A University of Groningen Professor Multiply Plagiarized an American Woman’s Dissertation and Then…
The University of Groningen lawyer’s letter was an attempt to “cool the mark out” and make the woman go away and hinted at an enduring attitude to uppity outside women (and men).
The con man, the restaurant host, the complaint department of a business, and the University of Groningen
While still a sociology graduate student at the University of Chicago in 1952, Irving Goffman published “On Cooling the Mark Out: Some Aspects of Adaptation to Failure” in Psychiatry: Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes. According to Sherman Dorn:
Goffman used a routine in crime–where designated members of a gang would “cool out” unhappy con-job “marks” by explaining to them why it was just that they were taken advantage of (or that they weren’t taken advantage of, or somesuch)–to point out that such cooling-out functions happen broadly in society, where people unhappy with how they’re being treated are let down in some way to avoid ruffling feathers.
Goffman wrote brilliantly, and so it is best to quote his explanation directly:
The con man who wants the mark to go home quietly and absorb a loss, the restaurant hostess who wants a customer to eat quietly and go away with…