The Emotional Impact of Deception
Which scenario would be more distressing: losing $100 to a pickpocket on a bustling street or donating the same amount to a charity only to find out it was a scam? For many, the latter is more troubling. Being deceived by someone in whom one has placed trust elicits feelings of outrage and betrayal. Research into cybercrime has revealed a range of mental and physical health effects experienced by scam victims. While scepticism is undoubtedly beneficial—especially in an era where online fraud is becoming increasingly sophisticated—studies indicate that an excessive fear of being deceived can also have detrimental consequences. This heightened anxiety can distort decision-making and behaviour, leading to implications that are often undervalued in legal, public policy, and societal contexts.
“It’s a fundamental dilemma that people face continuously,” explains Carsten De Dreu, a behavioural scientist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Trust fosters reciprocity, benefiting both parties, he notes. However, when individuals are overly fearful of being deceived, they may refrain from engaging, hindering the positive cycle of mutual benefit and cooperation.
Everyday Experiences of Betrayal
Feeling deceived extends beyond financial losses due to scams; everyday interactions can trigger similar emotional responses. You may experience this frustration during your daily commute when you allow someone to cut in front of you, only to feel resentment afterward. Or perhaps, after completing the most challenging part of a work project, you find that lazy colleagues receive equal credit. There is a psychological underpinning to this irritation. “The distinction between feeling deceived and other forms of exploitation is that when people feel deceived, they see a part of themselves in what has transpired,” explains Kathleen Vohs, a social psychologist at the University of Minnesota. “They perceive their own behaviour as, to some extent, complicit in what happened to them.”
Even in low-risk psychological experiments, people react intensely to being taken advantage of. For decades, social psychologists and behavioural economists have examined the mechanisms of human cooperation through trust games. In a typical scenario, individuals can choose between cooperating with a group to share a monetary reward or betraying the group for personal gain. Those who betray receive a larger share, effectively leaving the group deceived. A landmark study from 1977 revealed that some participants reacted with such intensity that it was common for individuals to express a desire to exit the experimental building or to voice their disdain for those who had betrayed them.
The Detrimental Effects of Distrust
Such studies also suggest that the anticipation of being harmed diminishes people’s willingness to cooperate. In one of the early investigations into this “naïve effect,” researchers asked participants to quickly inflate two rubber balls connected to a mysterious box labelled FLOWMETER. They were informed that their earnings would depend on the amount of air they and an invisible partner could pump into the box within thirty seconds. Participants who believed their partner was less capable tended to pump vigorously, seemingly eager to compensate. Conversely, those who thought they were paired with a capable yet lazy partner relaxed their efforts, ultimately sacrificing potential earnings to avoid the feeling of being deceived.
In a 2007 paper, Vohs and her colleagues coined the term “sugrophobia” to describe the anticipatory fear of being deceived. This fear can be adaptive, to an extent. “Sugrophobia is certainly beneficial,” Vohs asserts. “However, like most psychological traits, it is adaptive only in moderation: neither too much nor too little.” An overabundance of sugrophobia can impair individuals’ ability to make rational financial decisions. In one study, participants were less willing to invest money in a hypothetical company when they were informed that the only risk was a small chance of loss due to fraud, compared to another company where the risk was framed as stemming from market forces.
Real-World Consequences of Fraud
A 2017 study uncovered similar dynamics in real-world contexts following the Madoff scandal, where the investment advisor Bernie Madoff defrauded wealthy clients out of billions of dollars in history’s largest Ponzi scheme. Based on court documents and filings made to federal authorities, researchers found that individuals living in areas with a high concentration of Madoff clients—where more people were likely aware of the fraud and perhaps had connections to the victims—withdrew more funds than those in similarly situated areas. Following the revelation of the scam in 2008, Madoff’s clients withdrew a total of $363 billion from investment advisory accounts, moving a significant portion of that money to the relative safety of banks. By doing so, many likely missed out on substantial returns as the stock market rebounded from the 2008 housing crisis.
The Health Implications of Being Scammed
More recently, researchers working directly with scam victims have begun to outline the myriad health effects—physical, emotional, and psychological—associated with falling prey to fraud. In 2024, it was estimated that American consumers lost nearly $200 billion due to fraud, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Many scams now originate online, with fraudsters increasingly targeting specific groups, notes Marti DeLiema, a gerontologist studying financial fraud at the University of Minnesota. Scammers offering fake job opportunities often target young job seekers on platforms like LinkedIn, while those promoting tech support or cryptocurrency investment assistance frequently focus on older adults struggling with technology. “It’s now easier to specialise, thanks to generative AI,” DeLiema remarks.
The emotional responses of individuals who fall victim to scams can vary widely, according to Mark Button, a criminologist specialising in cybercrime and economic offences at the University of Portsmouth in the UK. Feelings of worry and stress are commonplace, as Button and his colleagues discovered in a recent survey of over 300 scam victims in the UK. In more extreme cases, victims experienced insomnia, digestive issues, and other physical ailments. Some scam victims also socially isolate themselves, as demonstrated by Button’s group’s research. This can create a vicious cycle, he argues: “If you feel a bit lonely, you are more likely to become a victim.”
Emotional Pain and Stigma
This psychological impact on victims typically correlates with the amount of wealth they have lost, as suggested by Button’s research. However, this is not the sole factor influencing the severity of effects. Emotional pain can be especially acute for those who fall for romantic scams or elaborate investment frauds, where the perpetrator invests time in building a relationship and earning the victim’s trust over months or even years. “You lose something you had been fantasising about and looking forward to for months,” DeLiema states. Moreover, financial losses can be devastating for older individuals who have less time and fewer opportunities to rebuild their savings. “This will determine how they live for the rest of their lives,” she adds.
Shame also plays a significant role in this dynamic, leading many fraud victims to refrain from reporting the crime, explains Tess Wilkinson-Ryan, a law professor studying the psychology of legal decision-making at the University of Pennsylvania. “People feel so bad about what has happened that they essentially feel ashamed and, therefore, do not talk about it or report it,” she explains. “It is stigmatised, as not only has something bad happened to you, but you have also let it happen. There is a kind of weakness associated with it.”
The Attribution of Blame in Fraud Cases
The psychology of the naïve has implications in contractual negotiations, divorce settlements, and other areas of law where one party believes the other is attempting to exploit them unfairly, argues Wilkinson-Ryan in the Annual Review of Law and Social Science 2025. She and other researchers study legal decision-making by recruiting members of the public to evaluate realistic legal scenarios. It is perhaps unsurprising that a common conclusion is a willingness to punish the offender. In one study, Wilkinson-Ryan and a colleague asked participants to assess the fairness of proposals for asset distribution following a divorce. They were informed that it was irrelevant which party was at fault for the breakdown—contrary to the norm in state laws. Nonetheless, participants rated proposals made by an unfaithful spouse as less reasonable than identical proposals from a faithful partner.
At the same time, researchers have identified a tendency to blame the victim. In a 2014 study, Wilkinson-Ryan asked participants who was at fault in a hypothetical scenario where someone had taken out a credit card with a contract that concealed abusive clauses in the fine print. The majority of respondents attributed blame to the customer, believing they should have read the contract more carefully—despite many acknowledging it was unreasonable to expect someone to identify a hidden abusive clause in such an extensive document. The outcome, according to Wilkinson-Ryan, is that consumers rarely challenge contracts containing abusive provisions, even when such clauses are likely unenforceable in court.
The Broader Implications of Distrust
On a larger scale, the psychology of the naïve can influence public policy—and not always positively. For instance, the presumed objective of ensuring that recipients of social assistance genuinely meet income requirements is to prevent individuals from taking undue advantage of social programmes. While fraud prevention is a commendable policy, Wilkinson-Ryan notes that when fraud detection measures end up costing more than the fraud itself, they ultimately counteract the public good.
The fear of being deceived can also be weaponised by politicians, as