Thoughts of Eggcup

My theme this week is about how we worry about being cheated and the different ways in which we react to being cheated. Many people who bought off-plan or illegal properties in Spain have experienced what it feels like to be duped by unscrupulous individuals and companies, and have had to learn psychological strategies to cope with this. Indeed, being cheated is a universal experience and we all have to learn how to deal with the fallout. As landlords in the UK we have had more than our share of being deceived and it has taken an emotional toll. In fact it was my anger at one tenant, Amanda, whom we were trying to evict that served as the catalyst for me to do some research on the psychology of being cheated. I wanted to know: was my reaction normal and proportionate or had I lost the plot?  

According to the psychological literature,* one of the main reactions of victims of con-artists is to blame themselves for not having been more careful about whom they trusted. That didn’t strike me as true at all; I blamed Amanda and I blamed society’s institutions and laws which protected her to our detriment. I didn’t blame us (actually, I blamed Adrian a bit for trusting her on the basis that he’d vaguely known her mum).  When Amanda viewed our house, she chatted to us in such a friendly manner, complimenting the house, she had the rent and deposit and yes, she could get her mother to sign the guarantor forms, but her mother was on holiday until the following week and she’d like to move in before her mother returned; why shouldn’t we have trusted her?

     Of course the whole thing was a disastrous mistake and after finally getting her out, we were terrified to re-let the house; ironically, the next person who viewed it was also called Amanda and I felt like blacklisting the name. The first Amanda had ruined our peace of mind to such an extent that the thought of going through it again with someone else filled us with dread. This is where our experience resonated with the literature as there was now the danger we could turn into cynical, mistrusting types forever, as the experts suggested.

    We had experienced a similar reaction in an entirely different context on holiday in the Sierra Nevada in our twenties. Our budget for food each evening was 5,000 pesetas (£20), but late one afternoon we walked into a café in the deserted, out-of-season resort and asked for a couple of tapas. The man disappeared for twenty minutes and then brought out large plates of tortilla and prawns with ali-oli; far more than we needed, but we assumed he was just being generous. He then presented us with a bill for 6,000 euros (£24). This meant we’d be stuck in the hostal that evening as we wouldn’t have the money to go out.

     When we told the man we hadn’t asked for all that food and only had 5,000 pesetas on us he said, ‘Well get some more money out from the cash till across the road.’ We refused and said he’d have to settle for the 5,000. After being stung in this way, from then on every time we asked for a tapa in a bar, we would say, ‘¿Cuánto es?’ as we pointed to each specimen under the glass counter, and the bar staff were bemused as they invariably said ‘100 pesetas,’ which was about 40 pence. We looked pathetic and petty and it spoiled our holiday.

      So, this paranoia about being cheated can strike at any time and in different contexts. In the literature, the victims of cheats are called ‘suckers,’ which isn’t very nice, although apposite. Indeed, during one of our spats in the tanning salon where our tenant Amanda worked, I said ‘you’re taking the piss out of me.’ I felt a fool for having been stupid enough to trust her; so our experience here tied in nicely with the literature. It was all jolly interesting for psychologists but damn annoying for us.

     I also found it a massive challenge to come to terms with what the experts called the ‘highly aversive’ feelings attached to the experience of being duped. The feelings can pollute your peace of mind for years, especially if you’ve received no justice, the person hasn’t paid back what they owe you and you then see them swanning around without a care in the world, almost definitely now doing the same thing to some other sucker.

     Apparently, the main emotions are those of regret, frustration, shame and guilt. It is also tentatively suggested anger might be a part of this. A big bloody part, actually. Whenever I see Amanda in town (she’s just got a job near us in an establishment that Adrian refers to as ‘the tarty clothes shop’) and she’s dolled up, always in a new outfit, I remind her loudly: ‘You owe me £2,300 and I want it. Stop spending money on fags, booze, clothes and make-up, you criminal! And give me my money!’

    In addition to this anger, the sucker (that’s me) may suffer from a chronic and possibly exaggerated fear of being duped. And this is what they’ve termed ‘sugraphobia,’ from the Latin, sugro, which means to suck. If you get this pathology, you go through life maintaining chronic vigilance against being duped. If being cheated has that unfortunate effect on you, and you become a sugraphobe, you will see the world in a certain way. You’ll assume taxi drivers take the long way around to run up the fare, that car mechanics and plumbers fix more than they should and overcharge you, and so on. You’ll spend most of your life worried sick that everyone’s out to get you. We made a conscious decision not to allow the likes of Amanda to turn us into pathological cowards in this way. Had we gone down that route, we would have had to give up our business; trust and the concomitant possibility of being open to being cheated, is an inevitable feature of being involved in business.

     I believe sugraphobia is particularly rife in Spain now, with a culture of mistrust developing. These days, when you want a builder to work for you, he will ask for the money upfront, (justifiably) terrified that you might not pay him at the end of the job; whilst you, as the customer, don’t want to give him a penny before he’s started the job. When you’re buying new furniture and are asked to hand over 2,000 euros and you will receive your goods in six weeks’ time, you think, ‘Hold on, what if they go bust or just don’t deliver it?’ This mutual mistrust is spreading throughout Spanish society, en mi humilde opinión.

    On the other hand, some people can be defined as nonsugraphobes. These are people who often don’t even realise they’ve been cheated, because it doesn’t fit into their world view. If they do notice it, they’re genuinely surprised. And they don’t then see it as a reason to change their behaviour; it couldn’t possibly happen more than once. Both approaches have costs. The sugraphobes, who suspect cheaters everywhere, go through life worried about being taken advantage of and may believe themselves victimised when they’re not and the nonsugraphobes will get stung more often than if they’d been more alert to the dangers.

     In conclusion, after reading the research, which in many ways made sense of my emotions at having been cheated, I felt a bit better. It took my mind off Amanda and allowed me to achieve some emotional distance from the issue. It also demonstrated we hadn’t somehow been going mental or overreacting when dealing with her and the other lying cheats we’ve come across. I was also relieved that all of our experiences hadn’t resulted in us turning into sugraphobes; just given us a healthy dose of scepticism to no longer automatically believe everything we are told in this world.

*(Ref. ‘Feeling Duped: Emotional, Motivational, and Cognitive Aspects of Being Exploited by Others.’  Kathleen D. Vohs (University of Minnesota), Roy F. Baumeister (Florida State University), Jason Chin (University of British Columbia). Review of General Psychology, 2007, Vol. 11, No. 2, 127–141)

This is an adapted extract from my second book.

My first book is available to download for only £2.98 (to kindle, a PC, IPAD etc): This is the link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BJO2TU0  

Sometimes I can’t work out why some friends react in a particular way to something I’ve said. I’m puzzled. Maybe I was expecting an interested raised eyebrow or an involuntary titter. Why, for example, didn’t my friend compliment one thing about our newly-built Spanish house when Adrian showed her photos of the finished article? Why, when I mentioned I’d just published a book, didn’t she ask one thing about it, but immediately changed the subject (I thought she couldn’t have heard me)?  And how come we don’t even know if she liked what we just cooked, as she hasn’t said one good thing about it and it was, if I say so myself, delicious? Why does she respond with a deafening silence to anything I do that’s positive, but will make sympathetic noises and give friendly advice for hours if I say my dog’s got eczema? Why do I have to decide before we meet for a café con leche which subjects are taboo and which are safe?

To me, the only explanation is envy, or envidia as it’s known in Spain (mixed with a dose of competitiveness). A Spanish friend, Carmela, once declared envidia to be a defining characteristic of the majority of inhabitants of our village in Spain (maybe it’s a national trait?). She believed envidia was at the root of the antipathy shown towards her by many of her old school friends, who resented her success and believed she was now lording it over them. This is a woman whose child had died and who lived every day with that grief; all they could see was her money.

To illustrate the attitude towards Carmela: My English friend Judy worked in a local restaurant (it was a place I found annoying because there were no prices displayed; I would be like a coiled spring before the cuenta was presented, being notoriously careful with my money). One day Carmela had the audacity (bravery) to query the bill after dining with a few friends and Judy was astounded: ‘With all the money she’s got. What does it matter to her?’ Well, Judy, how do you think she got rich in the first place? By not being a fool, that’s how. When I told Carmela how various people thought they could have free access to our  money and had tried to stitch us up in various ways, she suggested we tell them: ‘Extranjeros si; tontos no!’ In other words, we might be foreigners, but we’re not idiots.

It was also in Spain that I experienced how envy could lead to covetousness. I’ve only ever come across this in Spain; for that reason, I learnt the word, codicia. People would see something I had (an extendable table, a Scandinavian wood burner, an IKEA potato masher), say, ‘I love that,’ and then ask, ‘Can I buy it off you?’ Excuse me, but why do you think I struggled with loading my bargain table onto the roof rack and drove back from the coast like a nervous wreck worried it might fall off and kill an entire family? Because I like it as well! With the potato masher, the woman asked, ‘Could you get me one like that, por favor?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I got it from el pais de Gales. Give me seven euros and I’ll bring you one back.’

There is also sometimes an expectation that you should hand over your money or belongings just because someone else thinks you’re better off than them. Last year French friends were visiting and the one, who is a close friend of ours, tried to pay the bill for 14 of us in a curry house. Adrian and I obviously refused, an argument ensued and our French friend’s other friends said, ‘Let him pay! He’s rich.’ ‘I don’t care how rich he is,’ I said, ‘he’s not paying for us!’ I didn’t care if he was the richest man in the Universe. Why should he pay for me? For some, however, it seems second nature to take from others. These are the same people who are preternaturally envious and unable to accept what they’ve got but also unwillling to change what they’re doing to gain the objects of their desire legitimately.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with admiring something that belongs to someone else. Just don’t then ask if you can have it! These people brush aside the problems that come with wealth. I’d like a chateau for example, but I wouldn’t like the French taxes or the heating bill. I’d also like to be a world-famous singer, with all the money that comes with it, but if a paparazzo hung round my house and wouldn’t give me any peace I’d punch him in the face. I wouldn’t want these people’s lives and I wouldn’t make the sacrifices they’ve made.

But people who think money is everything have no sympathy for the problems wealthy people face; as though the fact of them having money precludes them from the right to some understanding. I remember reading years ago how Charlotte Ford, heir to a massive fortune and the richest woman in America, had a lying, cheating toe-rag for a husband, and I was shocked; shocked to realise that even that incredible wealth couldn’t protect a woman from the pain and suffering of being cheated on by the man who was supposed to love her. I thought, ‘Is no woman safe from being treated that way?’ Others would have thought, ‘Who cares? She’s loaded.’

When will people realise money isn’t everything?