Do you get deceived too often? This leads to the question — are YOU too trusting? (1) Do you know that you trust too easily? (2) How should you fix this?
Before reading below, check out these articles. Consumers Beware Online Marketing Tricks and Issues in Business Ethics.
How Likely Are YOU to Fall for a Scam?
As Minda Zetlin reports for Inc.:
“Ever wonder how likely you are to fall for a scam? Or get sucked into a bad business deal. Or deceived by a charming liar who claims to offer a great business opportunity? Now you can find out. A research team led by Alessandra Teunisse at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia created a simple 12-question test. It measures gullibility and takes about five minutes to complete. Then, they tested it against a wide range of participants known to be gullible (such as who had fallen for scams in the past) or skeptical. The test proves a surprisingly accurate predictor of how savvy, or how easily fooled you are.”
“According to Teunisse and her team, two characteristics leave you particularly vulnerable to a scam artist. The first : persuadability. Most of us, at one time or another, get talked into buying something we didn’t actually need or want. But if this happens to you frequently. Or if you often find that other people get you to change your opinions or undertake unwanted things. You may be highly persuadable and thus vulnerable to scam artists.”
The second trait: insensitivity to cues of untrustworthiness.” Plenty of indications suggest someone is lying, but somehow you miss them. This results from wishful thinking.”
Test Yourself: Are YOU Too Trusting?
Here, we turn to Susan Krauss Whitbourne, writing for Psychology Today:
“Across five studies with both undergraduate and online adult participants, the Australian authors tested and refined their 12-item gullibility scale. Composed of Persuadability and Insensitivity to Untrustworthiness Cues. You can test yourself on this measure by rating yourself on each of the following statements on a 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree) scale.”
Note: The answer scale follows the quiz. No cheating. 🙂
“If you’re a person high in gullibility, your best way of gaining a little healthy skepticism seems to be that you wait before you jump into a deal, relationship, or E-mail and ask yourself whether something doesn’t seem quite right. Lowering your gullibility, as the study authors suggest, might make you more resistant to fall for fake news, join cults, or be tempted by a romance scam.”
“To score yourself, reverse your ratings on numbers 1, 2, and 4 so that the ‘strongly agree’s’ become ‘strongly disagree’s.’ Now, calculate your total on items 1 to 6 to measure your Insensitivity to Untrustworthiness, and items 7-12 to score your Persuadability. On average, participants scored between 16-17 on Persuadibility (i.e. toward the low end of the scale). As well as slightly higher on the Insensitivity scale, between 18-19. If your scores were above 22 to 23 on these two scales, this suggests that you may want to turn up your antenna when others are trying to lure you into a trap.”
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