Understanding susceptibility to phishing emails: Assessing the impact of individual differences and culture

In a lab-based empirical study, we examined how individual differences and an aspect of national culture impacted on participants’ responses to phishing and spear-phishing emails. Results showed that the strongest predictor of the participants’ ability to detect these malicious emails was cultural orientation towards the needs of the individual rather than the needs of society. For both types of emails, there was also a positive association between self-reported information security awareness and detection ability. Impulsivity in decision making predicted poorer detection of phishing emails, but not spear-phishing emails, and different personality traits predicted detection ability for the two email types.