Why Scams Work: The Psychology Behind Urgency, Fear, and Trust - Part 1: Urgency
Updated: 5 days ago
How criminals use normal human decision-making to influence our choices—and what we can do about it.
A 7-part series about why urgency, fear, authority, trust, scarcity, and emotional connection can derail good decision-making—and why understanding the psychology of scams matters.
Part 1: Urgency - "You need to act now."
Urgency is one of the easiest manipulation techniques to recognize once you know to look for it.
Something is wrong with your account.
A payment needs immediate attention.
A loved one needs help.
A request from work cannot wait.
The goal is not simply to make the message sound important. The goal is to reduce the time available for reflection.
This matters because adding time pressure can change the quality of our decisions.
In a 2022 experiment involving 472 participants, researchers found that time pressure significantly reduced people's accuracy when detecting phishing emails. People also rarely examined the destination of links, although those who did were better at distinguishing phishing from legitimate messages. ScienceDirect
A 2025 study reached a similar conclusion. Participants asked to evaluate emails under greater time pressure were less effective at detecting phishing and judging whether links were safe than people who had more time. ScienceDirect
This is why one of the simplest fraud-prevention behaviors can also be one of the most useful:
When someone else is trying to speed you up, slow yourself down.
A pause creates space for us to ask questions about the request and suppresses the urgency tactic that cybercriminals use to get us to act without thinking it through.
Do I recognize this request?
Does it make sense?
Can I verify it somewhere else?
In this 7-part series, I examine each one of these persuasion principles in the context of cybersecurity awareness. Tomorrow, I will take a look at authority.
Selected scholarly research
Auton, J. C., & Sturman, D. (2025). Persuasion under pressure: the influence of persuasion principles and time constraints on phishing email susceptibility. Information & Computer Security, 33(5), 845–859. https://www.sciencedirect.com/org/science/article/pii/S2056496125000145
Butavicius, M. A., Taib, R., & Han, S. J. (2022). Why people keep falling for phishing scams: The effects of time pressure and deception cues on the detection of phishing emails. Computers & Security, 123, 102937. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cose.2022.102937
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