ArticleBehavior research methods2021
The Phishing Email Suspicion Test (PEST) a lab-based task for evaluating the cognitive mechanisms of phishing detection.
Article in Behavior research methods, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 39 citations in OpenAlex.
- The role of analytical reasoning and source credibility on the evaluation of real and fake full-length news articles.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2021Trial
- Decomposing trust-related decision making: dimensionality and predictability of phishing susceptibility in an adult lifespan sample.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2026Article
- Interoceptive Accuracy Enhances Deception Detection in Older Adults.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2024Article
- Phishing vulnerability compounded by older age, apolipoprotein E e4 genotype, and lower cognition.PNAS nexus · 2024Article
- Financial Fraud and Deception in Aging.Advances in geriatric medicine and research · 2023Article
- Is This Phishing? Older Age Is Associated With Greater Difficulty Discriminating Between Safe and Malicious Emails.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2021Article
- The Phishing Email Suspicion Test (PEST) a lab-based task for evaluating the cognitive mechanisms of phishing detection.Behavior research methods · 2021Article
- The Role of User Behaviour in Improving Cyber Security Management.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Review
- Novel methods for assessment of vulnerability to financial exploitation (FE).Journal of elder abuse & neglectArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Phishing emails constitute a major problem, linked to fraud and exploitation as well as subsequent negative health outcomes including depression and suicide. Because of their sheer volume, and because phishing emails are designed to deceive, purely technological solutions can only go so far, leaving human judgment as the last line of defense. However, because it is difficult to phish people in the lab, little is known about the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying phishing susceptibility. There is therefore a critical need to develop an ecologically valid lab-based measure of phishing susceptibility that will allow evaluation of the cognitive mechanisms involved in phishing detection. Here we present such a measure based on a task, the Phishing Email Suspicion Test (PEST), and a cognitive model to quantify behavior. In PEST, participants rate a series of phishing and non-phishing emails according to their level of suspicion. By comparing suspicion scores for each email to its real-world efficacy, we find initial support for the ecological validity of PEST - phishing emails that were more effective in the real world were more effective at deceiving people in the lab. In the proposed computational model, we quantify behavior in terms of participants' overall level of suspicion of emails, their ability to distinguish phishing from non-phishing emails, and the extent to which emails from the recent past bias their current decision. Together, our task and model provide a framework for studying the cognitive neuroscience of phishing detection.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.