Internet Scamming and the Techniques of Neutralization: Parents’ Excuses and Justifications for Children’s Involvement in Online Dating Fraud in Nigeria

Abstract

Techniques of neutralization have largely been used to explain the triadic relationship between cybercrimes, offenders and victims, while the possible involvement of the offenders’ social networks as accomplices has been ignored. Interviewing parents, a qualitative study of their children’s romance scam involvement was conducted in Nigeria, exploring the parents’ disposition towards their children’s delinquent behaviour. In all, 52 interviews were conducted, and a thematic analysis of the narratives was carried out. Findings indicated that parents’ initial opposition to cybercrimes and support for enforcing laws against perpetrators changed towards accepting their children’s involvement in romance fraud. Parents adopted their children’s neutralization techniques in accepting their deviance. These findings have important implications in understanding the depth of Internet scams and parents’ social expectations in controlling their children’s behaviours.

Does time pressure promote lies in betting on coin tosses?

“…The negative social consequences of lies may be enormous, therefore, various studies have been undertaken to investigate the causes and prevention of lies in fields such as criminology, sociology, economics, and education. Over the years, lies have been widely studied in these fields and have attracted immense interest recently (Aborisade, 2022;Birkelund et al, 2022;Nanduri et al, 2020;Shams et al, 2022). Moreover, psychology has focused on revealing the causes and mechanisms of lies from different perspectives, such as personality, physiology, decision-making, and social cognition (e.g., Gunia et al, 2012;Judges et al, 2017;Kocher et al, 2018;Lee et al, 2015).…”