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It All Blurs Together: How the Effects of Habituation Generalize Across System Notifications and Security Warnings

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Information Systems and Neuroscience

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organisation ((LNISO,volume 16))

Abstract

Habituation to security warnings—the diminished response to a warning with repeated exposures—is a well-recognized problem in information security. However, the scope of this problem may actually be much greater than previously thought because of the neurobiological phenomenon of generalization. Whereas habituation describes a diminished response with repetitions of the same stimulus, generalization occurs when habituation to one stimulus carries over to other novel stimuli that are similar in appearance. Because software user interface guidelines call for visual consistency, many notifications and warnings share a similar appearance. Unfortunately, generalization suggests that users may already be deeply habituated to a warning they have never seen before because of exposure to other notifications. In this work-in-progress study, we propose an eye tracking and fMRI experiment to examine how habituation to frequent software notifications generalizes to infrequent security warnings, and how security warnings can be designed to resist the effects of generalization.

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by a supplement to NSF Grant #CNS-1422831 and a Google Faculty Research Award.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA

    Bonnie Brinton Anderson, Anthony Vance, Jeffrey L. Jenkins, C. Brock Kirwan & Daniel Bjornn

Authors
  1. Bonnie Brinton Anderson
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  2. Anthony Vance
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  3. Jeffrey L. Jenkins
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  4. C. Brock Kirwan
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  5. Daniel Bjornn
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bonnie Brinton Anderson .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Informaton Systems, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, USA

    Fred D. Davis

  2. University of Appl. Sc. Upper Austria, Steyr, Oberösterreich, Austria

    René Riedl

  3. Department of Information Systems, University of Liechtenstein, Vaduz, Liechtenstein

    Jan vom Brocke

  4. Department of Information Technology, HEC Montréal , Montréal, Québec, Canada

    Pierre-Majorique Léger

  5. Department of Information Systems, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, Georgia, USA

    Adriane B. Randolph

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Anderson, B.B., Vance, A., Jenkins, J.L., Kirwan, C.B., Bjornn, D. (2017). It All Blurs Together: How the Effects of Habituation Generalize Across System Notifications and Security Warnings. In: Davis, F., Riedl, R., vom Brocke, J., Léger, PM., Randolph, A. (eds) Information Systems and Neuroscience. Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organisation, vol 16. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41402-7_6

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