“This is the way ‘I’ create my passwords ...":does the endowment effect deter people from changing the way they create their passwords?

The endowment effect is the term used to describe a phenomenon that manifests as a reluctance to relinquish owned artifacts, even when a viable or better substitute is offered. It has been confirmed by multiple studies when it comes to ownership of physical artifacts. If computer users also "own", and are attached to, their personal security routines, such feelings could conceivably activate the same endowment effect. This would, in turn, lead to their over-estimating the \value" of their existing routines, in terms of the protection they afford, and the risks they mitigate. They might well, as a consequence, not countenance any efforts to persuade them to adopt a more secure routine, because their comparison of pre-existing and proposed new routine is skewed by the activation of the endowment effect.In this paper, we report on an investigation into the possibility that the endowment effect activates when people adopt personal password creation routines. We did indeed find evidence that the endowment effect is likely to be triggered in this context. This constitutes one explanation for the failure of many security awareness drives to improve password strength. We conclude by suggesting directions for future research to confirm our findings, and to investigate the activation of the effect for other security routines

A Qualitative Analysis of Online Gaming:

The popularity of Massively Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) has risen dramatically over the last decade. Some gamers spend many hours a day in these virtual environments interacting with others gamers, completing quests, and forming social groups. The present study set out to explore the experiences and feelings of online gamers. The study comprised 71 interviews with online gamers (52 males and 19 females) from 11 different countries. Many themes emerged from the analyses of the interview transcripts including (i) relationship with social networking, (ii) social interaction, (iii) the community, (iv) learning real-life skills, (v) reinforcement schedules and operant conditioning, (vi) game design and content, (vii) escaping from real life, (viii) playing longer than intended, and (ix) gamers’ obligations towards others in online worlds. These findings specifically showed the social networking capabilities of online gaming, the community aspects and the psychological mechanisms within MMORPGs that can lead to excessive online gaming. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to previous qualitative and quantitative research in the area

Teachers' perception of the students' foreign language learning and the potential role of ICT

This article focuses on the learning problems that arise in the teaching of second languages. Nowadays, the introduction of new technologies in this field has had a relevant effect by offering new possibilities that did not exist in the analogue era. However, many of the learning problems persist, and one of the causes identified is the change in learning styles. The use of new technologies has fostered an experimental learning style among students. This style is incompatible with traditional classes of theory and practice, in which an intellectual effort is required to understand the theory and then put into practice what has been learned. The present work starts from this reality and tries to provide possible improvements. For this, an analysis of the main problems encountered by the learners in the various linguistic acquisition components (lexicon, grammar and processes of comprehension and production, both oral and written) has been carried out. The method used was a questionnaire answered by 113 active language teachers. After the analysis of the answers received, a series of specific problems of the teaching-learning process was enumerated and different IT applications and ICT resources were searched that could solve or at least minimize them