Journalist’s name: Simmone Shah
There’s one simple and effective trick many scams rely on: emotional manipulation. “They use fear-based tactics to get us into our primitive brain, which is always on alert,” says Alex Melkumian, founder of the Financial Psychology Center.
Scams range from impersonations of federal offices or banks to AI voice cloning that impersonates a family member or friend to pretend romances. The situations scammers create often involve high pressure emotional stakes and tight deadlines—such as claiming a family member has been kidnapped and asking for ransom—which are meant to encourage the individual to spring into action and make choices they wouldn’t normally make. “The emotional part of the brain really just hijacks our ability to rationally think through the situation,” Melkumian says. “It’s no different from the bully on the schoolyard. There’s this immediate pressure to hand over your lunch and you feel like you have no outs, no exit to run away.”