[00:00:00] Season 5 launches September 7th and here's a full episode on how con artists use misdirection to sucker people in. We believe season 5 is our best yet with stories about pickup artists, time travel scammers, how con artists justify what they do and much much more.
[00:00:20] Plus we're going weekly with our new feature called Scams & Cons News. It will bring you up to date with real Scams happening in the field right now. We look forward to being back with you again and that's no misdirection.
[00:00:56] To reset everything, to put everything back in the right pocket, you know, everything where things go. All of that kind of stuff. And as I was in the cubicle, to my horror, the groom and his best man enter the bathrooms.
[00:01:10] And to even more my horror, what are they talking about? The best man said, did you see the magician? And I'm sitting there thinking, no, no, no, no, no, no. Do I really need to listen to this right now?
[00:01:24] But this is what happened. The groom said, he was amazing. He came over to the table, I thought of a card and he was in his pocket. And that taught me two things. Number one, for anybody who performs or who's on stage speaking, doing magic, whatever,
[00:01:42] never tell an audience what you are about to do. Had I walked up to that table and said, the card that you're thinking of will be in a sealed envelope in my wallet, I would have been toast. Because that was never going to happen.
[00:01:52] Second, and most importantly, I realized he fooled himself. He lied to himself. That's not what he witnessed. What he witnessed was an incompetent magic trick. But what he believed was a miracle. So magic and sales and scams and political beliefs all happened in the mind of the spectator.
[00:02:31] For a con to work, the con artist must be able to redirect the sucker. To get them looking or thinking about something else while their pocket is being picked, their bank account drained, or to convince people to invest huge sum of money in a Ponzi scheme.
[00:02:48] And it makes sense. If people paid attention to what the con artist was really doing, they wouldn't become suckers. The scam would be obvious. I'm Jim Grinstead, and today we're going to talk about misdirection. The masters of misdirection are magicians. They make things vanish right before our eyes.
[00:03:14] They know what card is in your pocket, and they escape from locked boxes. You know something happened after all magic isn't real, but you don't know what or how. And that's because you were looking at something else while the trick was being done.
[00:03:34] In 1983, magician David Copperfield told the world he would disappear the Statue of Liberty on live TV. He did, then had it reappear. Copperfield has never said how he pulled it off, but that hasn't stopped others from investigating. Copperfield had two towers erected on each side of the statue.
[00:03:54] The towers were to raise and lower a curtain to raise the tower. The towers were erected on each side of the statue. The towers were to raise and lower a curtain to reveal the disappearance and reappearance of the statue.
[00:04:09] There was also a seating section in front of the towers where observers could watch the trick close up. A helicopter flew overhead, lights in the ground illuminated the statue. The speculators say that when the curtain went up, the audience platform slowly rotated.
[00:04:27] So when the curtain fell, the statue was concealed behind the left tower, unseen by the audience. Ground lights were switched on and it was clear. The statue was gone. These lights however were different from the ones we saw earlier.
[00:04:47] They were in a different location. For the reappearance, the process was simply reversed. Was the audience in on it or was the platform built so well that the people didn't detect the movement?
[00:05:04] We don't know but I suspect if they were plants there were plenty of papers signed to guarantee their silence. What was probably true is that everyone who watched it on TV believed the statue was gone.
[00:05:16] Weeks of advertising had told them that that's what would happen and they were primed for it. Misdirection is adjust for national monuments. It's all around us, especially in sports. Here's Pickleball Pro Rick Whitken. Today we're going to work on misdirection and deception.
[00:05:41] Those seem like they're almost two of the same but I can tell you that when I utilize those two skills they come in different capacities. For instance, when I misdirect I like them to think I'm going one direction
[00:05:54] and I hit the opposite so I will even maneuver my body towards a target they think I'm going for and then I will shift with a wrist maneuver that sends it to the direction my body wasn't going. That's clearly a misdirection, deception.
[00:06:11] In basketball it's called the misdirection crossover. Normally when we make a crossover if I was going left to right my body is going left to right. This move is the opposite so if I'm going left to right with the basketball
[00:06:25] I'm actually going to run out the other way so I'm going left to right and my body is going left. So the defender thinks that you're going to explode right and you're actually going the other way. So you can do this in so many different situations.
[00:06:39] Basketball has also been used to illustrate another aspect of misdirection. There's an example of this and you may have seen the video of an experiment that involved basketball players passing balls to one another.
[00:06:57] Observers were told to count how many times a bounced basketball came into the possession of players wearing red shirts. The researchers rolled the film and the participants started counting. When the film ended the observers were asked if they had noticed anything unusual. Most didn't.
[00:07:21] What they missed was a man in a large gorilla costume who walked in, beat his chest and walked out the other side. It was classic misdirection. The participants were so busy counting basketballs they didn't see the extremely unusual thing that happened right before their eyes.
[00:07:37] So who are you going to believe? Your lion eyes or your ears? Here's British comedian Jimmy Karmus directing us only to force us into a sharp curve as he talks about people with kids.
[00:07:58] I never know what you're supposed to say like what you're supposed to say when they show you photos. Yeah, he's lovely but no I haven't seen him. I can't help you look, I'm super busy. If you were that bothered you should have kept the lookout shouldn't you?
[00:08:16] It's a joke. I know where he is. And the joke's on them really. He doesn't look like that anymore. He's got sad eyes now. Karmus directs us by continuing to raise the bar until the absurdity of his words overwhelms us.
[00:08:35] There are lots of ways to misdirect human beings. Some are more physical while others are just downright sneaky. One group of researchers say there are five basic ways to misdirect people. First, they're tumor and we've just heard a crew get powerful example of that.
[00:08:53] Secondly, we can engage someone in a different activity. A magician can give the audience something else to watch while the trick is happening elsewhere. Food is a powerful distractor as is smell. When we're only 12 weeks in our mother's stomach, we have a fully developed sense of smell.
[00:09:12] After this first trimester, we can actually smell what our mother is eating as odor is the only sense that passes through the ambiotic fluid. This is the beginning of our taste preferences and then once we're born, our entire world is smell.
[00:09:26] It is our dominant and primary sense until we are 10 years of age. Our only other sense, if you can call it that, that is fully developed at this stage is emotion. And sense and emotion work together to help us to understand, comprehend and create our new world.
[00:09:44] Actually, when you smell an odor, you automatically link an emotion to it and the sense and emotion remain forever linked together floating around our olfactory memory, our smell memory, which is the largest and most acute part of our memory.
[00:09:58] I call them sentomotocons, sense and emotion linked together forever. This is why some of our most powerful memories are linked to smell. One whiff and we're immediately transported to another time, to another place. That was Don Goldworm at TEDxEast. Another misdirection technique is to rapidly change the conversation
[00:10:21] so the person is forced to think about something other than what's really happening. That's what quick-change scammers do. Here's how the trick works. A con artist buys a small item using a large bill, say they buy a soda and a bag of chips with a $50 bill.
[00:10:37] The transaction is complete when the con artist wants to change something like breaking a $20 bill into four fives. The customer talks rapidly, confusing the clerk as money switches around. KRQE in Albuquerque describes a major switcheroo at a Walmart.
[00:10:53] Police say that this is one of the fastest con acts they have seen, almost like a magic trick. From a small $4 transaction, both suspects were able to walk away with $2,100 between them.
[00:11:04] It wasn't until the cashier was doing a final check of her register at the end of the night that she realized she was short all that money. Lastly, touch is always a powerful distraction. Stage pickpockets use touch as a way of moving their subjects around,
[00:11:19] all the while collecting watches, wallets, phones and whatever else may be in their reach. A firm touch can capture attention, so the sucker doesn't notice the light touch of a wallet coming out of their pocket. Other researchers take a more psychological approach to misdirection.
[00:11:36] They believe the most powerful techniques involve convincing you that something false is true. That makes you an ally in their scam, not an obstacle. Dr. Robert Sialdini and his associate, Steve Martin, produced a video that explains six ways to bring suckers around to their way of thinking.
[00:11:55] The first is reciprocity. So the last time you visit a restaurant, there's a good chance that the waiter or waitress will have given you a gift. Probably at about the same time that they bring your bill. A liqueur perhaps, or a fortune cookie, or perhaps a simple mint.
[00:12:11] Here's the question, does the giving of a mint have any influence over how much tip you're going to leave them? Most people will say no, but that mint can make a surprising difference.
[00:12:22] In the study, giving diners a single mint at the end of their meal typically increased tips by around 3%. Interestingly, if the gift is doubled and two mints are provided, tips don't double. They quadruple a 14% increase in tips.
[00:12:40] Perhaps most interestingly of all is the fact that if the waiter provides one mint, starts to walk away from the table, but pauses, turns back and says, for you nice people, here's an extra mint. Tips go through the roof.
[00:12:53] A 23% increase influence not by what was given, but how it was given. So the key to using the principle of reciprocation is to be the first to give and to ensure that what you give is personalized and unexpected. The second is scarcity.
[00:13:10] The less of something there is, the more you want it. Money, love, power, these are all things people covet and scammers can cock stories that lead you to believe they can give them to you. The third is the principle of authority. Someone who's smarter than you.
[00:13:27] Someone who knows their stuff. One group of real estate agents were able to increase both the number of property appraisals and the number of subsequent contracts that they wrote by arranging for reception staff who answered customer inquiries to first mention their colleagues, credentials and expertise.
[00:13:46] So customers interested in letting a property were told letings. Let me connect you with Sandra, who has over 15 years experience letting properties in this area. Customers who wanted more information about selling properties were told, speak to Peter, our head of sales. He has over 20 years experience selling properties.
[00:14:04] I'll put you through now. The impact of this expert introduction led to a 20% rise in the number of appointments and a 15% increase in the number of signed contracts. Some believe familiarity breeds contempt, but it also provides comfort. Consistency makes things seem normal. So there's no reason for concern.
[00:14:25] Consistency is activated by looking for and asking for small initial commitments that can be made. In one famous set of studies, researchers found rather unsurprisingly that very few people would be willing to erect an unsightly wooden board on their front lawn
[00:14:44] to support a drive safely campaign in their neighborhood. However, in a similar neighborhood close by, four times as many homeowners indicated that they would be willing to erect this unsightly billboard. Why? Because 10 days previously they had agreed to place a small postcard
[00:15:05] in the front window of their home that signaled their support for a drive safely campaign. That small card was the initial commitment that led to a 400% increase in a much bigger but still consistent change. It's a sales person's mantra that people do business with people they like.
[00:15:26] But what causes one person to like another? Persuasion science tells us that there are three important factors. We like people who are similar to us, we like people who pay us compliments and we like people who cooperate with us towards mutual goals.
[00:15:43] Then there's our belief that other people will make the right decisions. The final principle is consensus, especially when they are uncertain people will look to the actions and behaviors of others to determine their own.
[00:15:56] This was illustrated by a salesman that recently came to my door trying to sell me lawn services. He ticked off a list of people who'd signed up. He said they were my neighbors. Honestly, who knows all their neighbors these days so the list was meaningless.
[00:16:11] But he hoped I'd fall in line with others in the neighborhood. Combined, these are all powerful psychological tools. Some work better with some cons and some with others. Distractions are important to get the sucker looking or reacting one way while the magic is happening somewhere else.
[00:16:29] So the next time you hear someone yell, it's Godzilla! It's Godzilla! It looks like Godzilla but due to international copyright laws, it's not. Still we should run like it is Godzilla! Though it isn't. Thanks for listening.
[00:17:49] Was it murder? Or just a horrible accident? That's up to you and the law to decide. But either way, if you leave for your vacation in the plane and come home under the plane you've definitely gone on a slaycation. Join us every week for a fascinating new episode.
[00:18:10] 911, what's your emergency? But make sure to pack your body bags because getting away can be murder. This is Slaycation.