Deceptive Patterns
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Older and younger adults are influenced differently by dark pattern designs

Author
Reza Ghaiumy Anaraky, Byron Lowens, Yao Li, K. Byrne, Marten Risius, X. Page, P. Wisniewski, Masoumeh Soleimani, M. Soltani, Bart P. Knijnenburg
Date
5 Oct 2023
Publisher
Social Science Research Network
Focus
HCI & Psychology
Category
Academic Scholar

Support is found for the effectiveness of dark pattern designs in the sense that positive framing and opt-out privacy defaults significantly increased disclosure behavior, while negative justification messages significantly decreased privacy concerns.

Considering that prior research has found older users undergo a different privacy decision-making process compared to younger adults, more research is needed to inform the behavioral privacy disclosure effects of these strategies for different age groups. To address this gap, we used an existing dataset of an experiment with a photo-tagging Facebook application. This experiment had a 2x2x5 between-subjects design where the manipulations were common dark pattern design strategies: framing (positive vs. negative), privacy defaults (opt-in vs. opt-out), and justification messages (positive normative, negative normative, positive rationale, negative rationale, none).