6 cognitive biases scammers use to dupe us😞

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Scammer and Scammed

Scammers are everywhere, they are omnipresent, they are omniscient as they know your weaknesses and they have great power and influence over you, hence omnipotent. When scammers strike, we often succumb to their vile unexpectedly. They exploit certain cognitive biases which exist with us naturally to make us give into their ulterior intension to profit anyway, whatever the means.

The six cognitive biases scammers use to dupe us are

1. Anchoring bias:

In this cognitive bias, as the name suggests, the decision of an individual is dependent on the “anchor” or first piece of information and over reliance on this information to take final decision, which the scammer uses to his advantage. For example, the scammer will put a tag price of $1000 for an iPhone based on the market rate, but a discount of 60% will be described for it and the final selling price will be for $400.

Since our reference point was $1000, we compare this with the new price of $400 and think it as a good deal to purchase the product, only to realize later that the product was a fake or faulty one. For other products which are not branded, the scammer usually exaggerates the price several times its actual cost and then gives discount to it to make us believe that we are…