“I was stressed about an upcoming conference in Las Vegas when I got this phishing email that my order wouldn’t be shipped due to a declined credit card,” says Hadnagy, CEO of the company Social-Engineer. “I was short on time. I felt even more stressed and anxious. I started entering my personal identification when I realized it was the perfect scam.”

From fear and anxiety to the desire for security or connection, exploiting strong feelings is step one in the scammer playbook.

Stirring strong emotions shifts your decision-making away from “central processing”—when your brain carefully weighs pros and cons—to “peripheral processing”—when you react on feelings and impressions, says scam researcher Marti DeLiema, at the University of Minnesota School of Social Work.

“Criminals are adept at moving you from emotion to emotion,” says Amy Nofziger, AARP’s director of fraud victim support. “They take you on this journey.” The destination? Your money and private information.

Here’s how it unfolds with four common emotional scam triggers.

FEAR: Cindy H., 76, of Colorado gave scammers $5,000 in cash after someone who “sounded like my grandson with a stuffy nose” called this year to say he’d been arrested and needed bail for a car accident that injured a pregnant woman. “I was so fearful,” she says. “I’m thinking my grandson could be charged with manslaughter.” That night, she called her grandson and discovered it was a scam. 
Scammers’ Playbook: Strike terror first, then demand money. “They know if we’re afraid we’ll make bad decisions,” Hadnagy notes.

LONELINESS: Jerry Waxman, 71, received a “wrong number” text followed by a photo from someone claiming to be a young San Francisco woman. Waxman, who lives in Puerto Rico, fell into a routine of text conversations with her. “There was a friendship that developed,” he says. He lost all of his savings when the “friendship” morphed into a gold and cryptocurrency scam. 
Scammers’ Playbook: Exploit the human need for connection. Scammers may get close through a fake friendship or romance, Nofziger says. Once the attachment develops, the scammer subtly introduces money.

AVARICE: Waxman’s scammer shared screenshots off a fake website showing hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits she claimed to have made with quick gold trades. An initial $2,000 investment earned 40 percent. Waxman went all in. Then his scammer disappeared—along with his $26,000.
Scammers’ Playbook: The slow buildup. Investment scams try to establish trust slowly, so victims believe the fabulous winnings are real. In Waxman’s case, the scammer built up the friendship for weeks, dangling her winnings. When he finally invested, Waxman was at first able to withdraw some money, which made the “investment” look legit.

ANXIETY: Impostors claiming to represent the Social Security Administration threatened people with arrest. Victims of the scheme felt panic and “an overwhelming sense of dread,” they reported in a 2021 University of Minnesota study. They lost an average of $6,000. 
Scammers’ Playbook: Crooks told victims someone had stolen their Social Security number and they needed to send money fast to protect their account. “They get you afraid and then present a solution,” DeLiema says.