Research / Studies
Peer-reviewed research and foundational works, each summarized in plain English and tagged to PsySec principles, tactics, and the belief chain.
5 studies match your filters
Merging Cialdini, Gragg and Stajano & Wilson into one set of social-engineering persuasion principles, the authors found authority, strong affect, integrity and reciprocation were the most common in phishing subject lines. Strong-affect and authority emails leaned on 'you/your' wording, reciprocation on 'we/us/our'.
Repeating a chosen behavior daily in a consistent context made it more automatic along an asymptotic curve. Time to reach 95% of peak automaticity ranged from 18 to 254 days, and missing a single day did not materially derail habit formation.
Drawing on marketing-persuasion theory, a field study tested whether the factors that make marketing campaigns work also explain who falls for phishing and pretext phone attacks, and found that they do: dispositional factors tied to persuasion predicted victimization.
Habits are learned links between context cues and responses that form through repetition and can then be triggered directly by those cues without the goal that originally drove them. Goals shape habits mainly by motivating the early repetition and by steering people toward cues, rather than by directly activating the habit.
Healthy participants began choosing advantageously and showed anticipatory skin-conductance responses to risky options before they could explain which strategy was best. Patients with prefrontal damage never developed these signals and kept choosing badly even after knowing the right strategy.