May
23
... a fascinating report on the psychology of why people fall for scams, commissioned by the UK government's Office of Fair Trading and created by Exeter University's psychology department.
It's a 260 page monster, so is not exactly bed time reading, but was drawn from in-depth interviews from scam victims, examination of scam material, two questionnaire studies and a behavioural experiment.
...
The report concluded that the most successful scams involve:
- Appeals to trust and authority
- Visceral triggers
- Scarcity cues
- The disproportionate relation between the size of the alleged reward and the cost of trying to obtain it.
- Induction of behavioural commitment.
- Lack of emotional control
And here's a couple of counter-intuitive kickers:
- Scam victims often have better than average background knowledge in the area of the scam content.
- Scam victims report that they put more cognitive effort into analysing scam content than non-victims.
Link to UK Office of Fair Trading report page and download.
From Mind Hacks