The scammers' psychological warfare: a call to arms

Fraud and scams (we use the terms interchangeably) are some of the most common crimes in the world, inflicting staggering emotional, financial, health and psychological suffering on millions of individuals each year. Despite this, widespread and extensive impact, the psychological research on what renders some individuals more susceptible to fraudulent solicitations, what mechanisms scammers employ to lure potential victims, what therapeutic programs can help victims, what educational/preventive programs can reduce compliance, what can be done to increase reporting, and what policies are needed to safeguard the public is just emerging. To address this pressing social problem, this article has several goals. It is designed to provide readers with state-of-the-art insights into fraud research: what has been done thus far and what is urgently missing. Its second purpose is to highlight the urgency of the problem and encourage researchers to pay attention to this acute problem and conduct relevant research in their domain (clinical, cognitive, health, personality, etc.). Our primary goal, however, is to reach beyond the academic sphere. To fight fraud, we must unite forces with private and not-for-profit organizations, education providers, financial institutions, government entities, grass-roots organizations, international organizations, law enforcement agencies, and many more. As such, we hope to draw the attention of a wide range of stakeholders and encourage collaborations that produce direct action.

Citation

Hanoch, Y., Wood, S., DeLiema, M., Han, S.D., Lichtenberg, P. (in press) The scammers' psychological warfare: a call to arms. Psychological Science in the Public Interest.

Type

Journal article

Language

en

Description

This is an author's accepted manuscript of an article published by SAGE on [date TBC], available online: [link TBC]. The accepted manuscript may differ from the final publsihed version.

ISSN

1529-1006

EISSN

2160-0031

Collections

Faculty of Arts, Business and Social Sciences