07/20/2021
By Karen Mulllins
The School of Criminology & Justice Studies announces Michael J. Palmieri’s Dissertation Proposal Defense entitled: “Decrypting Personality: Extending Reinforcement Sensitivity, Social Power, and Anonymity into Cyberspace” on Friday, July 30 from 1 to 2:30 p.m. via Zoom Meeting.
Committee:
- Neil Shortland, Chair
- Jason Rydberg
- Claire Lee
- Robert Brown, UMES
Abstract: Cybercrime costs billions of dollars annually. In the US alone, it is estimated the country lost $4.2 billion in 2020. While research into cybercrime has been ongoing for over 20 years, the majority of this has focused on victimization and the application of routine activity theory. More recent research has begun to focus on the offenders and their characteristics, however, our insights into offenders are still limited. The proposed study expands on the work of Palmieri et al. (2021) by integrating theoretical facets related to the nature of cyberspace and the individual into the existing reinforcement sensitivity theory framework in a more holistic approach to explaining the decision to and motivations behind engaging in cybercrime using a surveyed sample of Amazon Mechanical Turkers.