Whysome people are more easily fooledThan others by scammers, charlatans, smoke sellers and people who spread false rumors? When faced with an email from a stranger asking for money for a noble cause or a message from a financial scammer selling valuable stocks at a ridiculous price, it has been found that young and old tend to be more easily fooled than middle-aged people. . American scientists have identified the area of the brain responsible for credulity, and have proposed a theory to try to explain why at certain ages we are less likely to doubt these types of messages.
Specifically, theventromedial area of the prefrontal cortex of the brain, located just above the eyes, seems to be responsible for a subject stopping after listening or reading something to analyze if it is true, as can be read in the latest issue of the magazineFrontiers in Neuroscience. “When most adults get a message about something, thefirst impulse is to believe it is true and process it“explains Erik Asp, a researcher at the University of Chicago and co-author of the study.” Only a little later our brain begins to ask itself questions and to question the veracity of the information, “he adds.
In children, the prefrontal cortex is still developing, not reaching full maturity until the late teens or early twenties. On the other hand, as you get older, the area of the brain responsible for doubt can begin to deteriorate, gradually reducing the propensity to question. Researchers suspect that this area is the last to develop in the brain, and that it could be the first to begin to show some decline, hence the excess of credulity appears in the first and last years of our lives. That would also explain whyFrom the age of 60 and 70, people? tend to be more likely to believe in conspiracy theories “Asp stresses, who in his experiments found that individuals with damage to the prefrontal cortex are more vulnerable to being deceived also by advertisements for “miracle” products. The researchers believe that the process could be related to the activity ofcells called oligodendrocytes that make the myelin that covers nervesand it allows neurons to exchange nerve impulses rapidly.
According to Asp and his team, being aware that credulity at certain ages has biological foundations can help to anticipate the problem and deal with it effectively, without blaming the subjects for their vulnerability to deception.
