The Cyberpsychology of Deception: A Mini Review of the Psychological Factors Influencing Scam Compliance

Abstract

Despite extensive research in addressing technical aspects of cybercrime, there is a significant gap in understanding how psychological factors impact scam compliance in differing contexts. This review evaluates studies from diverse disciplines, including psychology, criminology, and behavioral science, to identify key personality, cognitive, emotional and social factors that influence victimization. Covering a broad spectrum of fraudulent activities— including investment fraud, relationship scams, mass marketing fraud and phishing—the review aims to provide an overview of recent empirical research focusing specifically on data collected from actual scam victims. The review applied the PRISMA-P methodology to systematically search and screen literature from multiple databases to identify 18 empirical studies. Findings revealed that personality traits such impulsivity and trust, cognitive factors such as authority bias, and other emotional and social risk factors are recurrent themes found to influence scam compliance. However, there is considerable variability in research methodologies, scam contexts, and reporting of results. This variability underscores the need for more detailed, context-specific investigations into different scam types as the psychological factors that influence scam compliance differs by scam type and context. The review concludes with recommendations for future research, emphasizing the importance of examining specific scam contexts and improving study designs to better understand scam compliance. Show more