For my article review I read “Do You Love Me? Psychological Characteristics of Romance Scam Victims” (Whitty (2018)). In this article the question the researchers were trying to find out was if there was a relation between a person’s characteristics and their susceptibility to mass marketing fraud, more specifically, romance scams. The experiment was done by asking willing participants a bunch of demographic questions that the researchers themselves had hypothesized on. There were many hypotheses based on each of the character traits that were outlined by the researchers. These character traits being age, gender, education, knowledge of cybersecurity, Impulsivity, locus of control, trust in others, trustworthiness, kindness, greed, and addictive disposition. The general hypothesis on these topics was that if you scored high on impulsivity, locus of control, trust in others, kindness, greed, and addictive disposition you were more likely to be scammed. Another prediction was that if they were middle aged and if they were a woman, they were more likely to be scammed. Lastly, if you had less knowledge of cybersecurity and had a lower education level you were more likely to be scammed. For this experiment the researchers had 12,060 participants from the United Kingdom, but only used a final sample size of 11,780 participants. 10,723 of them were not victims, 728 were one-time victims, and 329 were repeat victims. Out of these victims most of the hypotheses previously mentioned were proven to be true. The two biggest findings were in the kindness and education part of the questionnaire. It turned out that people with higher education were more likely to get scammed probably because they might be overconfident in their ability to detect a scam. The other finding, yet hard to explain, was that less kind people had a higher chance to get scammed. This might be due to their lack of friendly networks to help them determine the scam. This article is very psychology based because of its focus on what leads the victims mind into this scam based on their mental character traits.

This article relates to many social science principles such as relativism, objectivity, and ethical neutrality. In the case of relativism the whole experiment seems to be created around this principle. The researchers are trying to figure out if a mixture of all these different demographic traits relate to each other, and relate to how susceptible someone is to a romance scam. Objectivity in the experiment can be seen in the discussion portion of the article. In the discussion they showed that they were correct in some of the categories they hypothesized, but they also made sure to show where their predictions went wrong. However, it is important to know the difference between designing an experiment around your hypothesis and making a hypothesis alongside an experiment. Lastly, the researchers show ethical neutrality in their use of survey research by using recruited and willing participants.

In our class we went over many different topics that can be related back to this article. This includes victim precipitation, cybersecurity,survey research, and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Victim precipitation has to do with the study of how a victim’s behavior led to victimization. This article gets more specific and decides to study the behavior and demographics of the victims of romance scams. The article relates to cybersecurity of course because it is talking about mass marketing scams and is using the information it collects to help solve this problem in the future. Alongside one of the questions on the survey asking about the level of cybersecurity knowledge each person has. The article also relates to our class by using one of the different research methods we went over. In this case they used a survey research model to gather their information ethically. Lastly, this topic relates to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs because of the third layer. The layer of belongingness and love needs is what allows the romance scam to become so successful. The perpetrator attacks this weakness in the victim in order to make a profit.

This research also affects marginalized groups such as women, people with a lower level of education, and senior citizens. In the case of women, they are more likely to become victims of the romance scam at 60 percent compared to men at 40 percent. Since they are more likely to be scammed they are also going to be targeted more often. On the other hand, people with lower education and senior citizens are affected in a different way. They are actually less likely to fall victim to the romance scams. Which goes to show that all effects on marginalized groups have to be negative. 

One of the major contributions this study has is the newfound knowledge of who is the most likely to be attacked by these scams. It may not seem like a big deal but with this information some parts of society will understand that they are in a group that is more likely to be attacked or even fall for the scam. Groups under attack such as women and middle-aged people in general were found to be the most likely victims. This will allow them to seek education on the characteristics of the attacks and how to prevent it from happening to them. Simply having the knowledge of this scam in the back of someone’s mind is vital to the battle against it. Another contribution is some of the recommendations that the article mentions. Such as, having dating sites help raise awareness to certain demographics on their sites to be wary of these scams and direct them to places where they can educate themselves on the matter. As well as the fact that people who have addictive personalities are more susceptible to revictimization. Therefore, there should be a sort of rehabilitation program for them like with gamblers or alcoholics.