Living on the intersection of cryptography and psychology, password psychology is the study of what makes passwords or cryptographic keys easy to remember or guess.
In order for a password to work successfully and provide security to its user it must be kept secret and un-guessable; this also requires the user to memorize their password. The Psychology behind choosing a password is a unique balance between memorization, security and convenience. Password security involves many psychological and social issues including; whether or not to share a password, the feeling of security, and the eventual choice of whether or not to change a password. Passwords may also be reflective of personality. Those who are more up tight or security oriented may choose longer or more complicated passwords. Those who are lax or who feel more secure in their everyday lives may never change their password. The most common password is Password1, which may point to convenience over security as the main concern for internet users.
Read more about Password Psychology: History, Current Research, Memorization Problems, Password Alternatives
Famous quotes containing the word psychology:
“Psychology has nothing to say about what women are really like, what they need and what they want, essentially because psychology does not know.... this failure is not limited to women; rather, the kind of psychology that has addressed itself to how people act and who they are has failed to understand in the first place why people act the way they do, and certainly failed to understand what might make them act differently.”
—Naomi Weisstein, U.S. psychologist, feminist, and author. Psychology Constructs the Female (1969)