Department of Human Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA.
Department of Psychology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA.
Brain Behav. 2021 Nov;11(11):e2391. doi: 10.1002/brb3.2391. Epub 2021 Oct 17.
Mass marketing scams threaten financial and personal well-being. Grounded in fuzzy-trace theory, we examined whether verbatim and gist-based risk processing predicts susceptibility to scams and whether such processing can be altered.
Seven hundred and one participants read a solicitation letter online and indicated willingness to call an "activation number" to claim an alleged $500,000 sweepstakes prize. Participants focused on the solicitation's verbatim details (hypothesized to increase risk-taking) or its broad gist (hypothesized to decrease risk-taking).
As expected, measures of verbatim-based processing positively predicted contact intentions, whereas measures of gist-based processing negatively predicted contact intentions. Contrary to hypotheses, experimental conditions did not influence intentions (43% across conditions). Contact intentions were associated with perceptions of low risk, high benefit, and the offer's apparent genuineness, as well as self-reported decision regret, subjective vulnerability to scams, and prior experience falling for scams.
Overall, message perceptions and prior susceptibility, rather than experimental manipulations, mattered in predicting scam susceptibility.
大规模营销骗局威胁着财务和个人福祉。基于模糊痕迹理论，我们研究了逐字和主旨风险处理是否可以预测对骗局的易感性，以及这种处理是否可以改变。
701 名参与者在线阅读了一封征集信，并表示愿意拨打“激活号码”，以声称赢得了据称价值 50 万美元的抽奖。参与者关注征集信的逐字细节（假设会增加冒险）或其大致要点（假设会降低风险）。
正如预期的那样，基于逐字处理的测量正向预测了联系意图，而基于主旨处理的测量则负向预测了联系意图。与假设相反，实验条件并没有影响意图（43%的条件下都是如此）。联系意图与低风险、高收益的感知以及该提议的明显真实性相关，还与自我报告的决策后悔、对诈骗的主观脆弱性以及之前受骗的经历有关。
总体而言，信息感知和之前的易感性，而不是实验操作，决定了对诈骗易感性的预测。
