Fear of Cybercrime. An Experimental Study on the Mismatches between Self-Reported and Physiological Measures in a Simulated Cyberattack Environment

Abstract

Fear of crime has been one of the most compelling scientific phenomena since the 60s. Its scope has traditionally been limited to assess this emotional experience predominantly in physical space. However, studies on fear of crime experiences are gradually increasing in this new area of criminal opportunity, which is cyberspace. The aim of this paper is to analyze, in real time, the fear of crime dynamics elicited from a simulation of cyber-attack by malware infection. To meet this aim, our design and results will be explained from a study carried out with the participation of a sample of university students from the Universidad Miguel Hernández de Elche (Spain) in 2018. Design is as innovative as challenging, since it involves collecting physiological measurements associated in the psychophysiological literature to the experiences of fear as a way of complementing traditional analyzes based on self-reports, as well as to detect possible mismatches between both types of data.