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“Your account has been compromised”

Exploring emotional triggers in scam emails

 | Shahrood University of Technology
 | University of Reading
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with University of Reading.

Published online: 4 March 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.00135.mog
Abstract
Scam emails pose a significant threat to online security, exploiting individuals’ vulnerabilities through emotional manipulation. This study explores emotional triggers in a corpus of scam emails (n = 371) compiled from ten genuine email accounts over a period of five years (2018–2023). Using Robinson, David L. 2008. “Brain function, emotional experience and personality.” Netherlands Journal of Psychology 641: 152–168. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar taxonomy of basic emotions, the positive and negative emotional content and triggers were identified and analyzed. The findings reveal that an overwhelming majority of the emails allude to negative emotions (n = 252), suggesting a clear scammer strategy in stimulating negativity to achieve fraudulent objectives. Conversely, the emails that evoke positive emotions (n = 119) seem to create a false sense of trust, sociability and gratitude. In addition, many scam emails employ various combinations of emotional triggers to manipulate recipients. This study sheds light on the intersection between emotions and discourse pragmatics and highlights the affective dimensions of discourse in email communication.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Linguistic and discourse features of scam emails
    • 2.2Emotional triggers in scam emails
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Data
    • 3.2Framework and data analysis
  • 4.Findings
    • 4.1Quantitative analysis of data: Negative and positive emotional triggers
    • 4.2Combinations of emotional triggers
    • 4.3Qualitative analysis of scam emails
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Implications and conclusions
  • References
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