AARP study links stress to fraud victimhood

October 27, 2021 - A recent AARP study of 9,000 American adults linked a person’s stress level to their susceptibility of being scammed.  Whether due to the state of the world in the current pandemic, a loss of a loved one, or a loss of a job, we are all struggling to get by and experience various levels of stress.  This stress can present risk factors that actually increase a person’s vulnerability to being scammed.  The AARP study reported that fully 90% of American adults (229 million people) were exposed to a fraud attempt in the prior year. 

Compared to non-victims, fraud victims had experienced more than twice as many stressful events, such as a death in the family, a job loss or loneliness.  The report theorizes that coping with a stressful life event consumes valuable cognitive capacity that otherwise might be employed to spot and resist fraud.  We’re all aware of the fraud attempts that assault us on a daily basis, through spam emails and spoofed number robocalls.  Scammers know how to find and exploit our “emotional Achillis heel” through probes into the target’s stressful life events, and 33 million vulnerable and stressed Americans fell victim and lost money to these fraudsters.