The Impact Of Death Anxiety On Vulnerability To Fraud Among Older Adults: The Role Of Materialism And Mental Simulation

With the proportion of the aging population rising year after year in China,criminal cases against older adults are also on the rise.The problem of old people being cheated has become a serious public problem that the whole society urgently needs to solve.The victimization associated with fraud can not only have a staggering and devastating impact on economic,but also lead older adults to suffer severe negative emotions as well as psychological trauma.Fraud is essentially deception and in this process,deceivers often awaken victims’ negative emotion of anxiety to mislead their decision-making,in order to achieve the purpose of defrauding property.Older adults at the end of life are more likely to experience intense about death because they are aware of the inevitability and imminence of death.Chronic anxiety will weaken older individuals’ allocation of cognitive resources and increase their possibility of making risky decisions.However,few studies have explored death anxiety as a risk factor for vulnerability to fraud in older adults.Accordingly,this study explored the influence of death anxiety on vulnerability to fraud and the potential mechanism of materialism,and investigated the role of mental simulation between death anxiety and vulnerability to fraud,in order to provide scientific basis for the prevention of older adults to avoid fraud.This study mainly consisted of three parts: Study 1A based on classical Terror Management Theory,and investigated older adults by questionnaire survey to explore the relationship between death anxiety and older adults’ vulnerability to fraud as well as the mediating effect of materialism between them.Study 1B introduced misleading advertising experiment paradigm and used a single-factor inter-group design with death anxiety level as independent variables(death anxiety priming;control priming)to investigate the influence of death anxiety on vulnerability to fraud and verify the mediating role of materialism in the relationship between them.Since not all individuals are affected by death anxiety and thus become fraud victims,study 2 adopted a 2(death anxiety: higher,lower)× 3(mental simulation: downward outcome,upward outcome,process)mixed experimental design to explore the influence of different types of mental simulation on the vulnerability to fraud among older adults with different levels of death anxiety.The main conclusions of current study are as follows:Firstly,there is a positive correlation between death anxiety and older adults’ vulnerability to fraud.In other words,death anxiety significantly positive predict the vulnerability to fraud among older adults.Secondly,there is a significantly positive correlation between death anxiety and materialism.And there is also a significantly positive correlation between materialism and vulnerability to fraud.Additionally,materialism plays a partially mediating role in the relationship between death anxiety and vulnerability to fraud among older adults.Thirdly,compared with the control group,older adults in the death anxiety priming group have a higher credibility evaluation for misleading advertising.Additionally,materialism plays a partially mediating role in the influence of death anxiety on the credibility ratings of misleading advertising among older adults.Fourthly,compared with the control group,older adults in the death anxiety priming group have a higher purchase intention for misleading advertising products.Additionally,materialism plays a partially mediating role in the influence of death anxiety on the older adults’ purchase intentions for advertising products.Fifthly,under different mental simulation conditions,older adults with different levels of death anxiety show significant differences in the credibility evaluations for misleading advertisements.To be precise,under process mental simulation conditions,compared with older adults with low death anxiety,the elderly with high death anxiety have a significantly higher credibility score of misleading advertisements.In the downward outcome mental simulation condition,the credibility evaluations of misleading advertising among older subjects with high death anxiety are significantly lower than that of the elderly subjects with low death anxiety.Additionally,under the condition of upward outcome mental simulation,older subjects with high death anxiety show significantly higher credibility evaluations of misleading advertisement than the elderly subjects with low level of death anxiety.Finally,older adults with different levels of death anxiety show significant differences in the purchase intentions for advertising products under different mental simulation conditions.Specifically,under process mental simulation conditions,compared with older adults with low death anxiety,the elderly with high death anxiety have a significantly lower purchase intention for advertising products.In the downward outcome mental simulation condition,the purchase intentions for advertising products among older subjects with high death anxiety are significantly lower than that of the elderly subjects with low death anxiety.Additionally,under the condition of upward outcome mental simulation,older subjects with high death anxiety show significantly higher purchase intentions for advertising products than the elderly subjects with low level of death anxiety.