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How could you ever doubt the word, or face, of such an obvious angel?

How could you ever doubt the word, or face, of such an obvious angel?

“You hansum man!”

“I lub you!”

“My buffalo die.”

Ahhh the courtship ritual between a Thai bar boy and an elderly farang is a wondrous thing. Wondrous because despite all the warnings, farang still fall madly in love with Thai bar boys. Everyone knows the old adage: ‘If something sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.’ And a hot, fit, twenty-something guy falling madly in love with your senior citizen body certainly qualifies as sounding too good. Yet older visitors to Thailand continue to fall in love with the young guys who profess their love for them. Are they that desperate for companionship? Is it a case of suspending disbelief out of loneliness? A willingness to pay for fantasy? The dementia associated with old-age finally kicking in? Or just one the dangers of letting your little head take over from you big head, regardless of age? Why do so many elderly visitors to Thailand not realize that is not a look of love, but a trained eye sizing up the depth of their wallet?

Yup, smells like science to me.

It’s not earth shattering news that the elderly are prone to falling for scams and are ripe for being duped. There are specific laws on the books dealing with those who scam old folk, government sponsored outreach programs to help the old farts who have fallen victim to a scam, and a vast network of both con men and business people who make their living from pulling a fast one on senior citizens. Most assume the elderly are susceptible due to their advanced aged and corresponding diminished mental capabilities. But even the sharpest old coots can and are swindled daily. Now new research shows its not so much about the slowing of ones wits, but rather that age-related changes in the brain make it harder to detect suspicious body language and other warning signs that people may be untrustworthy.

It’s not that aging sex touri are too dense to know the bar boy they just met really doesn’t love them, but that they are no longer as capable of determining when they are being lied to. Even when the bar boy tells them so, starting off with the frequently heard mating call of, “I lie you!”

It must be love, because what bar boy wouldn’t fall head over heels for him?

It must be love, because what bar boy wouldn’t fall head over heels for him?

Funded by the National Institute on Aging, a new study led by Shelley Taylor, a professor of psychology at UCLA, has found that older people, more often than younger adults, fail to interpret an untrustworthy face as potentially dishonest. Taylor and her team conducted two studies. In the first, 119 adults ages 55 to 84 and 24 younger adults looked at 30 photographs of faces and rated them on how trustworthy and approachable they appeared. The faces were intentionally selected to look trustworthy, neutral, or untrustworthy, based on known signs of deceit, such as eyes being averted downward.

The researchers studied the response in the anterior insula of the brain, the portion of the brain used for assessing risk. “It’s the area of the brain that gives you the gut feeling that something is not right here,” says Taylor. The younger adults’ bullshit meters pinged when they were viewing the untrustworthy faces. The older adults displayed very little activity in the risk assessment areas of their brains when viewing the same photographs. “We wanted to find out whether there are differences in how the brain reacts to these faces, and the answer is yes, there are,” Taylor said. “The response is much more muted among the older adults.”

Both the young and elderly subjects reacted similarly to the trustworthy faces and to the neutral faces. However, when viewing the untrustworthy faces, the younger adults reacted strongly, while the older adults did not. The older adults saw the faces as more trustworthy. And were more willing to rate them as being honest.

The second study Taylor’s group performed was conducted at UCLA’s brain mapping center, where participants got functional magnetic resonance imaging brain scans while looking at the faces. And again, in younger subjects brain activity in the anterior insula region was high while in the brains of the older test subjects little if any activity was mapped. Taylor says that older adults have a diminished ability to process negative stimuli which can lead to a sense of improved well-being, a benefit to the elderly, but when it comes to knowing whether to trust someone, it causes nothing but trouble.

Recent research shows the elderly are less capable of determining when trouble is staring them in the face.

Recent research shows the elderly are less capable of determining when trouble is staring them in the face.

A 2009 study conducted for the National Institute of Justice concluded that nearly 12 percent of Americans 60 and older had been exploited financially by a family member or a stranger. Insurance company MetLife Inc. reported last year that the estimated annual loss by victims of elder financial abuse was $2.9 billion. That’s a lot of water buffaloes. As with Taylor’s more recent work, the study done in 2009 by neurology and psychology professor Daniel Tranel and Natalie Denburg, assistant professor in neurology at the University of Iowa found that older people are less capable of identifying deceit and once again traced the failing to the same general region of the brain. Which is often failing in the elderly.

In the Iowa study, the researchers used participants who had suffered damage to their ventromedial prefrontal cortex – the area of the brain that controls belief and doubt – others with damage outside of it, and patients with no brain damage. Subjects were shown ads that were similar to ones the Federal Trade Commission deemed misleading to see whether they’d believe what they were being sold. The researchers found that patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex were roughly twice as likely to believe a false ad, even when given disclaimer information that made it pretty clear that it was misleading. And, they were more likely to buy the item too.

“Behaviorally, they failed the test to the greatest extent,” reported Denburg. “They believed the ads the most, and they demonstrated the highest purchase intention. Taken together, it makes them the most vulnerable to being deceived.”

Apart from being damaged, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex begins to deteriorate as people reach age 60, although the onset and the pace of deterioration varies. “The more worn down it is, the less able we are to detect if something is a scam, even if it’s staring us right in our face,” says Professor Tranel, adding that even undamaged brains in the elderly show marked deterioration of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex.

The look of love?

The look of love?

Tranel thinks the finding will enable doctors, caregivers, and relatives to be more understanding of the bad decision making by the elderly. “Instead of saying, ‘How would you do something silly and transparently stupid,’ people may have a better appreciation of the fact that older people have lost the biological mechanism that allows them to see the disadvantageous nature of their decisions,” he says pointing out that his research explains why highly intelligent elderly people can fall victim to seemingly obvious fraud schemes.

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