Gullibility

The term gullibility has numerous meanings, including foolishness, naiveté, unwarranted trust, belief despite little evidence or when there is evidence one should not believe, credulity, and susceptibility to manipulation and exploitation. Characteristics of gullibility include an enduring pattern of personality or a cognitive trait, and other times it is a product of temporary situational, emotional, or cognitive influences. Colloquially, [Page 429]some refer to those duped on a single occasion as gullible persons. However, it is worth considering someone repeatedly taken advantage of by others to be gullible. Because of the important impact that gullibility can have on a person's decision making, research on gullibility spans a wide variety of topics and domains, including financial, legal, political, scientific, religious, interpersonal, and the workplace.

Historically, scholars and practitioners have been interested in gullibility as it relates to being taken advantage of, such as by snake-oil salesman or new religious movements. More recently, this topic is discussed within the context of high-profile financial scandals (for example, Ponzi schemes), false confessions in criminal cases, and an ever-increasing amount of online social interactions. This has important implications because research on gullibility has focused heavily on face-to-face interaction. As society moves toward increasingly frequent online interactions, it is less clear whether the causes of gullibility are specific to in-person interactions. It is likely that many cues that signal untrustworthiness are more difficult to recognize in online social situations.

Research suggests that gullibility relates to a high degree of trustworthiness in another person, group, or an institution. Research on interpersonal trust (a general expectation that people will be true to their word), conducted by Julian Rotter and colleagues, suggests such a relation between trust and gullibility is unlikely to be the case. Individuals who score above average on an index of interpersonal trust tend to be no more susceptible to being fooled or manipulated than those who score average trustworthiness. Evidence suggests that those who rate themselves as very trusting may in fact be less gullible, on average. One reason for this may be that the so-called high-trusters develop abilities to accurately identify untrustworthiness in others. In other words, high-trusters assume that other individuals are trustworthy; however, they are unlikely to be exploited because of their ability to detect untrustworthiness.

Copious research suggests that individuals frequently behave automatically, without conscious thought, relying on mental shortcuts (heuristics) to ease decision making. Rather than deciding if someone is trustworthy, many individuals instead rely on intuitive cues about someone's trustworthiness. For instance, a person will believe someone who is known to have expertise, such as a medical doctor. However, it is relatively easy to manipulate trustworthiness cues, such as by wearing a uniform (for example, a lab coat), merely stating credentials (for example, M.D. or Ph.D.), or even speaking quickly; each signal trustworthiness that may in fact be unwarranted. For example, jurors sometimes find eyewitness testimony suspicious when a witness hesitates while recalling information verbally. While such cues have advantages in everyday judgments, they can expose a person to exploitation.

Numerous ordinary characteristics can increase gullibility, such as tiredness, distraction, emotional arousal, and uncertainty. For example, someone who is multitasking is less able to recognize crucial signals that someone else is acting untrustworthy; hence, gullibility increases. Similarly, stress and time pressure, novel and ambiguous situations, or lacking knowledge or expertise sometimes lead to gullibility. In unfamiliar situations, individuals rely on others for cues regarding appropriate behavior and open themselves to exploitation by others.

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