“Sucker’s World“

 

How fear of playing the sucker shapes ourselves and the social order and what we can do about it?

Most languages have at least one word for someone who's been played for a fool. In English alone, there are suckers, pawns, marks, chumps, fools, dupes and, yes, losers. Even cultural stories are riddled with themes of people falling for elaborate cons, the Trojan horse, the Emperor's new clothes, the boy who cried wolf, and even Hansel and Gretel. So why is this theme so prominent in our world?

Well, it's because it's human nature to be scared of being played for a fool. Most people recoil at the very thought of it. But for something that's so universally known and collectively experienced, the concept of what it actually means to be a sucker gets very little attention. As a coherent construct, the fear of being conned can be so powerful that it influences our decisions and behaviours.

In this content, we'll examine the cultural motivations and psychological mechanisms that determine who gets labelled a sucker and what constitutes a scam. We'll also discover the multitude of ways that the sucker's game influences everything from the social order to racial, ethnic and gender stereotypes, and even our own behaviours and actions. Suckers’ World

By doing so, we can learn to recognise how this dynamic plays out in our own lives and keep it from threatening our values and beliefs.

Being played for a fool is a universal human experience. Imagine you log into your credit card app and see an unusual $20 charge from a website you've never visited. After calling customer service, you learn that a hacker has stolen your credit card info, but you're not liable for the charge and it'll be refunded. A little annoying, but you didn't really lose any money, so no harm done. Now, imagine this same scenario, but with one major detail changed.

Earlier that day, you were approached by a man holding a clipboard outside the grocery store who asked you to donate $20 to a children's charity. He seemed trustworthy enough, and you wanted to help the kids, so you swiped your card. Again, you call customer service and they tell you that the charge will be removed. You didn't actually lose money in either scenario, so why does one feel so much worse than the other? It's because being conned or made to look foolish is a deeply disruptive and painful human experience that everyone understands. The feeling is so bad, in fact, that people will do almost anything to avoid it.

In 2007, a team of experimental psychologists coined the term, Suggraphobia, a mix of the Latin roots for sucking and fear, to represent the phenomenon. In their research, they hypothesized that the fear of being a sucker is an experience unique to humans and that it's possible to track its psychological triggers and emotional consequences. Falling for a con engages two very uncomfortable conditions, regret and alienation. The regret kicks in because we've had an active role in our own misfortune. In other words, we have to agree to be involved in the situation to come out looking like a fool. Falling for a scam is like taping a kick-me sign to your own back.

And then there's alienation. On a deeper level, the construct of being made a sucker isn't really about material outcomes, but social standing and respect. The sucker's dilemma is, in essence, a power play. No matter what kind of scam is taking place, the mark will always be socially demoted by the con. Even if no material transaction happens, there'll still be a winner and a loser. The sucker dynamic and racial, ethnic and gender stereotypes Another crucial factor in this equation is that society's most offensive stereotypes have been built using elements of the sucker-con narrative.

The sucker Dynamic::

As we discussed earlier, at its core, the sucker's game is rooted in hierarchy and social status. People that are typically seen as having less power – women and people of colour, for example – are subject to the strange dichotomy of being conveyed as both scammers and marks at the same time. For example, one common stereotype is that women are easier to mislead than men. In 2014, psychology professors Cray, Kennedy and Van Sant studied a 1981 car-buying manual, written by a veteran car salesman. In the book, the salesman profiled the typically uninformed female buyer as indecisive, wary and easily misled.

 On the other side of the coin, there's the stereotype of the gold-digger woman. In fact, one of the most common reasons that families end up contesting the will of a father or grandfather is because he's left his money to another woman – usually his second wife. No matter how long the couple was married or what specific claims are being made, the argument is often the same. The woman is a gold-digger and tricked the man into giving her all of his money. The same phenomenon plays out for racial and ethnic minorities. Although it affects many people of colour, this bizarre duality is best exemplified by the roots of anti-black racism.

From the earliest days of chattel slavery, the practice was justified by the stereotype that black people were foolish and incapable of caring for themselves. Yet at the same time, slave owners were cautioned always to be on the lookout for any sign of revolt and were advised to keep an eye on their enslaved people to make sure they weren't cheating them out of their money by loafing on their dime. Racial, ethnic and gender stereotypes help ensure the social order by providing legitimising myths that confirm hierarchies that are already in place.

Scams by people in positions of power are often referred to as something else. While conducting her own research on the subject of scams, Wilkinson-Ryan presented her participants with scenarios about harsh consumer deals and then asked them to tell her which party was in the wrong. One scenario was about a car rental company that tripled its price if the renter got any parking tickets, even if they paid the ticket right away. She also specified that this part of the rental agreement was extremely hard to find as it was written in small print on an extra sheet in the company's welcome folder. Despite intentionally writing these scenarios to be unfair and legally questionable, she found that most of her subjects thought the deal was totally fine.

Why, she wondered, would the majority of respondents side with the big company rather than the little guy? The reason is that it's much more comfortable psychologically. It takes an enormous mental burden to believe that the world is unfair. The thought is so depressing and unsettling that people will actually adapt their own feelings to create the illusion of a just world. In the 1950s, psychologist Melvin Lima studied this theory, naming it the Just World Bias. According to Lima, refusal to accept the unfairness of the real world can affect our judgments and even trick us into believing that we live in a structurally fair world.

The motivation to keep to the status quo is enough to excuse truly bad behaviour by people in positions of power. When people with higher social status take advantage of others, it's usually not recognised as a scam. This is why we tend to pay more attention to smaller individual cons versus larger systemic ones. Big corporations misuse their power all the time, but when individuals try to do the same, it can feel destabilising.

Even if we know deep down that smaller scams aren't really that big a deal, we still pay them far more attention than the systematic exploitation happening around us every day. If we recognised these larger issues for what they truly are, we'd have to accept the fact that we live in a world where we're constantly being conned. And that would probably be too much to take.

The fear of getting scammed can keep us living upto our values.

The fear of getting scammed can keep us from living up to our values. Culturally, we often think of being scammed as a lesson. As the old saying goes, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Since we've already been played, we can use what we've learned to ensure it doesn't happen again. What we don't usually talk about are the consequences of being overly cautious.

The fear of being a sucker largely determines who we're willing to trust and who we keep at arm's length. If you've been the victim of a scam, this will likely affect you the next time someone asks you for a donation or even a favour. Let's look at another scenario. This time, a student emails their professor and asks for an extension on an assignment because there's been a death in their family. The professor's first instinct is to send condolences and grant the extension. But when the professor mentions this to a colleague, they find out that several of the colleague's students have used this excuse in the past to get out of assignments.

This is when doubt starts to creep in. What if the student is lying? What if they're trying to con me? Instead of granting the extension right away, the professor asks the student for proof, all the while forgetting to offer condolences for their loss. As a result, both the student and the professor come out of the experience feeling significantly worse. The fear of taking a risk and getting it wrong often affects our judgement on a personal level, but when this plays out communally, it can have even harsher consequences.

A good example of this phenomenon is the story of Million Dollar Murray, the subject of a 2006 New York Times article about the tension surrounding free housing for the homeless. Murray was a homeless man in Reno, Nevada, whose frequent trips to the emergency room cost the city millions of dollars each year. It's been proven that it would be far cheaper to provide free apartments to homeless people like Murray to help keep them off the streets and cut down on health care costs. Even if the apartment cost the city $10,000 a year in rent, it would still save them millions in the long run. Despite being the naturally cost-effective solution, many people are still resistant to the idea of free housing for the homeless because they feel that it's unfair. In their minds, it feels like they're being taken advantage of.

Why should their hard-earned tax dollars be used to give someone else a free ride? This is the kind of thinking that gets us stuck in a cycle of suspicion and blame, resulting in far less efficient public welfare programs. Even when more efficient and cost-effective options are possible, we're often so sensitive to the possibility of being scammed that it distorts our values and influences our perceptions of who truly needs help.

It's not about whether or not threats exist, but rather which ones actually deserve your attention. By now you're probably thinking that this sounds like a whole lot of bad news. We're all naturally terrified of becoming suckers, living in a world that's constantly trying to con us, which makes us hypervigilant and less likely to trust. Well, not exactly. The good news is that by acknowledging the phenomenon of the suckers game, you can actually start to do something about it.

When you're able to recognise your natural tendency to avoid being tricked, you can keep it from influencing your decisions and behaviours. The best way you can do this is by focusing more on your values than your fears. Let's go back to the scenario about the student and the professor for a moment. The professor's fear was that the student might be trying to trick them into giving an extension. But is this really such a big deal? Odds are the student is telling the truth.

But even if they're not, they probably have a good reason for doing so. Maybe there's something else going on in their life that they're too embarrassed to talk about. Maybe they got in over their head this semester and just needed a break. In this instance, a simple cost-benefit analysis would show the professor that they really have nothing to fear by putting trust in this student. If they're being played, it's not going to cause any real harm, and if they aren't, they'll be able to act on their best instincts and support their values while the student gets the support that they need too. We all fall for cons every once in a while.

It's an unavoidable part of being human. Although there's the potential for the situation to end badly, most of the time, it's really not that big of a deal. What's important is that we don't let our fears stop us from living our lives the way we want. Of course, this isn't to say you should go around blindly trusting every situation you encounter without listening to your gut.

The question isn't whether or not threats exist, but rather which ones truly deserve your attention. The next time you're wondering whether or not to put your trust in someone, consider your personal goals, values and beliefs. Try not to focus on what you might lose, but rather on what you, and others, could gain. In this content we've learned that the fear of being a sucker is a collective, familiar, intuitive experience that finds its way into nearly every part of our lives.

It's such a painful and isolating phenomenon that we often do everything we can to avoid it. Unfortunately, this can lead to a state of hypervigilance. The core of the sucker dynamic is a power struggle that reinforces social roles and justifies harmful stereotypes. It also causes us to focus our attention on smaller scams committed by individuals, while larger, systemic ones are constantly taking place. Being overly cautious to avoid being scammed can keep us from trusting others and interfere with opportunities to be kind and generous.

When this plays out on a communal level, it can have far worse consequences. The truth is that the world around us will always be filled with opportunities to become a sucker. It's part of being human. What matters is how we acknowledge and react to these situations. Becoming aware of the sucker's game can help you decide what risks are truly worth taking. Listening to your instincts can help you decide where to invest your psychological energy.

When you do this, it becomes possible to live your life with integrity in a sucker's world. That's it for now. Thanks so much for reading. Please leave us a comment. We always appreciate your feedback. See you in another content soon. 💚