Why do old people become victims of fraudsters more often?
The credulity of the elderly was explained by a decrease in the function of the island
Copper News based on ScienceNOW Materials: Why Old People Get Scammed
Excessive credulity, characteristic of the elderly, may be associated with an age–related decrease in the function of one of the lobes of the brain - the insula. This assumption was made by experts from the University of California (Los Angeles), UCLA, based on the results of two studies they conducted. The work was published on December 3 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Castle et al., Neural and behavioral bases of age differences in perceptions of trust).
According to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), more than 80 percent of victims of various scams are over 65 years old. Agencies tend to explain the increased victimization (tendency to behavior that increases the chances of becoming a victim of a crime – VM) of old people by their excessive credulity and a tendency, despite life experience, to "look at the world with pink glasses." Trying to find the physiological basis of this state of affairs, the authors tested a group of 119 elderly people aged 55 to 84 years, as well as a group of 24 younger people whose age ranged from 20 to 42 years.
The study participants were alternately shown photographs of human faces, suggesting that they be divided into categories "trustworthy", "neutral" and "not trustworthy", distributed on a scale from -3 (very suspicious) to +3 (extremely trustworthy). The signs of "suspicion" were an evasive look, an insincere smile with unsmiling eyes, a smug grin and others.
As a result, it turned out that older people for the most part were inclined to evaluate obviously untrustworthy persons much more positively than young test participants.
Then, using neuroimaging methods, the authors observed the distribution of brain activity in different age groups during the task. It turned out that in a younger group of subjects, at the time of evaluation of the demonstrated face, the insular lobes are activated, and when looking at a deliberately suspicious object, activity in this area increases significantly. As for the elderly, they have, regardless of the degree of suspicion of the person being shown, the islet either does not activate at all, or very weakly.
The functions of the island include providing perception and analysis of information about the state of internal organs, on the basis of which the brain forms a scenario of safe behavior of an individual. A decrease in the function of this lobe of the brain in old age may to some extent underlie the partial absence of an instinctive reaction in old people to dangerous strangers, as well as their general uncritical perception of reality and, as a result, more risky behavior. This, in turn, leads to the fact that old people are more likely than young people to become victims of fraudsters, the authors believe.
Does this suspicious guy seem like a decent person to you? You may have reduced activity of the anterior islets.
And in the picture – the legendary Charles Ponzi, an American Mavrodi of the beginning of the last century – VM
Photo: UCLA on the left, Wikipedia on the right.
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05.12.2012