Top Highlights

• Interestingly, a multidimensional model of consumer gullibility similar to the one proposed by me in Fig. 1.1, was developed by two marketing psychologists, Jeff Langenderfer and Terrence A. Shimp (2001), in a paper titled "Consumer Vulnerability to Scams, Swindles and Fraud: A New Theory of Visceral Influences on Persuasion." A difference between ...
• holy cause" (p. 157).A big part of Hartzell's success was his ability to play on the distrust that Midwesterners felt toward Eastern elites. Any attack on him was reframed as a conspiracy against the common
• believe them and to pass them on. Unfortunately, in the age of the Internet a rumor can (literally) take on global proportions with amazing speed, a process that can be very harmful, especially if the substance of the rumor turns out to be exaggerated or totally incorrect. The uncritical acceptance of the truth of unfounded rumors is a form
• cognitive, and affective contributors. One of the biggest situational contributors is what behaviorist psychologists call "intermittent reinforcement" (i.e., even the most messed up persons among us are not messed up all the time). Thus, an alcoholic may have periods when he or she does give up, or cut back on, drinking for awhile; an abusive
• presented briefly a theory of gullibility causation that contains four explanatory factors: situation, cognition, personality, and affect and state. In each of the many stories in the preceding seven chapters, one or more (sometimes all four) of these factors have been invoked in explaining the gullible behaviors portrayed. I put off