. We want to test the effects of expressive writing in a study carried out completely online. Here are some brief details of the study, more information is available by clicking through below:

• You will not be contacted by phone or in person (although you will need to provide name, address and email details for the administration of the study).
• This 6 week study is conducted completely online so you must have regular internet access.
• You will be asked to carry out an expressive writing activity.
• Please note that this is a pilot study and therefore participant numbers are restricted.
• Please do not take part if you have already participated in UCL's online support groups study (previously advertised on PsyBlog).

Update: Thanks for your interest in this study but recruitment is now closed.

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Despite being self-absorbed, arrogant, entitled and exploitative, narcissists are also fascinating.

And not just from a clinical perspective; the research finds that we are strangely drawn to their self-centred personalities, their dominance and their hostility, their sensitivity and their despair, at least for a while.

Psychologists are fascinated by narcissists, both why we like them despite on some level recognising their dysfunction, and because they embody so many paradoxes. Extreme narcissists inevitably reveal their true nature to those around them and are soon rejected. So why don't we (and the narcissists) learn?

The charming narcissist

To find out social psychologist Mitja Back and colleagues decided to investigate (Back et al., 2010). They asked 73 freshman students who had never met before to introduce themselves to the rest of the class, one by one. Each person was rated by all the others on how likeable they were as well as being videotaped for later analysis. After the session all the students filled out some questionnaires, amongst which was an assessment of narcissistic personality traits.

Here are the findings:

1. Narcissists were more popular at first site. Self-rated narcissists were initially more liked by others than non-narcissists.
2. Participants liked narcissists' sense of entitlement most. Of the four aspects of narcissism they studied, leadership/authority, self-admiration/self-absorption, arrogance/superiority and entitlement/exploitativeness it was the last of these that most predicted liking.
3. Narcissists look, sound and move better. The reason narcissists were popular is because they used more charming facial expressions, a more confident speaking tone, wore more fashionable clothes, had more trendy haircuts and were funnier.

Naturally all these effects only hold true in the short-term. Narcissists are usually soon found out and shunned since few people will put up with a self-absorbed, authoritarian, arrogant, exploitative friend.

The paradoxes of narcissism

But there are all sorts of paradoxes in the way narcissists behave. Here are three that this research helps explain:

1. Why do people continue to behave selfishly when it only ruins their relationships with others?
2. Why do narcissists devalue others when they are so dependent on them for admiration?
3. Why don't narcissists spot the cycle of early attraction followed by rejection?

The first two are partly explained by the fact that narcissistic behaviour is, at first, attractive to other people. Behaving selfishly seems to bring them a rush of admiration which they get addicted to, while devaluing others when the inevitable rejection comes, covering it up by searching out new people to worship them.

The reason narcissists fail to spot this cycle may well be that friends and partners never hang around long enough to tell them in such a way that they actually believe it and want to do something about it.

Reality TV

One of the best showcases for narcissists at the moment is reality TV. This study shows exactly why narcissists are so perfect for this format. They first capture our attention and liking with their self-confident, flashy, arrogant behaviour. Then, later, when we see what they're really like we come to despise them. It makes compelling TV: participants can be built up then knocked down, with plenty of emotional breakdowns along the way to keep us 'entertained'.

So the practical upshot of this study is: don't encourage the narcissists by paying them any attention. Not only are we likely to get hurt ourselves when they use us, but it keeps them stuck in a loop of attraction and rejection.

There you are: a perfectly reasoned argument for never ever watching reality TV (as if you needed one!).

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Over the last 7 months I've been exploring 10 more of my favourite social psychology studies, each with an insightful story to tell about how our minds work. This follows on from an article I wrote two years ago (10 brilliant social psychology studies).

Key insights from each study are below but click through to get the full story of each experiment. Once you've had a look, vote for your favourite at the bottom of this page.

Why You Can’t Help Believing Everything You Read

By default are we critical or gullible? This study shows that understanding something is believing it. A fraction of a second after reading it, you believe it until some other critical faculty kicks in to change your mind. Read on →

The Truth About Self-Deception

Surely lying to ourselves is counter-productive? This study shows that people can deceive themselves so thoroughly that they act as though their incorrect beliefs are completely true, totally disregarding any incoming hints from reality. Read on →

How Rewards Can Backfire and Reduce Motivation

Sometimes rewards do work to increase motivation, especially if the task is objectionable. But when tasks are inherently interesting to us rewards can damage our motivation by undermining our natural talent for self-regulation. Read on →

Why Groups Fail to Share Information Effectively

When asked to make a group decision, people tend to repeat what everyone already knows, instead of sharing vital information known only to themselves. At first these findings seem deeply counter-intuitive but in fact it's just what we should expect. Read on →

Why Thought Suppression is Counter-Productive

The classic response to unpleasant thoughts and feelings is to try and push them to the back of our minds. Unfortunately these experiments show that the attempt to push away thoughts about pain, trauma or obsession brings them back with a vengeance. Read on →

The Chameleon Effect

Is it just a myth peddled by glossy magazines that mimicking body language can increase how much others like us? Apparently not: this series of experiments suggests it really is effective. Read on →

How Other People's Unspoken Expectations Control Us

Understanding that other people's expectations about us directly and immediately affect our behaviour is a vital component in understanding ourselves. This experiment shows that we quickly sense how others view us and play up to these expectations. Read on →

When Situations Not Personality Dictate Our Behaviour

A fundamental mistake we often make when judging other people is assuming that their behaviour mainly reflects their personality. A modern test of an ancient bible story demonstrates the power of situations to trump personality in determining behaviour. Read on →

Finding The Surprising Gaps in Your Self-Knowledge

This research reveals the fascinating and unnerving idea that some aspects of our own personalities may be completely mysterious to us. In the experiment some participants were unaware of whether or not they were independent people.Read on →

Stereotypes: Why We Act Without Thinking

Stereotypes can be handy short cuts that give us useful information about the world and other people. But when a particular stereotype is activated can we avoid being influenced by it? These experiments suggest stereotypes can easily influence our behaviour and our conscious mind seems to have no say. Read on →

Vote for your favourite

If you don't see the voting box below then visit the site.

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Good hustlers are excellent intuitive psychologists. Just like magicians they understand enough about how the mind works to exploit its vulnerabilities. Our fascination with hustlers is insatiable and, despite being criminals, they are frequently portrayed by Hollywood in a flattering light, in films like The Sting, Catch Me If You Can and the Ocean's Eleven trilogy.

Of course the reality is nowhere near as romantic, especially if you've fallen for one of the cons. Frank Stajano, a security expert at Cambridge University, has been working with Paul Wilson, a scam artist and author of BBC TV's The Real Hustle to identify the 7 major psychological principles used in short cons to part people from their cash (Stajano & Wilson, 2009; PDF, 308K).

1. Distraction

Attention is like spotlight, which means when it's pointing in one direction it pretty much ignores everything else.

Except people don't realise how little information coming in from the outside world we actually process. Naturally you don't notice what you don't notice, plus the mind is designed to fill in the gaps for us. But hustlers do know and almost every con uses some kind of distraction.

The classic example is 'Three-card Monte' sometimes called 'Find the Lady', a rigged card game in which the aim is to find one card out of three after the hustler shuffles them around.

At the heart of this hustle is the orchestration of a crowd of onlookers who the mark (that's you and me) thinks are all fellow punters, but who are actually in on the game. Marks are distracted by the situation in the street—the banter, laughter and excitement—and don't realise the whole thing is a setup: no matter what the mark thinks they know, there is no way to win. The hustler is always one step ahead.

Stajano and Wilson call Three-card Monte 'polite mugging'.

2. Social compliance

The classic study showing how compliant we are, especially when told to do things by an authority figure, was carried out by Stanley Milgram.

Hustlers know all about this and happily exploit our automatic deference to authority figures. People will hand over credit cards to people they think are waiters, car keys to people they think are car park attendants and give access to their house to people they think are from the water board. The best known online example is a 'phishing attack'  where people give fraudsters their bank details in response to an email that purports to be from their bank.

3. Herd principle

People are sheep: they can't help following each other.

The classic study on conformity was conducted by Solomon Asch in the 1950s showing that people will deny evidence from their own eyes to fit in with others. In the Three-card Monte con, the crowd of shills around the game creates the herd for the mark to follow.

Online there are all kinds of tricks people can use to make others think there is a herd when actually there is only one person. The practice of 'astroturfing' means creating multiple online identities to fake grass-roots support for a politician. In peer-to-peer networks the multiple identities created by people trying to influence them are known as Sybils.

Whether online or offline, though, groups exert an enormous influence over us.

4. Dishonesty

Fear is the mind-killer.

Hustlers know that people are fearful and play on this fact. Some cons involve selling goods to marks that are used for illegal purposes. For example one scam described by Stajano and Wilson involves selling people 'cancelled banknotes', actually just pieces of paper which have been spray-painted, then telling marks they have an amazing gadget which will clean off the ink and make the notes usable again.

Marks are discouraged from reporting the scam because they would be implicating themselves and the hustler wins both ways.

5. Deception

People are easily tricked, even when they think they are being careful. Hustlers take advantage of the fact that most people go along with their expectations of what will happen in any given situation. If the hustler's behaviour fits the situation then people will accept what they say.

One classic is 'van dragging' where hustlers target a warehouse from which they want to steal the goods being delivered. They hang a sign saying the door is broken and those delivering should call a number. The hustlers, hiding nearby, answer and steal all the goods from the delivery driver, all the while complaining that they've called the locksmith and he hasn't turned up yet. The delivery driver often helps the hustlers load their van.

6. Need and greed

Once hustlers know what people want, even if it doesn't exist, they are in a position to manipulate them. They will play on people's desperation; unfortunately the more desperate people are, the easier they are to con.

A classic short-con that works people's greed is the 'ring reward rip-off'. A female hustler enters a bar and shows-off a new ring to the barman (the mark) claiming it cost thousands (actually it's a cheap fake). The female hustler leaves to be replaced by a male accomplice. The female hustler then rings the barman to say she lost her ring. The male hustler then claims to have found it but asks if there's a reward. Over the telephone the female gives a price but the barman realises he can make a profit so tells the male hustler a much lower price. The barman hands over the money and, of course, neither of the hustlers are seen again.

This con relies on the barman's greed or it won't work. In reality it works surprisingly often.

7. Time pressure

A classic study of how people make decisions under time pressure demonstrates what hustlers already know: when there's no time to think people rely on short cuts and emotional responses to a situation.

So hustlers make sure the mark is under time pressure so they will respond in a predicable fashion, i.e. by being greedy, or giving in to the herd principle, or by bending to the will of an authority figure.

Who are the marks?

And if you think no one falls for these tricks then think again. A recently published UK report found that each year 3.2 million people in the UK fall for mass marketed scams (OFT, 2009). That's 5% of the population, each year. Collectively they lost £3.5 billion. £3.5 billion.

The OFT report investigated those who had been conned and reached some insightful conclusions:

• Counter-intuitively victims of cons tended to put more effort into analysing scams than non-victims. Victims admitted they saw the scam as a long-odds gamble but were prepared to take the risk.
• Victims often failed to discuss the scam with anyone else, as if they knew others would confirm their worst fears.
• Between 10% and 20% of people were repeat victims, getting caught up in scams again and again despite being burned before.
• Victims are not generally poor decision-makers, but are often professionals or successful business people.

The best advice is that given at the end of the TV programme The Real Hustle: if it seems too good to be true, then it probably is.

→ Read on: like hustlers, magicians know how to exploit our mental vulnerabilities, discover 3 critical techniques in the psychology of magic.

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