Why We Say Yes When We Doubt

I started Tech Talk for Seniors in ninth grade, after watching my grandfather struggle with technology in his nursing home. Residents would usually bring me questions about finding a photo, sending a message, or changing a setting. One conversation went somewhere I did not expect.

A resident told me about a banking scam she had fallen for. Thankfully, after realizing what had happened, she was able to resolve it with her bank. What stayed with her was something else. She worried that telling her children would make them question her ability to live on her own.

I reassured her that younger people fall for scams, too. Later I realized I had answered the wrong worry. I was addressing her embarrassment while missing her fear of losing her independence.

That conversation left me with a question I could not put down: why can a request feel suspicious and still be difficult to refuse?

I went looking for answers in published research and in what I had seen at Tech Talk. The paper that came out of it, my first, looks at how trust, the wish to help, and the pressure to act quickly shape the way we respond to scams, and how AI makes deceptive messages more personal and convincing.

What I found changed how I think about helping someone. We do not need to be certain a request is fraudulent to give ourselves permission to step away and check it on our own. When someone we love has been scammed, the first question is not what they should have done. It is what they are afraid of losing.