William Gates Building, Cambridge
Bonnie attended the Workshop on Security and Human Behaviour (SHB 2014) at Cambridge University to present our research using fMRI to look at habituation to security warnings. Chris Soghoian calls the workshop “one of the most interesting security conferences” because of its multidisciplinary nature.
Ross Anderson, host and organizer of the workshop, live blogged the following from the presentation:
Bonnie Anderson works on NeuroIS, using fMRI, EEG, eye tracking and cortisol measurements to find out what’s really going on with risk behaviour. The repetition suppression effect was first discovered in the California sea slug, and Eric Kandel won a Nobel prize for it; it turns out from fMRI work that this is exactly how people ignore security warnings. Can we counteract this with polymorphic warnings? She tested 13 treatments and found from fMRI that jiggling the message is best, then zooming it. She’s now doing a series of larger-scale field studies with Google and Linkedin. Her takeaway message is that habituation is not equal to laziness but something absolutely innate, and found even in invertebrates.
You can listen to Bonnie’s presentation and subsequent panel discussion, and access the slides here: