50k-think: Want to know how you were conned? | Space, Military and Medicine

20.7.12

Want to know how you were conned? | Space, Military and Medicine | News.com.au

If you are too nice - not greedy - you could be conned easily. Picture: file

IF YOU have ever fallen for a scam that was too good not to be true, it probably wasn't greed that made you succumb. It was niceness.

Or at least that's what a group of researchers are claiming.

A British study finds it's the neurochemistry of niceness that helps con artists rip you off.
Strangely, they found it was the neurochemistry not of greed, but of niceness that helped tricksters rip you off.

The scientists sent people around train stations to ask commuters to answer 10 questions in exchange for a pen.

The questions included their credit card pin, email passwords and other personal information - which most people handed over, because they found it too awkward to refuse once they had started answering the researchers' questions.

According to neuroscientist and author, Paul Zak, oxytocin - the molecule which regulates social interaction and causes people to be cooperative - can cause even the smartest people to get taken in.

It's the same molecule that has been credited for causing attraction between lovers and bonding parents to children.

They get taken in because they want to seem trustworthy, the author explained to tech blog, io9.

If someone asks you for money - be it by email or in person, you are being trusted with a lot more money (theoretically) than they are.

According to the author of The Moral Molecule, only two per cent of the UK won't return money they've been trusted with.

But what about thieves, you ask?

Well, frankly, Professor Zak said that their oxytocin systems are dysfunctional because they do not experience pleasure from helping people the same way "regular" people do.
So long as you stay within the 98 per cent of people with properly functioning oxytocin molecules, your open bag or wallet is in safe company.