Six Psychological Tricks Scammers Use Against You
Chances are you’ve recently encountered a scammer —perhaps several—by phone, email, or social media. Last year alone, 2.6 million scam reports were filed, and people reported losing $10 billion to scammers. It may seem like every other message you receive is a romance scam , pig butcher scam , or impostor scam . And you may think you’ll never fall in love with him, but you definitely can .
This is because scammers use a wide range of psychological tricks to confuse you and convince you to make decisions that will likely seem incredible to you in retrospect. In the heat of the moment, it’s easy to find yourself being manipulated, and if you ever accidentally come into contact with a scammer, you’ll likely encounter one or more of these psychological tricks scammers use to keep you off balance.
Appeal to the authorities
Fraudsters often impersonate people in authority: government officials, law enforcement officers or professional experts. We are all trained to obey the people in charge, and scammers use this to suppress any resistance we may have to what we are told to do. After all, if the cops are on the phone telling you that you missed a court date and must pay a fine or be immediately arrested, our instinct is to do as we’re told to stay out of trouble.
It also takes advantage of what’s called the halo effect , the tendency to let a positive first impression influence how we perceive subsequent interactions. If someone has established themselves as an authority figure, we’re more likely to follow their commands, even if they’re strange—like when a police officer orders you to stay on the phone while you buy gift cards to pay a fine.
What to watch out for: If someone claiming to be an authority figure resists any attempt to fact-check his facts—claiming that you’ll be arrested if you hang up, or that he doesn’t have time to fact-check his claims—you should be very careful. suspicious. Legitimate authorities will have no problem conducting a reasonable inspection of you.
Time pressure
Scammers want you to use the emotional, instinctual part of your brain, so they often try to use scarcity and fear to get you to do what they want. Scams are often presented as limited opportunities in terms of time or offer, which immediately puts you in a more emotional state because you don’t want to miss out on them. This works even if a few minutes ago the benefit being offered to you wasn’t even on your radar – the moment you are told that you can get something, your emotional reaction is aimed at protecting that benefit, often ignoring your more rational thought processes. .
Another way to pull this off is with delivery scams or fake invoice scams , which often include a convenient (and very fake) contact link or phone number that you can easily click on to get in touch. Your emotional reaction to a large bill that you never authorized causes you to immediately click to correct the error without having to worry about checking your contact information.
What to pay attention to: Any time you are forced to act immediately to solve a problem or gain some benefit, stop yourself. No legitimate business would ever require you to make such hasty decisions.
Foot in the door
Scammers know that people are often wary of large, impressive amounts or anything that requires a lot of effort. Therefore, they use a technique known as ” Foot in the Door ” to make it easier for you to participate in the scam. The way it works is simple: they initiate contact with a small, simple request—sometimes as simple as “Can I give you two minutes of your time?” or ask you to answer a simple question. If you’ve ever been stopped on the street by a signature collector and started with a question like, “Do you like animals?” You’ve encountered the “Foot in the Door” trick.
The first question is followed by a constant stream of additional requests, but you are already willing to give in, and your agreement to previous requests may make it difficult to justify subsequent refusal to cooperate. For example, if you’ve already agreed that a particular cause is worth supporting, refusing to donate some money will make you feel like a liar.
This method also uses the ” sunk cost fallacy “. Once you’ve spent the time and emotional labor answering questions and becoming increasingly involved in the conversation, you’ll be less inclined to simply walk away or end the conversation without results. Foot in the Door can also be used in reverse: the scammer may start with a huge request that is easy to refuse, and then follow up with a much smaller request that suddenly seems reasonable in comparison.
What to watch for: Any time a stranger starts with a question without any warm-up or jokes, it’s time to slow down the conversation on your part so you can think.
Reciprocity
Reciprocity is why civilization works: when someone does something for us, we feel a “social duty” to return the same. Remarkably, this works even if we didn’t originally want what we got. This often comes in the form of a favor —a special price or special access offered to you because you seem like a good person—but it can also be used subtly to support you. The scammer will compliment you or show interest in you to create social debt: If someone asks you how your day is going, you may feel pressured to ask them too, which will keep you interested. This can be used to create mental fatigue: after a long conversation with a scammer, you become tired and easier to manipulate.
What to watch out for: Off-the-cuff compliments or offers of favors from people you’ve never met should be a red flag that you’re about to be confronted with a return request, and the scammer wants to make you feel indebted to them.
love bombing
Romance scams are a long-term scam in which scammers pretend to be an attractive, interested romantic partner who, unfortunately, is very far away and therefore unable to meet in person. The scammer convinces his victim that they are in love and then demands money in various forms to solve temporary problems – such as a car that needs repairs or travel problems.
From afar, it may seem hard to believe that people don’t immediately become suspicious when their new friend demands money. But these scammers use so-called ” love bombing ” to emotionally suppress and manipulate their victims. Love bombing begins with constant, dramatic expressions of affection, but then withholds that affection without explanation, forcing the victim to work to regain that feeling of adoration. Before you know it, you are working hard to do whatever they want to restore your good feelings towards them.
What to watch out for: If someone you’ve never met starts showering you with attention and praise, be suspicious. If they then seem to randomly “go cold” and get angry at you, then you are almost certainly being manipulated (or the person is not in a healthy emotional space – either way, it’s time to leave).
Early victories
One technique that is used in most pig slaughter scams is “early win”, which can be used in other types of scams as well. The early win is simple: to gain your trust, the scammer will actually allow you to earn real money from him. For example, the classic pig butchering scam asks you to invest in something, often a cryptocurrency scheme. You invest a small, safe amount of money that you can afford to lose, but instead of having that small amount stolen from you, you actually make a profit and can even withdraw it from the scheme.
Winning early is about gaining trust. Once you actually make a small profit, you are more willing to take the risk of increasing it. And Early Wins will help convince you to keep investing more money even if you have trouble withdrawing from scams in the future, because you’ve already seen the “proof” that it’s legit.
What to watch out for: If you are forced to test an investment scheme with a small amount of money and/or are promised a “guaranteed” return, you may be fattening yourself like the proverbial pig.