Jones, Helen and Towse, John and Race, Nicholas (2015) Susceptibility to email fraud : a review of psychological perspectives, data-collection methods, and ethical considerations. International Journal of Cyber Behavior, Psychology and Learning, 5 (3). pp. 13-29. ISSN 2155-7136
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Abstract
We review the existing literature on the psychology of email fraud, and attempt to integrate the small but burgeoning set of research findings. We show that research has adopted a variety of methodologies and taken a number of conceptual positions in the attempt to throw light on decisions about emails that may be in best-case scenarios, sub-optimal, or in the worst-case scenarios, catastrophic. We point to the potential from cognitive science and social psychology to inform the field, and we attempt to identify the opportunities and limitations from researcher’s design decisions. The study of email decision-making is an important topic in its own right, but also has the potential to inform about general cognitive processes too.