Psychological Characteristics of Romance Scam Victims (2018) | Hacker News Reader

Psychological Characteristics of Romance Scam Victims (2018)

liebertpub.com

78 pointslaurex16 comments

The reason these scams seem so crude and obvious, as I learnt from Daniel Dennett, is that they're designed that way. They filter out the vast majority of the population. The scammers can then focus on trying to reel in potential victims, in a series of verbal/written exchanges, from the tiny pool that remains.

I've read this for years, and I'm still not sure I buy it. It smells to me like the same sort of thing as when pundits say Some High Ranking Executive in Govt(tm) does something nonsensical it's because of some cleverness or cunning that we just can't see, when my suspicion is that he is just nonsensical.

But it isn't nonsensical: filtering your client base into qualified leads is sales 101.

You wouldn't advertise tax law services to 100% of the population. Nor would you want to high touch sales on 100% of the population for a sex scam.

I'm sure some amount of it is explained by incompetence, poor english skills, etc. But if that was a real detriment to sex scamming, it would have been worked out of the market.

Interestingly enough if a large amount of people replied to fishing emails they would become unprofitable as most of those people would not be tricked into sending them money. If anyone felt like a charity project a chatbot that contacted spam senders could put a lot of these scam operations out of business...

I agree. The real solution is false victims, there to demand larger time commitments from the scammers.

Holy crap that could be a public charity. You donate $10 to help keep a service running that honeypots the scammers. Like an automated / machine-learning version of kitboga, the guy on twitch who scams people and thousands of people watch him do it.

There is automation for this for telemarketers: https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/

This is a really good idea. I bet the people on scambaiting forums would be eager to collaborate and provide convo logs etc.

This is confusing; from the abstract

> victims .. they tend to be .. less kind

which doesn't sound right to me. Then in the text there is

> it is hypothesized that individuals who score high on a survey measuring kindness are more likely to be victims of romance scams

which is the opposite?

A typo in the abstract perhaps?

The answer is in the article.

Hypothesis:

> Little is known about whether the victims of MMF are more kind compared with nonvictims; however, given that many of the romance scam narratives involve a victim helping out another it is hypothesized that individuals who score high on a survey measuring kindness are more likely to be victims of romance scams (H9) compared with those who have not become victims of romance scams.

Method of measurement:

> Participants were asked to complete a series of demographic questions (e.g., age, gender, education, knowledge about cybersecurity), personality items (e.g., impulsivity, locus of control, trust in others, trustworthiness, kindness, greed, addiction disposition), and whether they had been scammed by MMF. They were also asked specially whether they had been scammed by the romance scam.

Interpretation of findings:

> The finding that less kind individuals were more likely to be scammed by romance scams was less easy to explain. Perhaps, less kind individuals have fewer networks to help them check profiles or perhaps they seek out more harmful relationships. Kindness might also be a more transitory disposition. At the time of the scam, researchers have found that criminals isolate the victim from loved ones and push them to focus their time and resources on the fictitious relationship. They have also found that it is difficult for victims to rebuild their social networks after the scam has taken place. This might explain why victims of romance scams are less likely to rate highly items such as: “going out of their way to cheer up people who appear down,” “helping out a neighbor in the last month,” “getting excited by others good fortunes,” or “calling their friends when they are ill.”

> The finding that less kind individuals were more likely to be scammed by romance scams was less easy to explain.

My hypothesis would be this:

- There are two things which encourage the average human being to form relationships: 1. the pleasure of doing good to other people / seeing other people happy 2. the pain of being lonely.

- "Kindness" is essentially a measure of #1. People who are naturally more kind have more friends, and thus are less at risk of experiencing loneliness. People who are less naturally kind, but still find loneliness painful, are more driven by #2 to act somewhat against their inclinations in order to maintain relationships. They thus have fewer relationships, those relationships are perceived as requiring more effort, and they are more at risk of experiencing loneliness.

- The "romance" scam involves someone treating someone well almost no matter how they act. The relationship is maintained whether the victim is kind or not; and thus the victim gets their need for a relationship fulfilled without the extra effort required from other relationships.

- So a person who is less kind has much more to lose from losing their relationship than a kind person. A kind person is much less at risk of being lonely, and is more likely to feel like they can create other relationships if the "scam" one fails. An unkind person is much more at a risk of being lonely, and much more likely to feel like replacing the "scam" relationship will be difficult.

- This drives an unkind person to be more desperate to maintain the "scam" relationship than a a kind person

Being just a little bit kind is a highly effective strategy for someone to get to wherever it is they want to go in life, so much some people seem to have kindness conditioned in to them. There are some almost pathologically kind people out there and it can get amazing results - but explaining the benefit is a little bit subtle and they probably didn't logic their way into that position.

Probably a correlation-not-causation with the fact that the tiny pool of people who get scammed aren't people with effective interpersonal strategies who have already set up a good romantic relationship.

I think an explanation is that less kind are motivated to have more sway over this hypothetical person for more love/attention. They might see this gesture as a shortcut to avoid the need to have knowledge, effort, or the emotional intelligence needed to form or retain a relationship.

Similar to how Nigerian prince scams appeal to people by offering lots of money in exchange for disproportionately small amounts of effort and money.

Thanks all, that makes sense.

First one is result of study. Second one is hypothesis they formed prior - it is in chapter that essentially reviews existing literature and expresses hypothesis they had.

E.g. they expected victims to be more kind, but it turned out they are less kind.

Could be that they have become less kind, or were less kind victims now seeking some sort of vengeance by participating in a study. It seems to me like it would be extremely hard to determine anything about a victim after the fact.

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