Heightened Emotional States Increase Susceptibility to Fraud in Older Adults
Fraudsters often attempt to evoke strong emotions in their target victims to convince them to pay money, and seniors may be particularly vulnerable to the effects of high-arousal emotions on decision-making. With funding from AARP and the FINRA Investor Education Foundation, psychologists at Stanford University conducted a study that found that inducing high-arousal emotions in older adults made them more susceptible to misleading advertisements, increasing their intention to buy the falsely advertised items.