Ms Carolyn Misir1, Mr Wei Liang Tan1, Dr Jansen Ang1
1Singapore Police Force, Singapore
Biography:
Carolyn Misir is a principal psychologist in the Operations and Forensic Psychology Branch (OFP) of the Police Psychological Services Department, which supports police operations, crime investigations, victim support and police intelligence through offence research and profiling projects as well as direct consultations with units in high profile on-going cases. Carolyn oversees the crime research areas of the work in OFP while building deep domain expertise and research in the areas of investigative, victim and criminal psychology. Carolyn has a concurrent appointment at Home Team Psychology Division as a principal psychologist within the Forensic Expert track.
Abstract:
Investment scams are the fifth most prevalent and the most financially damaging scam type in Singapore in 2023. The aim of this study was to examine the psychological factors involved in investment scams from a victimology perspective as well as to understand the dominant investment scam variants in a Singapore context. A behavioural analysis study, using a mixed method design, was conducted to understand the psychological processes underlying investment scams. For this study, both quantitative analysis of victim police reports of 270 investment scam victims and qualitative analysis of structured interview data of 18 investment scam victims was conducted. The study findings reveal three dominant scam variants in Singapore; a befriending variant, a self-search variant, and a chatgroup initiated variant. The findings also demonstrate that the majority of investment scam victims were male, professional or skilled workers, had encountered a ‘third party’ scammer, and transferred funds due to supposed profits being locked by the scammer. The psychological factors such as persuasion techniques and visceral cues were leveraged in investment scams to gain victims’ compliance. The persuasion techniques used were largely Authority, Behavioural Commitment, Reciprocity, Social Proof and Unity while the visceral cues elicited were mostly greed and fear. Some implications of these findings include psychoeducation of members of public of these psychological processes that could serve as red flags as well as re-designing crime prevention campaigns with these findings in mind.