Abstract
Previous reports on racial differences in scam susceptibility have yielded mixed findings, and few studies have examined reasons for any observed race differences. Older Black and White participants without dementia (N = 592) from the Minority Aging Research Study and the Rush Memory and Aging Project who completed a susceptibility to scam questionnaire and other measures were matched according to age, education, sex, and global cognition using Mahalanobis distance. In adjusted models, older Black adults were less susceptible to scams than older White adults (Beta = −0.2496, SE = 0.0649, p = 0.0001). Contextual factors did not mediate and affective factors did not moderate this association. Analyses of specific items revealed Black adults had greater knowledge of scam targeting of older adults and were less likely to pick up the phone for unidentified callers. Older Black adults are less susceptible to scams than demographically-matched older White adults, although the reasons remain unknown.
Highlights
Adults over the age of 65 are at risk for financial scam and fraud (AARP, 2020)
No study has yet investigated racial differences in scam susceptibility in older adults. To address this gap in the literature, we investigated whether a racial difference exists in susceptibility to scams in a large, well-characterized group of non-demented older Black adults demographically and cognitively matched to older White adults from two Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center (RADC) cohort studies of aging
Differences according to race were observed in susceptibility to scams; the contextual factors of selfreported discrimination, socioeconomic status, and financial and health literacy; and the affective factors of trust, risk aversion, and loneliness
Summary
Adults over the age of 65 are at risk for financial scam and fraud (AARP, 2020). The effects are troubling since older age is typically associated with limited employment opportunities and less time to recover from financial losses (Dessin, 2000; Jackson and Hafemeister, 2011). In a hearing before the United States Senate, it was reported that almost half of older adults consider fraud a higher concern than health or terrorism threats Our group has linked scam susceptibility in old age with poorer cognition and psychological well-being (James et al, 2014), mild cognitive impairment (Han et al, 2016a), incident Alzheimer’s Disease (Boyle et al, 2019), brain gray matter density (Han et al, 2016b), and white matter integrity (Lamar et al, 2020). Different types of cyberscams appear to be associated with different, and sometimes opposing, victim characteristics (Whitty, 2020), and fraud susceptibility has been linked to certain
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