Citation

Cheung-Blunden V, Cropper K, Panis A, Davis K. Emotion 2018; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, University of San Francisco.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, American Psychological Association)

DOI

10.1037/emo0000508

PMID

30475029

Abstract

Two threat-induced emotions and their respective ability to sway cybersecurity preferences were investigated after a cyberattack on financial institutions. Our theoretical aim was to advance the functionalist claim and differentiate between fear and anxiety by their action tendencies. The emotions were expected to have unique motivation power and thus show mutually exclusive ties to the three types of safety behaviors emerged in our study. Avoidance would be uniquely embraced by fearful participants, whereas surveillance and vigilance would uniquely appeal to anxious participants. Study 1 (N = 199) used a cross-sectional design and found full support for the hypothesis regarding anxiety but only partial support for the hypothesis regarding fear. Study 2 (N = 304), an experiment of fearful, anxious, and relaxed groups, did not yield significant results but did offer methodological recommendations. The quasi-experiments in Study 3 (N = 120) and Study 4 (N = 156) supported the hypotheses on fear and anxiety. Our results in the novel domain of cyber threat brought new evidence to bear on the mixed literature on fear and anxiety. A discussion is offered on the methodological challenges of differentiating two closely related emotions as well as implications for the emerging debate of cybersecurity solutions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Language: en