Ben Morrison

Northumbria University · Department of Psychology

Deceptive techniques known as dark patterns specifically target online users. Children are particularly vulnerable as they might lack the skills to recognise and resist these deceptive attempts. To be effective, interventions to forewarn and forearm should build on a comprehensive understanding of children’s existing mental models. To this end, we...

In this paper, we report on the literature related to understanding young learners' mental models related to deceptive "dark patterns" used by malicious agents online: so-called sludge. We also discuss elicitation of mental models, particularly when carrying out activities to reveal the mental models of young learners. In addition, we review the et...

Older adults are increasingly a target for cyber-attacks; however, very little research has investigated how they feel about engaging in protective cyber-security behaviors. We developed and applied a novel card-sorting task to elicit how older adults feel about protective cyber-security behaviors and to identify the factors that impact their confi...

Recorded incidences of work-related illness and injury within the manufacturing sector remain significantly high, therefore, an awareness of the aetiology of accidents remains integral to any realistic prospect of safety improvement interventions within this complex industry. The epistemological stance adopted in safety behaviour development in res...

Retirement is a major life transition, which leads to substantial changes across almost all aspects of day-to-day life. Although this transition has previously been seen as the normative marker for entry into older adulthood, its influence on later life has remained relatively unstudied in terms of technology use and cybersecurity behaviours. This...