In their latest book, Think Like a Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner cite several examples of people who trick guilty parties (i.e. those who prey upon people who are ignorant and/or gullible) into unwittingly reveal their guilt through their own behavior.
Here are three examples:
o Two women appealed to King Solomon, both claiming to be the mother of a newborn. Unable to decide, King Solomon ordered the child to be cut in half. One woman embraced the idea. He knew immediately that the other woman who begged him to let the other have the child was in fact its mother.
o Rock star David Lee Roth of the Van Halen group has a 53-page list of technical and security requirements for each concert location. One in the Munchies section specifies “M&Ms (WARNING: ABSOLUTELY NO BROWN ONES).” Immediately upon arrival, he checks the jar. “If he saw brown ones, he knew the promoter hadn’t read the rider [to the otherwise standard contract) — and that ‘we had to do a serious line check’ to make sure that the most important details hadn’t been botched either.”
o So-called “Nigerian scammers” send millions of email messages each month to millions of people throughout the world. (It’s called the “Nigerian scam” because more than half of the messages invoke Nigeria than all of the other emails combined.) I have received 3-5 each week in recent years. The “Beloved friend” message is always illiterate and ludicrous. How stupid, right? Not so fast. According to Levitt and Dubner, the Nigerian scammers know that almost everyone who receives a message will ignore it. But if only one in a hundred recipients provides the requested bank information….
“The ridiculous-sounding Nigerian emails seem to be quite good at getting the scammers’ massive garden to weed itself.” Those who think like a freak have mastered that skill. Some people use it to prey upon people who are ignorant and/or gullible. Others use it to identify predators.
Steven Levitt is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago and a recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded to the most influential economist under the age of forty.
Stephen J. Dubner is an award-winning author, journalist, and TV and radio personality. In addition to Freakonomics, SuperFreakonomics, and Think Like a Freak co-authored with Steven Levitt, he has published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Time magazine.