Often when I’m teaching a women’s self-defense seminar or a corporate personal safety event, I’ll be asked if women are more likely to be the targets of crime than men. With certain types of crimes such as rape and sexual assault, women are more likely to be targeted than men, but generally, men are more likely to be both the perpetrators and the victims of violent offenses. However, there is one group/demographic that is generally at a greater risk of crime and being exploited, and that is the aged. Older adults are perceived by many predators to lack the ability to defend themselves against physical attacks due to age-related decline in strength, mobility, and coordination. As a result, they may be more likely to become victims of robberies, burglaries, and/or other violent crimes. Whilst they may lead lifestyles, that are less risky than younger people – older people are more likely to be at home after dark than out in public space etc. – older members of society are at a much higher risk of being victims of fraud, and whilst predatory individuals may not understand the reasons behind this, they recognize a vulnerable population when they see one. In this article I want to look at why older people are more vulnerable to being exploited by fraudsters and how we can educate older people to be better able to defend themselves from such scams etc.

                As we get older, we start to give precedence to “unreliable” facial cues (facial trustworthiness) over other more relevant behavioral information (behavioral evaluation) when judging a person’s trustworthiness, increasing the risks that we believe what someone is saying/presenting to us and so fall victim to fraud. This is due to several psychological, neurological, and social factors. As we age, our cognitive processing speed tends to slow down, which affects how quickly we can interpret and assess social cues, including those related to facial expressions. As we get older, we may have more difficulty interpreting subtle social signals from facial expressions, leading to misjudgments in terms of trustworthiness i.e., changes in facial expressions – when in certain contexts – that are associated with deception that we would have once picked up on go unnoticed. Also, the amygdala, a brain region that processes emotions (including fear), tends to change with age. It can become less responsive to social stimuli, reducing our emotional empathy, making it harder to gauge whether someone is trustworthy based on their facial expressions, which can lead to less accurate evaluations concerning a person’s trustworthiness.

                As we age, we tend to rely more on heuristics (mental shortcuts or rules of thumb) and past experiences in order for us to make quick decisions and evaluations. This means that we may be more inclined to use previous experiences or even “stereotypes” to judge a person’s trustworthiness, rather than carefully analyzing the current situation we are in e.g., as we get older we might be more likely to make generalizations based on familiar traits that we associate with trustworthiness, even if the person in front of us isn’t exhibiting/displaying those exact traits. This even affects people who have experience dealing with detecting deception, e.g., those working in law enforcement get worse at detecting deception as they get older even though they have gained more experience doing so. This can be exacerbated by changes in societal norms around communication. What may once have been a sign of trustworthiness, such as certain facial expressions or body language, may have evolved and changed, making older people less attuned to modern social cues. This gap can lead to misunderstandings in judging trustworthiness. As people get older their social cognition declines, so an older officer might also experience difficulty in processing multiple social cues at once, such as facial expression, tone of voice, and body posture, which are essential for reading a suspect’s emotional state or intent. In high-stakes environments, such as interrogations and/or traffic stops; missing or misinterpreting these cues could result in poor evaluations and decision making.

However, a 2026 study suggests that older people’s preference and reliance on facial trustworthiness compared to behavioral evaluation resulted from a reduced utilization of behavioral evaluation rather than an increased reliance on facial cues i.e., automatic processing of facial information doesn’t change with aging though behavioral evaluation does. This means that older people need to hone, develop and work on their skills concerning behavioral evaluation, and this is possible, and a large part of this is understanding the contexts within which untrustworthy/deceptive practices occur. Whilst I am generally against a rules-based approach to personal safety, it appears that as we age, using rules to educate ourselves can be useful e.g., while we shouldn’t rely on them to make a decision they can be useful to develop our ability to judge trustworthiness and identify deception. If individuals – of any age - can learn the “rule” that those engaged in deception try to rush/pressure people to make quick decisions, then they can learn to recognize when this is happening to them etc. Whilst saying this, older people do take longer to learn these things than younger people, illustrating the importance of learning and developing these skills early in life.

        An early education into detecting deception is always best, however research has shown that it is possible to teach old dogs, new tricks. However, to do so older people need to recognize that some of the skills, knowledge and abilities that they once had as a young person have somewhat diminished. To learn more about detecting deception and recognizing untrustworthiness click here.