The Role of Cognitive Skills in Phishing Detection: A Comparative Study Between Chess Players and Non-Chess Players

Phishing remains one of the most pervasive and effective techniques in real-world cyberattacks, leveraging human trust as the weakest link in security. Phishing attacks exploit fast, intuitive judgments. Drawing on the Dual Process Theories of Higher Cognition (DPT) of Evans and Stanovich, this original study investigates how cognitive strategies in chess can be applied to cybersecurity threat detection. In this research, chess players significantly outperform non-chess players at phishing detection, building on prior work where the two populations' cognitive abilities, such as cognitive reflection and planning, were studied. Using principles from Signal Detection Theory (SDT), the enhanced accuracy exhibited by chess players in identifying phishing emails appears more attributable to a generalized predisposition toward increased threat anticipation than to a domain-specific capacity to reliably discriminate between phishing and legitimate emails. Framed within the context of the Dual Process Theory and Signal Detection Theory, this perspective offers a novel insight into the cognitive mechanisms underlying cybersecurity decision-making, highlighting a potential role for chess-based cognitive expertise in phishing detection.