Fun fact: A fellow Rationalist and I were doing Rejection Therapy. My friend chose to do Pascal's Mugging (the positive version - if you give me $5 now, a package of $50000 will appear at your doorstep tomorrow morning).

The subject came extremely close to actually giving him the $5, even though the subject only had five dollars and needed it to get home. (My friend added that a cab would arrive in five minutes if he waited at a particular intersection and take him home for free). He only stopped when I burst out laughing. (It took maybe a 5-10 minute conversation to build up to that point)

We talked to him about it afterwards to ask about his motivations. He said the logic made sense to him and my friend did a good job of maintaining the persona.