Understanding the Mechanisms Underlying Scam Vulnerability

Understanding the Mechanisms Underlying Scam Vulnerability

Mia Harrison. 2015

Abstract
This study aimed to investigate whether increasing information demand on working memory through employing the use of internal and external interference tasks, both targeting different components of the working memory system, influenced participants’ ability to accurately discriminate between legitimate and scam emails. The secondary aim of this study was to see if participants’ ability to identify the distorted elements of Moses Illusion questions was an accurate predictor of their overall accuracy across all email recognition tasks. 44 Lancaster University students participated in this study in a within subjects design. Each participant was asked a set of five questions, with two including a distorted element according to the Moses Illusion. Participants completed three email recognition tasks, and in total read 54 emails. One task just involved participants reading the emails and stating whether they deemed them to be legitimate or scam. The second email task involved an internal interference task and the third involved an external interference task. There was a significant difference in the accuracy across all three email tasks. Performance was best in the control task and poorest in the external interference task. This indicates that individuals are most susceptible to online scams when working memory is overloaded as a result of engaging the phonological loop. A significant relationship between ability to identify the distorted Moses Illusion questions and overall accuracy was found. This finding indicates that individuals who fail to notice the distorted element in the questions were less able to accurately discriminate between legitimate and scam emails.