Each year, older adults lose more than $28 billion to financial scams targeting the elderly. Nearly three-quarters of that money is stolen by people the elderly adult knows – people they trust.
According to new research, this vulnerability may be in part because older adults have a harder time overcoming their first impressions of people’s trustworthiness when that trust is violated, potentially leaving them more open to deception and scams on older adults.
The researchers say elderly adults should be wary of their first impressions. Instead, they should focus on whether or not someone is acting in a way that really earns their trust or is instead harming them.
“We make these decisions about trustworthiness in a split second sometimes, and that is an unreliable way to make good decisions in the long term,” said Marilyn Horta, Ph.D., a University of Florida research scientist and first author of the new study. “All of us, especially older adults, we need to really pay attention to how a person behaves rather than our initial perceptions of whether they look trustworthy or not.”
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