The Theory Of Mind, Self-deception And Deceptive Behavior Of Fraudsters

The number of fraud crimes continues to rise,and the forms and means of fraud continue to be renovated,which has a huge negative impact on China's economic construction and development.The risk of recidivism in fraud crimes is high,but there is little psychological research on fraud crimes.Strengthening psychological research on fraudsters is essential to prevent and combat fraud crimes and psychological correction of fraudsters.Only by understanding the psychological characteristics of fraudsters can we design and implement correction programs suitable for fraudsters.Since deception is the main behavioral characteristic of fraudsters,this study explored the cognitive characteristics of fraudsters and their fraudulent behavior.This study also explored the relationship between fraudulent behavior and cognitive characteristics of fraudsters,providing a scientific basis for the evidence-based correction of fraudsters.This study includes 1 preliminary study and 2 formal studies.The preliminary study selected 63 fraudsters in a prison in Beijing,and collected demographic information and criminal information according to the questionnaire on basic information of fraudsters.This study selected typical fraudsters for interviews to understand the criminal process and psychological activities of the fraudsters,and provided ideas and basis for subsequent quantitative research.Study 1 explored the cognitive characteristics of fraudsters,mainly including cognitive theory of mind,emotional theory of mind and self-deception.Participants in this part came from two prisons in Beijing and Zhejiang,including 70 fraudsters and 30 general property criminals.The Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding(BIDR)was used to measure the self-deception tendency of the subjects.The imposing Memory Task(IMT)and the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test(RMET)respectively measured the subjects' cognitive theory of mind,emotional theory of mind.Study 2 explored the interpersonal deception of fraudsters and its relationship with theory of mind and self-deception.The subjects were the same as those in Study 1.The Interactive Deception Task(DeceIT)was used to investigate the interpersonal deception behavior of fraudsters,and explore the relationship between the fraudsters' deception behavior and cognitive theory of mind,emotional theory of mind and self-deception through regression and other statistical methods.The results and conclusions of this study are as follows:(1)The fraudsters under investigation have a high level of education,and the typical method of fraud is to falsely claim that they have a special relationship or power to work for victims.The relationship between fraudsters and victims is mostly friend or "person one knows",but the victim does not know fraudsters well.Fraudsters are good at understanding and taking advantage of victims.They are also good at gaining the victim's trust,and are skilled in coping with complex social relationships.During the interview,the fraudsters showed a high level of self-elevation and impression management.(2)The cognitive theory of mind of fraudsters is significantly stronger than that of general property criminals,but their emotional theory of mind is not significantly different from that of general property criminals;however,the performance of emotional theory of mind of fraudsters and general property criminals are significantly worse than that of healthy people.The advanced cognitive theory of mind of fraudsters makes they have a strong ability to read people's mind,making it handy in the process of fraud crimes;the deficient emotional theory of mind of fraudsters enable them avoid shame and other negative emotions and rationalize their criminal behavior.The level of self-deception of fraudsters is significantly higher than that of general property criminals,which enables fraudsters to gain the trust of victims by disguise their own language,appearance and behavior.(3)The credibility,logic and fluency of fraudsters in the DeceIT are higher than those of general property criminals.High-level cognitive theory of mind of fraudsters performed more fluently in DeceIT;the improvement of impression management cannot significantly predict the performance of fraudsters and general property criminals in DeceIT.However,the credibility,logic and fluency of the two Groups of subjects showed a downward trend with the improvement of the level of impression management.