Heightened Emotional States Increase Susceptibility to Fraud in Older Adults

We examined the effects of both emotional arousal (excitement, anger, neutral) and age (older adults, younger adults) on ratings of advertisement credulity and purchase intention. Inducing both high-arousal positive and high-arousal negative emotions in older adults increased their susceptibility to misleading advertisements, leading them to indicate greater intention to purchase the falsely advertised items. arousal group. When we examined younger adults separately, we did not find these same effects. Implications are discussed