Mental States: A Key Point in Scam Compliance and Warning Compliance in Real Life

The internet’s convenience and anonymity have facilitated different types of covert fraud, resulting in economic, mental, and social harm to victims. Understanding why people are deceived and implementing appropriate interventions is critical for fraud reduction. Based on the Bayesian brain theory, individuals’ mental states may be a key point in scam compliance and warning compliance. Fraud victims with different mental states may construct various hypotheses and explanations about the fraud they are exposed to, causing different cognition and behavior patterns. Therefore, we first conducted a semi-structured in-depth interview with online fraud victims to investigate the individual and social factors that affect victims’ mental states. Grounded theory analysis showed five core factors influencing scam compliance: psychological traits, empirical factors, motivation, cognitive biases, and emotional imbalance. Based on our findings of psychological processes and deception’s influential factors, we then designed warnings to inform victims of fraud, particularly for those involving novel types of scams. Tested on a real-life setting, our designed warnings effectively enhanced warning compliance, allowing more fraud victims to avoid financial losses.