Duping Delight

Ever feel giddy about getting away with something?

Psychologists have a name for this phenomenon: duping delight.

Maybe there’s a little turning up of the corners of the lips that betrays the true feelings of the duper, or maybe the person just feels smugly satisfied. They’ve just gotten away with something.

Now, everyone I know enjoys being sneaky every now and then. In fact, if you’re a jiu jitsu practitioner, that’s kind of the whole idea: you can use leverage and deception (in a manner of speaking) to trick your partner into doing something against their best interest.

The term duping delight was coined by psychologist Paul Ekman to describe a much more chronic manifestation of this feeling. Tricking others becomes like a game or a high all the time, so it kind of takes over someone’s life in very destructive ways.

What’s going on here? Why should someone feel so giddy about pulling the wool over the eyes of someone else?

One reason could be evolutionary. Our ancestors (the humans who survived) may have needed to trick other humans in order to steal their resources, for example. The inverse is also true: you have to have at least a basic understanding of duping, so that you can have a shot at defending yourself.

This has become an arms race, where you think everyone is trying to trick you all the time. Then, whoever wants to trick you has to be sneakier, so then you have to come up with better and more sophisticated ways to defend yourself. Today, there are entire industries built around scams, and I can’t help but imagine that duping delight is a primary motivating factor (though the immense potential profit doesn’t hurt).

Remember Hannibal Lecter breaking out of the prison in The Silence of the Lambs? Dr Lecter doesn’t only escape; he relishes the act of outsmarting the warden and the guards.

He even takes extra time to craft a little nightmare-fuel for Gen X kids watching Silence for the first time—Lecter uses religious iconography and symbolism to create a sense of shock and awe you certainly remember if you snuck into the theater to see this film.

He’s winning a game others don’t even understand that they’re playing.

Essentially, we’ve all got a tiny dose of this sort of satisfaction, but duping delight refers to someone like Lecter, who has this trait in droves, and maybe even bases his entire life around this feeling of superiority.

The next time you see that sneaky little turning up of the lips at the wrong time, watch out! You might be catching a glimpse of someone who just won a little game, and you’re the person they beat.