Functional divergence of two threat-induced emotions: Fear-based versus anxiety-based cybersecurity preferences.

Two threat-induced emotions and their respective ability to sway cybersecurity preferences were investigated after a cyberattack on financial institutions. Our theoretical aim was to advance the functionalist claim and differentiate between fear and anxiety by their action tendencies. The emotions were expected to have unique motivation power and thus show mutually exclusive ties to the three types of safety behaviors emerged in our study.