The Effect of Decision Strategy, Amount of Information and Working Memory Load on Detecting Email Scams

Alex Josephidou. 2014

This study investigated factors that lead individuals to fall for email scams. In particular, two factors were considered; the first was the impact of making intuitive, effortless and speedy decisions compared to rational, careful and thoughtful decisions, and the second, the effect of responding to emails whilst undertaking a concurrent task. Participants were presented with both email titles (ie limited information) and complete emails (ie detailed information); they then had to make decisions about how to respond to them. These decisions were made at times quickly and intuitively, at other times slowly and carefully. Participants had to make half of their decisions whilst doing a numerical concurrent task in order to tax their working memory. Results indicated that participants were more likely to fall for scam emails when in the concurrent task trials, however no statistical difference was found between intuitive and rational decision making. A separate analysis of participants’ responses to limited information (ie email titles) and detailed information (ie full emails) was carried out. The same pattern of results was found when participants were given limited information and asked to respond either intuitively or rationally; conversely when participants were presented with detailed information and also asked to engage, or not engage, with a concurrent task there was no difference in either their intuitive or rational responses, or responses on concurrent and non-concurrent trials.