Metacognitive Skills in Phishing Email Detection: A Study of Calibration and Resolution

Metacognition plays important roles in human judgments. In this study, we study two types of metacognitive skills, namely calibration and resolution, in individuals' judgments of phishing emails. Drawing upon the Probabilistic Mental Model (PMM) and past research on phishing detection, we examine individual- and task-related factors and their impacts on both skills. Results from an online survey experiment show that task-related factors (i.e., email familiarity, judgment time, variability of judgment time, and task easiness) influence calibration while both task- and individual-related factors (i.e., online transaction experience, victimization experience, email entity familiarity, and variability of judgment time) influence resolution. Interventions to improve individuals' metacognition in phishing email detection are discussed.