The questionnaire measures a range of
personality traits to distinguish people who are more prone to taking the bait
than others.
Researchers have devised a test that gauges a
person’s susceptibility to falling for online scams and other types of internet
crime.
The freely available questionnaire – called “Susceptibility to Persuasion –
II” (StP-II) and developed by scientists at the Universities of Cambridge and Helsinki – asks the participants a series of
questions that reveal how likely they are to succumb to persuasive techniques.
The test’s first version, StP-I, was actually
released five years ago. The new version has been described as “far more
comprehensive and robust” than StP-I, however. The nuts and bolts of the
new test are described in an aptly-called paper, “We will make you like our research: The
development of a susceptibility-to-persuasion scale”.
The test revolves around ten categories that
are used as predictors of “scam compliance”, i.e. one’s falling for fraud. The attributes measure various personality traits
due to which some people may be more prone to falling victim to con artists
than others.
The categories include premeditation,
consistency, sensation seeking, self-control, social influence, similarity,
risk preferences, attitudes towards advertising, need for cognition, and
uniqueness. Each of them has been proven to be a factor in one’s susceptibility
to persuasion, obviously in varying degrees and at various stages during the
process. Of all the variables, however, the failure to envisage the possible
consequences of one’s actions has been found to be the strongest predictor of
scam compliance.
Upon completion, the questionnaire taker
receives an automated interpretation of the results.
The researchers noted that there is generally
a three-step pattern in scams. First, the victim views the offer as believable,
then he or she interacts with the scammer and, in the end, the victim loses
something of value to the fraudster.
According to the researchers, their
“generalized modular psychometric tool” could also be useful for recruitment in
specific professions, for the screening of military personnel, or for
establishing the psychological profile of cybercriminals.
“While there is a commonly held belief that
an individual can either be a victim of a scam or not, there is a growing
amount of evidence that this is perhaps too simplistic,” the researchers said.