C003

Emotional appeals

Technique in the Coercion (C000) stage of the SC&MS ABCDEF lifecycle

Version 0.3 · ID stable since publication (March 2026) · Data snapshot: March 8, 2026

Description

A manipulation of the victim's emotions to compel compliance or cloud judgment.

Subtechniques

C003.001 Fear appealsAn appeal to fear of serious but unspecified consequences.
C003.002 Guilt appealsAn appeal to guilt over past actions or perceived wrongs.
C003.003 Obligation appealsAn appeal to duty, reciprocity, or social expectations.
C003.004 Shame appealsAn appeal to shame or embarrassment over personal or moral failures.
C003.005 Sympathy appealsAn appeal to sympathy or compassion for the scammer's claimed hardship.

Tags

emotional-manipulation

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How to cite

Plain text:

Narang, S. S. (2026). Emotional appeals (C003), in SC&MS: Scam Classification & Mapping System (Version 0.3). https://scams.dev/techniques/C003/

BibTeX:

@misc{scms03_c003,
  author = {Narang, Satnam Singh},
  title = {{C003 Emotional appeals}, in SC\&MS: Scam Classification \& Mapping System},
  year = {2026},
  version = {0.3},
  url = {https://scams.dev/techniques/C003/},
  note = {A taxonomy for classifying scam techniques}
}