Beyond the inbox: Exploring shared cognitive mechanisms underlying susceptibility to and reporting of deception...

As deceptive content proliferates across digital platforms, understanding how users detect and report deception is increasingly important. The present study examined how detection and reporting of deception may be consistent across a variety of digital domains (i.e., emails, news headlines, voicemails) and explored if there are any shared individual differences (e.g., cognitive reflection, digital literacy) underlying user susceptibility. Participants' discrimination abilities, risk tendencies, and reporting behaviors were related across the digital domains, suggesting widespread vulnerability. Cognitive reflection predicted deception detection across digital domains, while digital literacy was only predictive for emails and news headlines. Exploratory analyses revealed that gullibility, social desirability, and age were all related to various aspects of susceptibility across digital domains, highlighting the importance of investigating other broad predictors underlying susceptibility. Our findings indicate similar cognitive mechanisms underlying vulnerability to deception across digital domains, supporting the design of general interventions that target broad skills, like cognitive reflection.