Abstract

This study aimed to analyze the psychosocial variables related to fraud, which is rapidly increasing in recent years, by examining the differences in fraud vulnerability by age group, and investigating the relationship between psychosocial variables such as personality traits, fraud vulnerability, and mind reading ability. The difference between major variables of fraud vulnerability were verified according to age group. Early adulthood showed significantly higher compliance than old age; early adulthood and middle age showed significantly higher vigilance and impulsivity than old age; and belief in justice showed a significantly higher score in old age than in early adulthood. Correlations among most major variables were significant, particularly, compliance, vigilance, impulsivity, and decision time of fraud vulnerability were significantly correlated with personality neurosis. In addition, the personality latent profile was classified into five latent classes: “active-stable”, “introvert-unstable”, “normal”, “active-unstable”, and “passion-cold”. These results indicate that there is a difference in fraud vulnerability according to the personality latent class, and the foundation of the basic research for the preventive intervention to discern fraud or social deception can be established by confirming the relationship with psychosocial variables.