Willing to be scammed: How self-control impacts Internet scam compliance

At any given moment in time, there are people complying with fraudulent requests (i.e. scams) on the Internet. While the incidence rates are low (between five and ten percent of the population becoming victims on a yearly basis), the financial and emotional consequences can be high. In this Thesis we composed a unified theory of which factors made individuals more likely to comply with scams and what psychological mechanisms are unwittingly employed by con-men to make their (illegitimate marketing) offers more enticing. The strongest overall predictor of scam compliance (i.e. the extent to which an individual is likely to comply with fraudulent requests) was the level of self-control, regardless of the observed stage of a scam. On the basis of previous research, we postulated and have empirically shown that falling for a scam is a 3-stage process (i.e. assessing a scam to be plausible - plausiblity, responding to scammers - responded and, finally, losing utility to them – lost out). Taking this paradigm into account, we analysed the three stages in separate investigations and tested the viability of various psychological factors that play a role in them. We hypothesized that attitudes towards risky choices would play a role in finding an Internet scam plausible and thus started our investigation by transferring one of the classic economic psychological theories (i.e. Prospect Theory) into a virtual setting and demonstrated that risk preferences remain unchanged between concrete and virtual settings. Our investigation showed that attitudes towards risk are similar across virtual and concrete domains, but did not yield a reliable psychometric scale measuring risk preferences. As a corollary, in Chapter 3, we investigated psychological mechanisms that influence risky preferences as applied to all three stages of scam compliance. The empirical investigation in Chapter 3 of the present Thesis focused on social psychological mechanisms of persuasion. A scale of susceptibility to persuasion was developed, validated and then applied to the phenomena of scam compliance in two studies. Four reliable factors contributing to susceptibility to persuasion emerged: influence of authority, social influence, self-control and the need for consistency. The susceptibility to persuasion scale was then used to predict overall lifetime (study 1) and time-limited (study 2) scam compliance across the three stages of scams. Social Influence weakly predicted the plausibility stage in study 1, while strongly predicting the response stage in study 2. The need for consistency strongly predicted response stages in both studies. While compliance with requests from authorities did not predict responses to any of the stages in study 1, it weakly predicted the plausibility of a scam and strongly predicted responding to it in study 2. Weak self-control was a significant predictor of losing funds in study 1 and a strong predictor of responding to scams in study 2. As lack of self-control (as a personality trait) emerged as one of the significant predictors of scam compliance, this led us to infer that there were other personality traits that would contribute to understanding scam compliance. That became the topic of Chapter 4 of the present Thesis. In Chapter 4, we used the five factor model of personality, a brief self-control scale and the UPPS impulsive behaviour scale to measure the impact of personality traits on scam compliance in the response stage. Results showed that extraversion, openness, self-control, premeditation, sensation seeking and (negative) urgency had an influence on the response rates to fraudulent offers. Lack of self-control (as a personality trait) again emerged as a strong predictor of overall scam compliance, which led us to infer that self-control as a cognitive state would also contribute to measuring scam compliance in general and in specific types of fraud. The investigation reported in Chapter 3 showed fraudulent Internet auctions to be an effective scam. As a consequence of these two findings, in Chapter 5, we investigated the impact of self-regulatory fatigue on compliance with fraudulent Internet auctions. In the empirical investigation in Chapter 5 180 respondents in two groups were exposed to a cognitive task designed to be ego-depleting and then to a constructed fraudulent Internet auction. They were asked a series of questions concerned with the likelihood of them purchasing a desired item (i.e. the third stage of a scam) and its appeal to them. We found no evidence that lowered self-control (as a state) had any impact on the appeal of fraudulent offer or the likelihood of purchasing it. We also demonstrated that the perception of risk in the fraudulent Internet auctions is most strongly influenced by the feedback mechanisms and the sellers’ ability to use correct English. In the conclusion to the present Thesis we discussed the implications of our empirical investigations and constructed a fictional fraudulent offer that would be effective according to our research. It should, for example, be based on the advance fee schemes and should be delivered over the Internet to reach the most potential victims. Once we had created an outline of an effective scam, we used that as our starting point to suggest mechanisms that would be effective in resisting it. For example, individuals could employ heuristics in a better way or conduct reality checks; and software toolkits that would help in resisting scams could be developed on the basis of our findings. We also discussed future research directions (obtaining larger samples, focusing on specific types of scams and specific populations; and others) and general implications of our findings

The dark triad and willingness to commit insurance fraud

We evaluated how the dark triad (DT) personality traits (Psychopathy, Machiavellianism, Narcissism) influence willingness to claim for insurance in an online setting. In two mTurk studies (Ns 344 and 699) we created realistic online insurance claim tasks where participants could file claims for insured household items they had supposedly broken. We predicted “fibbing” (i.e., overclaiming the item values) in these tasks using the DT traits. However, within Study 2, we included monetary incentives and situational factors relating to claiming—that is, whether the items were broken in anger, while drunk, or by sheer accident. In both studies all DT traits predicted fibbing, but the results were weak for psychopathy in Study 1, while in Study 2 psychopathy was the strongest individual predictor of fibbing. Our results help understand why certain people are willing to commit insurance fraud, and provide an opening for further interdisciplinary research on insurance and personality science.Peer reviewe

"To bluff like a man or fold like a girl?" - Gender biased deceptive behavior in online poker

Evolutionary psychology suggests that men are more likely than women to deceive to bolster their status and influence. Also gender perception influences deceptive behavior, which is linked to pervasive gender stereotypes: women are typically viewed as weaker and more gullible than men. We assessed bluffing in an online experiment (N = 502), where participants made decisions to bluff or not in simulated poker tasks against opponents represented by avatars. Participants bluffed on average 6% more frequently at poker tables with femaleonly avatars than at tables with male-only or gender mixed avatars-a highly significant effect in games involving repeated decisions. Nonetheless, participants did not believe the avatar genders affected their decisions. Males bluffed 13% more frequently than females. Unlike most economic games employed exclusively in research contexts, online poker is played for money by tens of millions of people worldwide. Thus, gender effects in bluffing have significant monetary consequences for poker players.Peer reviewe

Scale-invariant magnetic anisotropy in RuCl3_3 at high magnetic fields

In RuCl$_3$, inelastic neutron scattering and Raman spectroscopy reveal a continuum of non-spin-wave excitations that persists to high temperature, suggesting the presence of a spin liquid state on a honeycomb lattice. In the context of the Kitaev model, magnetic fields introduce finite interactions between the elementary excitations, and thus the effects of high magnetic fields - comparable to the spin exchange energy scale - must be explored. Here we report measurements of the magnetotropic coefficient - the second derivative of the free energy with respect to magnetic field orientation - over a wide range of magnetic fields and temperatures. We find that magnetic field and temperature compete to determine the magnetic response in a way that is independent of the large intrinsic exchange interaction energy. This emergent scale-invariant magnetic anisotropy provides evidence for a high degree of exchange frustration that favors the formation of a spin liquid state in RuCl$_3$.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1901.09245. Nature Physic

White paper on the future of plasma science and technology in plastics and textiles

International audienceThis white paper considers the future of plasma science and technology related to the manufacturing and modifications of plastics and textiles, summarizing existing efforts and the current state-of-art for major topics related to plasma processing techniques. It draws on the frontier of plasma technologies in order to see beyond and identify the grand challenges which we face in the following 5–10 years. To progress and move the frontier forward, the paper highlights the major enabling technologies and topics related to the design of surfaces, coatings and materials with nonequilibrium plasmas. The aim is to progress the field of plastics and textile production using advanced plasma processing as the key enabling technology which is environmentally friendly, cost-efficient, and offers high-speed processing

Decision-making in adolescent females who deliberately self-harm

Self-harming behaviour most commonly begins in adolescence and is more frequent among adolescent females. We explored the hypothesis that adolescent females who deliberately selfharm were more likely to perform worse on a decision-making task. Previous research in adolescents who self-harm reported impaired decision-making. However, research put little emphasis on older adolescents and the emotional learning. In our research, we presented the Iowa Gambling Task to 35 adolescent females who self-harmed and were treated at a psychiatric clinic, and to 35 healthy female controls. Our results show that in comparison to the control group the adolescents who self-harm took more risky decisions and were less concerned about the outcome. In addition, the clinical group also focused more on immediate gains and showed a reduced ability to learn from poor decisions in the past. Further research is suggested to explore the potential neurological correlates of decision-making and selfharming behaviour

Susceptibility to persuasion datafiles

<div>The three SPSS encoded data files used in the PLoSONE article on Susceptibility to Persuasion.</div

Descriptives for overall and plausibility of individual schemes (n = 6609).

<p>Descriptives for overall and plausibility of individual schemes (n = 6609).</p