The fear of playing the fool is a universal psychological phenomenon and an underappreciated driver of human behavior. We have a whole thesaurus for victims of exploitation: suckers, fools, dupes, marks, chumps, pawns, and losers. Most of us are constantly navigating two sets of imperatives: how to be successful and how to be good. The fear of being suckered whispers that you can’t do both, cautioning us against leaps of faith and acts of altruism. In Fool Proof, University of Pennsylvania law professor and moral psychologist Tess Wilkinson-Ryan shows how the sucker construct shapes—and distorts—human decision-making. Fool Proof offers the first in-depth analysis of the sucker’s game, drawing evidence from grocery shopping to international trade deals, from road rage to #MeToo. Offering real-world puzzles and stories, Wilkinson-Ryan explores what kinds of hustles feel like scams and which ones feel like normal business;who gets pegged as a sucker and who gets lauded as a saint, and how