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The "Super Fruit" That Could Help Fight Alzheimer’s Disease
Six Psychological Tricks Scammers Use Against You
Sometimes you wonder how anyone falls for an obvious scam; but the truth is, we’re all susceptible.
Chances are you’ve encountered a scammer recently—probably more than one, either on the phone, via email, or on a social media network. There were 2.6 million fraud reports filed last year alone, and people reported losing $10 billion to scammers. It can seem like every other message you get is a Romance Scammer, a Pig Butcherer, or an Impostor Scam. And you might think that you’d never fall for one—but you definitely can.
That’s 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 manipulated, and if you ever accidentally engage with a scammer you will likely experience one or more of these psychological tricks scammers use to keep you off balance.
Appeal to authority
Scammers often impersonate people in authority—government officials, law enforcement officers, or expert professionals. We’re all trained to defer to folks in charge, and scammers leverage that to shut down any resistance we might have to what we’re being 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.
This also leverages something called the Halo Effect—a tendency to let a positive first impression influence how we perceive subsequent interactions. If someone establishes themselves as an authority figure, we’re more likely to go along with their commands even if they’re strange—like when a police officer instructs you to stay on the phone while you buy gift cards to pay a fine.
What to watch for: If someone claiming to be a figure in authority resists any attempt to fact-check them—by claiming that you’ll be arrested if you hang up, or that there’s no time to verify their claims—you should be very suspicious. Legitimate authorities will have no problem with you conducting reasonable verification.
Time pressure
Scammers want you to use the emotional, instinctive side of your brain, so they often try to use scarcity and fear to pressure you into doing what they want. Scams are often presented as limited opportunities, either in terms of time or supply, immediately putting you in a more emotional state because you don’t want to miss out. This works even if the benefit you’re being offered wasn’t even on your radar a few moments ago—the moment you’re told you could have something, your emotional response is to protect that benefit, often overriding your more rational thought processes.
Another way this gets implemented is with Delivery Scams or Fake Invoice Scams, which often include a convenient (and very fake) contact link or phone number you can easily click to make contact. Your emotional response to seeing a large invoice you never authorized drives you to click immediately to get the mistake resolved, so you don't pause to think about verifying the contact information.
What to watch for: Any time you’re pressured to act immediately to resolve a problem or secure some benefit, stop yourself. No legitimate business ever requires you to make snap decisions like that.
Foot-in-the-Door
Scammers know that people are often on guard against big, dramatic sums or anything involving heavy effort. So they use a technique known as “Foot-in-the-Door” to ease you into the scam. The way it works is simple: They initiate contact with a small, easy request—sometimes as simple as asking “Can I have two minutes of your time?” or asking you to answer a simple question. If you’ve ever been stopped on the street by someone collecting signatures and they start off with a question like “Do you love animals?” you’ve encountered the Foot-in-the-Door trick.
That first question is followed by a steady flow of additional requests—but you’re already in the mindset of acquiescing, and your agreement to earlier requests can make it difficult to justify a later refusal to cooperate. For example, if you’ve already agreed that a specific cause is worth supporting, refusing to then donate some money makes you feel like a liar.
This technique also uses the “Sunk Cost Fallacy.” Once you’ve invested time and emotional labor into answering questions and getting increasingly involved in a conversation, you’ll be less willing to just walk away or end the interaction without a result. Foot-in-the-Door can also be used in reverse—the scammer may open with a huge ask that is easy to refuse, then follow it up with a much smaller ask that suddenly seems reasonable in comparison.
What to watch for: Any time a stranger opens with a question without any warm-up or pleasantries, it’s time to slow things down on your end so you can think.
Reciprocity
Reciprocity is why civilization works—when someone does something for us, we feel a “social debt” to return the favor. Remarkably, this works even if we didn’t want what we received in the first place. This often comes in the form of a favor—a special price or special access offered to you because you seem like a nice person, but it can also be used subtly to keep you talking. The scammer will compliment you or express interest in you so they can establish a social debt—if someone asks you how your day is going, you might feel pressure to ask them as well, keeping you engaged. This can be used to generate mental fatigue—after you’ve been talking with a scammer for a long time, you can be worn down and easier to manipulate.
What to watch for: Spontaneous compliments or offers of favors from people you’ve never met should be a red flag that you’re about to encounter a reciprocal request and the scammer wants to make you feel indebted to them.
Love bombing
Romance scams are long-term hustles where scammers pretend to be an attractive, interested romantic partner who is sadly very far away and thus unable to meet in person. The scammer convinces their victim that they are in love, and then requests money in various forms to solve temporary problems—a car in need of repair or travel problems, for example.
When viewed from a distance, it might seem hard to believe that people don’t immediately become suspicious when their new friend demands money. But these scammers use what’s known as “love bombing” to overwhelm their victims emotionally and manipulate them. Love bombing starts with constant, dramatic expressions of affection, but then withholds that affection with no explanation, forcing the victim to work to regain that sense of adoration. Before you know it, you’re working hard to do whatever they want so you can regain your good standing with them.
What to watch for: If someone you’ve never met begins showering you with attention and praise, be suspicious. If they then seem to randomly go “cold” and become angry with you, you’re almost certainly being manipulated (or the person isn’t in a healthy emotional space—either way, it’s time to walk away).
Early wins
One technique that most Pig Butchering Scams utilize is the "early win," which can be applied in other kinds of scams. The Early Win is simple: In order to gain your trust, the scammer will actually let you make some real money from them. In the classic Pig Butchering Scam, for example, you’re invited to invest in something, often a cryptocurrency scheme. You put in a small, safe amount of money you can afford to lose—but instead of being scammed out of that small amount, you actually get a profit, and you can even withdraw it from the scheme.
The Early Win is designed to gain trust. Once you actually make some small amount of profit, you’re more willing to risk increasing amounts. And the Early Wins will help convince you to keep investing more money even if you have trouble withdrawing funds from the scam in the future, because you’ve already seen “proof” that it’s legitimate.
What to watch for: If you’re pressured to test an investment scheme with a small amount of money and/or promised a “guaranteed” return, you might be getting fattened up like the proverbial pig.
By Jeff Somers
Jeff Somers is a freelancer who has been writing about writing, books, personal finance, and home maintenance since 2012.
Even though you don’t eat the peel, you should be aware of what could be hatching on it.
In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was known for his punishment in the underworld. His eternal task was to roll a boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down before he could reach the top. This futile and repetitive labour has become a symbol of the somewhat absurd nature of what we go through as human beings at various points of our lives. As many of us know, life has no rhyme or reason at times, and it can be quite a vicious pitcher. Despite the seemingly hopeless nature of his predicament, there are valuable lessons we can learn from Sisyphus that can be applied to mental health and wellbeing when we feel that life’s challenges are getting on top of us.
One of the key lessons we can glean from the myth of Sisyphus is the importance of resilience and perseverance in the face of adversity. Sisyphus was condemned to an eternity of ceaseless toil, yet he continued to push the boulder up the hill, in spite of it rolling back down each time. This relentless determination, despite the futility of his efforts, speaks to the human capacity to endure and persist in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges.
In the context of mental health and wellbeing, Sisyphus can be seen as a symbol of resilience in the face of struggles such as depression, anxiety, or other mental health issues. Just as Sisyphus laboured tirelessly without the promise of a tangible reward, individuals grappling with mental health challenges often confront daily battles that may seem never-ending. The perseverance demonstrated by Sisyphus serves as a powerful reminder of the resilience that lies within each of us, even in the face of overwhelming obstacles.
The story of Sisyphus prompts us to reflect on the meaning we assign to our lives and the choices we make in the midst of adversity. In his essay, Camus explores the concept of the absurd and the pursuit of meaning in a seemingly meaningless world. Despite the absurdity of Sisyphus' punishment, Camus argues that he can find meaning and fulfilment through his rebellion against the absurdity of his situation.
The myth of Sisyphus invites us to reconsider our relationship with struggle and difficult situations. Rather than viewing his eternal task as an exercise in futility, we can reframe it as an opportunity for growth and self-discovery. Similarly, when we are navigating our own mental health challenges, we can transform our experiences of pain and hardship into opportunities for personal growth and introspection. By reframing difficult circumstances as catalysts for resilience and self-understanding, we are often able to cultivate a mindset that promotes mental wellbeing and emotional resilience.
Sisyphus's eternal labour underscores the importance of embracing the present moment and finding joy in the process, regardless of the outcome. Despite the repetitive and seemingly futile nature of his task, Sisyphus persisted in his efforts, finding purpose and meaning in the act of pushing the boulder up the hill. This serves as a poignant reminder that finding fulfilment and contentment in life often lies in the journey itself, rather than the final destination.
The enduring symbolism of Sisyphus's struggle highlights the universal nature of human suffering and the shared experience of confronting life's challenges. By acknowledging the universality of struggle, we are able to find solace in the knowledge that we are not alone in our battles with many of the issues that life throws our way. This recognition of shared struggle can foster a sense of community, empathy, and support among those navigating similar challenges, ultimately contributing to the cultivation of a more compassionate and understanding society.
The myth of Sisyphus serves as a timeless allegory for the human experience. By drawing inspiration from Sisyphus, we are able to cultivate resilience, find purpose and meaning in our lives, and embrace the present moment, ultimately contributing to our own mental health and overall wellbeing.
The loss remains, so why does intense grief usually fade?
Grief’s ‘double vision’ beholds both the bereaved and dead. Recognising this duality helps explain our ability to move on
I experienced serious grief for the first time when my mother died, unexpectedly, when she was 55. I thought I understood why I felt grief: my mother had died, not young, but too young. At the time, I was convinced, perhaps naively, that my life would always be infused with pain over her death. After all, the reason for my grief wasn’t going to change: my mother would remain dead, and she would continue to matter to me.
However, I found, to my surprise, that this was not so. I recovered from grief quickly. Moreover, I experienced this as somehow all right. It would have been a mistake to continue grieving, at least anywhere nearly as intensely as when she died. Yet it is puzzling why this should be so. Was my initial conviction that I was grieving for good reason mistaken? Or did my reason change? But how could that be, since my mother remained dead and continued to matter to me?
I still think that this experience of grief – the pronounced pain followed by swift recovery – is puzzling. However, it is not uncommon. For instance, the clinical psychology professor George Bonanno, a proponent of the ‘new science of grief,’ writes in The Other Side of Sadness (2009):
The good news is that for most of us, grief is not overwhelming or unending. As frightening as the pain of loss can be, most of us are resilient. Some of us cope so effectively, in fact, we hardly seem to miss a beat in our day-to-day lives … [Bereavement] is something we are wired for, and it is certainly not meant to overwhelm us. Rather, our reactions to grief seem designed to help us accept and accommodate losses relatively quickly so that we can continue to live productive lives.
This rings true to my experience. We are resilient: we accommodate ourselves to loss. And, in a way, this makes sense: resilience is advantageous. However, our resilience is also puzzling. This is because grief is not about our resilience; in fact, it is, in the first instance, not about us at all. The fact of our resilience thus doesn’t really show up in our experience of grief. Hence, what Bonanno says cannot be the whole story since it does not speak to the perspective of the griever.
To bring out what’s missing from Bonanno’s story of resilience, consider what the philosopher Paul Grice called ‘creature construction’. Say you are constructing a character in the game Dungeons and Dragons. It is important that your character be resilient. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t make it through the next battle when their friends got hurt or killed. But it is also important that your character be sensitive, or else they would not have any friends. This is why it makes sense for them to experience some grief when their friends get hurt or killed – but not a permanent, unending grief. Hence, from a creature-construction perspective, it makes sense that we experience grief but that our grief be short lived.
However – and this is the bit that is missing – we don’t just enjoy the perspective of someone who is constructing a creature and, like Bonanno, empirically observing it. We also inhabit the perspective of the creature that is constructed and observed. And from that perspective, considerations about resilience are a change of subject.
When we grieve for the person we love, our concern is not, in the first instance, with ourselves but with the dead. As Simone de Beauvoir writes in A Very Easy Death (1964): ‘All men must die: but for every man his death is an accident and, even if he knows it and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation.’ Grief is the apprehension of this unjustifiable violation that has befallen the person we love. This is why the perspective of the griever is hard to square with the thoughts that are available from a ‘creature construction’ perspective on grief. They change the subject from the beloved’s death to oneself.
This change of subject is, of course, possible. It can also be a source of relief. We are not condemned to remain overwhelmed by grief. However, matters are delicate. A shift in concern from the dead to ourselves can tinge grief with a characteristic sweetness. According to the philosopher Ashley Atkins, this is the sweet sadness of self-pity.
As self-conscious creatures, we are privy to both perspectives: the perspective of creature construction as well as the perspective of the creature that is constructed. This, I believe, gives rise to an ineliminable form of double vision. On the one hand, grief is a way of apprehending the death of someone we love. On the other, grief has something to do with us – with our resilience. If you wish to speak as Sigmund Freud does, you might say that grief is the activity of ‘reality-testing’ through which one’s libido detaches itself from the ‘lost object’. Once this activity is complete, grief evaporates.
The double vision arises because we cannot apprehend both realities at once: as we attend to one, the other recedes, blurry, into the background. As we attend to the fact that we are grieving, the dead person we love is no longer the focus of our attention. Yet because grief is a form of focused attention, we cannot get into view the fact that we are grieving with the grief itself. Hence, the double vision is irresolvable.
Nonetheless, I hold, grief’s double vision allows us to make sense of the diminution of grief. But it does this only from a theoretical standpoint on ourselves and not from the standpoint of the reasons in light of which we experience grief. From a theoretical standpoint, we can understand that, given the empirical reality of grief, it is all right that grief should diminish. Yet we cannot point to the reasons in light of which this would be all right. The diminution of grief is reasonable, though there are no reasons for it.
What does this mean? How could a change in emotion be reasonable without there being a reason? To explain this, I turn to a philosophical theory called pragmatic encroachment. This is a family of views in epistemology according to which pragmatic and moral considerations bear on what we have reason to believe without the considerations themselves being reasons. For present purposes, I draw on the philosopher Kate Nolfi’s version of pragmatic encroachment, in which the functional role of belief bears on the reasonableness of belief, without itself being a reason. Here’s what I mean.
On Nolfi’s view, the functional role of belief will affect the rationality of belief in the same way that the functional role of maps will affect the adequacy of maps. The functional role of a map is to put us in a position to reach our destinations. To achieve this, maps have to introduce a certain amount of distortion. For example, a subway map typically expands the distances between stations in the centre of the city and condenses the distances between stations further out, because the distances between stations in the centre are much shorter. If the map were not designed that way, either the stations in the centre would blur together or the map would be so huge as to be unusable.
As it is with maps, so it is with beliefs. On Nolfi’s view, the functional role of our beliefs is to put us in a position to achieve our ends. And sometimes, as an empirical matter of fact, our ends are best achieved if there is a certain amount of distortion: a little bit of extra optimism, say, or some positive illusions about ourselves. Although this distortion leads to false beliefs, these beliefs are reasonable insofar as they fulfil their functional role: they put us in a position to achieve our ends.
Nolfi’s crucial idea for us is that the distortion that is introduced into our belief systems is not represented in our beliefs – just as the distortion of the subway map is not represented on the map. The distortion is, as it were, behind the lens; it is a feature of the representational means rather than of the objects represented.
I find Nolfi’s view remarkably interesting. However, I don’t endorse it. I worry that the view is reflectively unstable. Apprehending a belief as an instance of distortion – as overly optimistic, say – is inconsistent with seeing it as reasonable. In fact, it’s inconsistent with holding it. What Nolfi is missing is an integration of the subjective perspective of the believer with the objective perspective on the rationality of belief that she recommends. In short, what she is missing is double vision!
Yet without going further into Nolfi’s account of the rationality of belief, let me return to grief. I say that, as it is with maps, and with belief, so it is with grief. Let’s suppose that, as Freud held, grief has the functional role of getting the libido to detach itself from the lost object. Crucially, this functional role is behind the lens. It bears on the reasonableness of the emotional response, even if the emotional response itself is not about this very role. In particular, once the libido has detached itself from the lost object, we have less reason to grieve and it is, therefore, reasonable to be equanimous. However, since grief is not about its own functional role, this is not something that we will understand in understanding our reasons for grief. Rather, understanding it will require an empirical understanding that this is grief’s functional role.
We can now see how the emotional double vision I described reveals the possibility of a reasonable diminution of grief even in the absence of reasons. What we learn empirically about our emotions is that they play a certain role in our life. They are a certain representational means. Once they fulfil their role, the representation loses its rationale, and it ceases to dominate our attention. However, this thought makes sense only from a theoretical perspective on ourselves. Hence, there remains an essentially unreconcilable moment in our emotional lives – a double vision of ourselves as subjects and objects at once. And it strikes me as a mistake to expect philosophical reflection to reconcile this moment. Such an expectation would conceive of our emotional life as too neat and of philosophy as too comforting.
14 dramatic moments from the 2024 Nature’s Best Photo Awards A mother tiger, feisty foxes, and wildflower fireworks.
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