Why Scams Work: The Psychology Behind Urgency, Fear, and Trust - Part 2: Authority
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 2 - Authority: “You can trust me because of who I am.”
Most of us respond to legitimate authority every day.
We trust communications from banks, employers, government agencies, doctors, law enforcement, technology companies, and other institutions because society could not function very well if we treated every interaction as equally suspicious.
Criminals exploit that normal human tendency.
Authority might be suggested through a title, organization, familiar branding, professional language, or the apparent identity of the sender.
Research conducted in a workplace environment found that both authority and urgency influenced employee susceptibility to phishing, illustrating how situational and message factors can affect security behavior even in professional settings. ScienceDirect
More recent experimental research has continued to examine authority as a persuasion principle in phishing. In the 2025 study by Auton and Sturman, phishing emails incorporating authority were harder for participants to distinguish from legitimate emails than messages containing no persuasion principle. ResearchGate
That doesn't mean we should distrust every authority figure. It means we need to separate the claim of authority from verification of authority.
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 fear.
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.researchgate.net/publication/392831277_Persuasion_under_pressure_the_influence_of_persuasion_principles_and_time_constraints_on_phishing_email_susceptibility
Williams, E. J., Hinds, J., & Joinson, A. N. (2018). Exploring susceptibility to phishing in the workplace. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 120, 1–13. The study provides evidence for the influence of urgency and authority in workplace phishing. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1071581918303628
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