Psychological Factors Affecting Email Decision Making

Sophie Green. 2016.

Abstract
The current study investigated the psychological factors involved in email decision making. Specifically, it investigated the factors which may affect individuals’ susceptibility to phishing emails, such as the failure to encode information adequately. We tested this by investigating whether there is a link between participants’ ability to correctly answer a set of Moses illusion questions, and their ability to distinguish between emails. A secondary aim of the study was to examine whether the variance of genuine to phishing emails affected participants susceptibility to phishing emails. The experiment contained three conditions; equal phishing to genuine emails (50% / 50%), mostly phishing emails (75% / 25%), and mostly genuine emails (75% / 25%). Twenty-four 20-22 year olds participated in this within design experiment. Participants were required to answer a set of questions constructed to elicit the ‘Moses illusion’, before distinguishing between genuine and phishing emails. All participants were presented with a total of 36 images of emails, where they had to decide whether they believed that they were genuine or phishing. Results showed no correlation between the answers participants gave in the Moses illusion, and their answers in the email susceptibility task. However, a statistically significant result was found with regard to the variance of genuine to phishing emails, indicating that the variance does affect performace. We were unable to find the specific psychological processes involved in email decision making. Therefore, further research is required in order to prevent the reoccurrence of phishing email crime in the future.