You click on an email you weren’t expecting from your bank, and something seems off. Your pulse quickens. There’s a twinge in your gut. It doesn’t feel right.
Then you notice the email address is clearly fake, the message riddled with typos. Clearly a phishing attempt, you say to yourself as you delete it and move on, a careful eye on your bank account.
This kind of “gut instinct” may be realer than we thought. Our bodies could be helping us tune into lies and scams, according to new research from University of Florida psychologists that found that older adults who were more attuned to their own heartbeat were better at spotting liars and phishing emails.
“We see that it’s helpful to listen to these inner signals, and we think it’s something that we could train in people to help them detect scams better, but that will take more research,” said Natalie Ebner, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at UF and senior author of the new study.
Ebner collaborated on the study with UF researchers Tian Lin, Ph.D., Didem Pehlivanoglu, Ph.D., and Pedro Valdes-Hernandez, Ph.D., and psychologists at other universities. The researchers published their findings Sept. 19 in the Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences.
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