This project explores the extent to which personality traits predict privacy and security behaviors. Over the past decade, computer privacy and security have improved by leaps and bounds by considering human factors in the design process. However, previous work to improve the usability of privacy and security systems has only examined the behaviors of "average users," which is believed to only yield local maxima because no individual perfectly fits this profile. Therefore, this project is examining the extent to which additional improvements can be made by catering system designs to individual differences (e.g., in personality traits). Through a series of surveys and controlled experiments, researchers are discovering how these personality traits are predictive of certain privacy decisions, as well as interactions with various security mitigations. For instance, knowledge of a user's personality traits may result in more appropriate default privacy settings on a social networking website or web browser security warnings that are more salient to that user. The researchers' goal is to ultimately design systems that infer personality traits and then adjust privacy and security mechanisms so as to yield outcomes that are optimally aligned with a particular user's preferences.
