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Deception
Deception and Why We Trust Too Much
Four ways to avoid getting burned by deception.
Updated March 9, 2025 Reviewed by Tyler Woods
Key points
- We’re wired to overtrust others, making us vulnerable to deception.
- History proves we repeat the same judgement errors.
- Science explains why — and helps prevent worse decisions.
How well do you spot a scam? Would you know if a friend was lying? Would you know if a politician, doctor, or influencer was bending the truth?
You probably think so. But science suggests otherwise. And reality bears this out from phishing to the billions lost in financial scams.
The truth is that humans are wired to trust—even when we shouldn’t. And that blind spot is getting costlier. From phishing emails to fake charities, miracle diets to disinformation, the world is full of misjudgement traps where we overtrust what we see and tune into the wrong voices.
Nearly one in four Americans has been scammed in the last five years. In Britain, a fraud is committed every 90 seconds. And it’s not just about money—misplaced trust ruins relationships, distorts history, gets people into trouble. Its not just embarrassing, it costs lives.
This isn’t new. In 1518, a dancing plague broke out in France. Believing a strange curse had befallen them, hundreds of people danced uncontrollably for weeks, some collapsing or dying from exhaustion. Physicians claimed that the cure for compulsive dancing was in fact more dancing! It took months before anyone questioned the logic.
Fast-forward to today, and have we evolved that much? We still believe stories because authority figures or celebrities or everyone else does, or we just want them to be true.
The Science of Overtrust
We’re terrible at spotting lies. Ask any betrayed spouse. A meta-analysis of 206 legal cases found that people detect deception only 54% of the time—barely better than a coin flip. The scary part? The more confident someone is in their lie-detection skills, the worse they tend to be.
As I write in my book Tune In: How to Make Smarter Decisions in a Noisy World, our trust problem isn’t just naïveté. It’s psychological.
Psychologist Tim Levine found that our brains are wired to assume people are honest by default. That combines with the illusory truth effect and the impact of repetition of misleading information. Therein lies the problem. The voice of the expert is not tempered, usually driven by champion bias and lack of attention. For instance, the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that 30 percent of prescriptions are unnecessary. People suffer.
Studies show that Oxytocin, the love hormone, also makes us more trusting of strangers—which is why charismatic con artists do well. Others deviously fake nervousness or vulnerability because people trust them more when they seem imperfect.
This is why intelligent, educated people fall for fake investment schemes, medical claims, and even cults. I remember how two English girls claimed they had photographed fairies in the early 1900s. Sherlock Holmes writer Arthur Conan Doyle trusted them so much he wrote an endorsing article. The Cottingley Fairies Hoax wasn’t exposed until the 1980s.
Similarly, in the 1938 War of the Worlds radio panic, millions believed a fictional broadcast about an alien invasion because it came in the format of real news. Some even fled their homes.
In 2014, you may recall the craze for natural cures. Wellness advocates convinced millions that essential oils could cure cancer, celery juice could reverse chronic disease, and detox teas could cleanse organs. Some abandoned medical treatment with tragic consequences. Similarly, Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 study linking vaccines to autism was debunked but triggered decades of distrust, leading to outbreaks of diseases. The damage continues today.
Why We Trust the Wrong People
I’d love to say I’ve never fallen for a trap, but I was nearly suckered into a “too good to be true” role as a Hollywood extra on Jurassic Park. It sounded credible and everything checked out – until it didn’t!
So, why do we fall for this repeatedly? Psychology explains.
The Authority Trap: People trust figures in power even when they’re wrong. The famous Stanford Prison Experiment showed that authority, not morality, often dictates behavior. Trusting pharmaceutical companies, many doctors over prescribed addictive painkillers, leading to a devastating opioid epidemic.
The Halo Effect: We assume someone good at one thing is good at everything. Just because a celebrity is great at acting doesn’t mean they know how to bake or predict cryptocurrency trends.
The False Consensus Effect: The more people believe something, the more they think it must be true. This bias explains mass delusions, from 17th-century witch trials to pyramid schemes.
This is the fuel of conspiracy theorists. Sometimes, it’s also due to the ostrich effect or wishful thinking.
4 Ways to Avoid Getting Burned
So how do we protect ourselves from overtrusting others? Here’s what science suggests:
Pause Before Believing. Just because something sounds true doesn’t mean it is. Even experts are wrong sometimes. Remember when doctors once advertised cigarettes?
Be Wary of Confidence. The more certain someone is, the more carefully you should check their claims. Studies show that overconfidence is not correlated with accuracy—rather, the opposite.
Trust Actions, Not Words. Harvard Business School Research shows people who lie tend to overuse emphatic language like “I swear on my mother’s life!” Meanwhile, honest people show doubt.
Con Artists Love Ego. Scammers and manipulators flatter you to lower your defenses. If someone tells you,“You’re too smart to fall for a scam,” watch out.
Ronald Reagan once said, “Trust but verify.” That advice no longer holds up. In a world of fake news, deepfakes, and viral hoaxes, perhaps a better motto is “Distrust but verify.”
Trust isn’t the enemy. Blind trust is. And in today’s era where misinformation spreads faster than facts, some skepticism might be the smartest thing you invest in.
