Participants are consistently overconfident for phishing emails but relatively well calibrated for legitimate emails except at 100% confidence¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associationalr2·q3
Currency · newest study 2019 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person
Subclaims¶
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q3 i? Participants were consistently overconfident for phishing emails except when guessing (50%), correctly identifying only 56% of phishing messages when 90–99% confident. → Casey Inez Canfield & Baruch Fischhoff & Alex Davis 2019
Evidence¶
Casey Inez Canfield & Baruch Fischhoff & Alex Davis 2019¶
Casey Inez Canfield & Baruch Fischhoff & Alex Davis. (2019). Better beware: comparing metacognition for phishing and legitimate emails. Metacognition and Learning. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11409-019-09197-5
q3 · i? · associational · r2
Calibration-curve analysis (Fig. 2b) of pooled judgments across both experiments, phishing emails separately. Proportion correct was barely related to confidence except for expressions of certainty (100%).
"Participants were consistently overconfident for phishing emails, with their judged probability of being correct higher than their actual probability, except for the few times when they said that they were guessing (50%). For example, they correctly identified only 56% of the phishing messages when they were 90 –99% confident."
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- Calibration is worse and resolution better for phishing emails than for legitimate emails — related
- Future anti-phishing interventions should measure both performance and metacognition, aiming to shift the phishing calibration curve toward the legitimate-email pattern — related
- Phishing email difficulty varies widely (15–85% correct) while mean confidence varies little (80–90%), leaving some victims unaware they were fooled — related
- Email-detection confidence judgments show good calibration but poor resolution, with aggregate overconfidence of 18% — related
- Individual and task factors fail to predict resolution, while perceived consequences predict calibration in opposite directions for phishing and legitimate emails — related
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
overconfident-phishing-well-calibrated-legitimate |
title |
Participants are consistently overconfident for phishing emails but relatively well calibrated for legitimate emails except at 100% confidence |
description |
Participants are consistently overconfident for phishing emails but relatively well calibrated for legitimate emails except at 100% confidence |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
moderate |
newest_evidence |
2019 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-18 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — casey-inez-canfield-baruch-fischhoff-alex-davis-2019 |
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