Marti DeLima

The tactics vary slightly based on the type of scam.

We often see scarcity.

So this initial public offering isn't going to last.

You have to get in on the ground floor.

We see some social proof, evidence of other people who have gotten really rich from this cryptocurrency investment.

And then the one that they use, and this is across all scam types because it's so effective, is emotional arousal.

There's two main forms of emotional arousal based on valence, right?

So you can have highly positive messages where what they're promising is something you want.

like a lot of money or a great romantic relationship.

But then on the other hand, we have high negative emotional arousal.

And those scams, they're trying to scare you.

They might threaten you with arrest.

They might say that you're about to experience a big financial loss.

And the way you avoid that loss is you comply with what I'm saying.

So emotional arousal works in both directions.

One reason why emotional arousal is so effective is that it overwhelms our slow, deliberate, analytical cognitive processing that we sometimes call type two or system two.

And it causes us to process things through system one, which is quick, intuitive, where we often rely on these heuristic shortcuts.

Like, oh, this person I'm talking to on the phone, they're part of my affinity group or they mentioned that celebrity I really admire.

And that likability is a stand in for trustworthiness.

Criminals will do anything they can to shut off our system to processing.