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The psychological interaction of spam email features
Williams, Sarah E. Sarno, Dawn M. Lewis, Joanna E. Shoss, Mindy Neider, Mark B. Bohil, Corey J.
Williams, Sarah E.
Sarno, Dawn M.
Lewis, Joanna E.
Shoss, Mindy
Neider, Mark B.
Bohil, Corey J.
Abstract
This study explored distinct perceptual and decisional contributions to spam email mental construal. Participants classified spam emails according to pairings of three stimulus features – presence or absence of awkward prose, abnormal message structure, and implausible premise. We examined dimensional interactions within general recognition theory (GRT; a multidimensional extension of signal detection theory). Classification accuracy was highest for categories containing either two non-normal dimension levels (e.g. awkward prose and implausible premise) or two normal dimension levels (e.g. normal prose and plausible premise). Modelling indicated both perceptual and decisional contributions to classification responding. In most cases, perceptual discriminability was higher along one dimension when stimuli contained a non-normal level of the paired dimension (e.g. prose discriminability was higher with abnormal structure). Similarly, decision criteria along one dimension were biased in favour of the non-normal response when stimuli contained a non-normal level of the paired dimension. Potential applications for training are discussed.
Keywords
spam email, spam features, spam judgment, spam attention, phishing judgment
Date
2019
Type
Journal article
Journal
Ergonomics
Book
Volume
62
Issue
8
Page Range
983-994
Article Number
ACU Department
Collections
Relation URI
Source URL
Event URL
Open Access Status
Published as green open access
License
File Access
Open
Controlled
Controlled