Many years ago, when my 70-year-old father came to visit me in New York City, he was scammed by a guy at Penn Station who told him that he would hail a cab for my father — and that his fee for doing so would also cover the cab fare. My dad happily handed over $25 to that guy, and was then horribly embarrassed when the cab driver told him he’d been scammed.
I remember how shocked I was that my father, a retired Navy captain and a very smart guy, could be so gullible. Well, now there’s a study that explains it — just in time for my own gullible years.
Researchers at UCLA say that seniors’ vulnerability to fraud is apparently rooted in neurological changes that come with aging. The study showed that an area in the brain known as the anterior insula was muted when older people looked at photos of suspicious-looking individuals. In other words, they had trouble reading visual clues like insincere smiles and shifty eyes.
In the words of one of the scientists, “We believe that what is going on is that older adults have a bias toward positive emotional experience,” something called “the positivity effect.” Another study — this one from Stanford — says that effect explains why seniors are generally happier than young people.
I’d love to look on the bright side here — after all, my anterior insula is urging me to do just that — but statistics indicate that there’s a downside to this upbeat attitude. According to the National Committee for the Prevention of Elder Abuse, financial scams involving older victims is on the rise. Elder fraud — ranging from bank accounts being emptied by so-called trusted caretakers to fake sweepstakes — totaled $2.9 billion in 2010. That’s a 12 percent increase from the year before. Not a good trend, as more and more boomers move into old age.
So what’s a gullible senior to do? Perhaps just knowing that you can’t really trust your own instincts is a start. If my dad had been armed with this information about his anterior insula, would he have paused before handing over his cash to a total stranger? I’d like to think so.
Feeling positive may be a good thing. Feeling foolish, not so much.
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