Pauses when a message pushes them to act fast

Treats deadlines, threats, and 'act now' language as a signal to slow down, not speed up.

Pressure pushes people into fast, habitual email routines where warning signs get skipped. Pausing gives conscious processing a chance to catch up.

How to observe it: Click rates on high-urgency Simulations compared with low-urgency ones; reports that cite urgency as the reason.

Supporting evidence

• Persuasion: How phishing emails can influence users and bypass security measures Ferreira & Teles, 2019
• Suspicion, Cognition, and Automaticity Model of Phishing Susceptibility Vishwanath et al., 2018

Context

• Cognitive Triaging of Phishing Attacks Heijden & Allodi, 2019