Special Issue Proposal: Human Factors in Cognitive Security – Trust, Decision Integrity and Influence in Complex Information Environments

Tuesday, June 9, 2026

By Chad Tossell, Leanne Hirshfield, Allison Hayman, Mica Endsley

Background and Rationale

Modern society faces an onslaught of misinformation, disinformation, and influence campaigns that threaten the integrity of individual and collective decision making. The World Economic Forum’s 2025 Global Risks Report highlights propaganda, deception and contested information (PDCI) as among the top threats to global stability (WEF, 2025). These information threats are persistent, evolving and amplified by emerging technologies such as AI-driven content generation and algorithmic social platforms (Ask et al., 2025; Endsley, 2018). While technical cybersecurity defenses remain critical, these measures alone are not sufficient as the human element is now central. How people perceive, interpret, trust and act on information can make the difference between resilience and vulnerability. Key concerns include deliberate deception (for political, economic and other motivations) as well as misinformation that is increasingly driven by AI agents.

Despite the clear urgency, human-centered approaches to cognitive security remain in their infancy (Endsley, 2018; Tossell et al., 2025). Cognitive security (CogSec) is emerging as a multidisciplinary field aimed at protecting the human mind and decision processes from information-based threats (Ask et al., 2025). Cognitive assets in this context include human cognitive processes, organizational decision-making structures and even AI systems which can all be targets of manipulation. This perspective aligns perfectly with human factors approaches to consider people, technology and context in tandem. It also underscores that cognitive security is actionable in that we can design interfaces, training, policies and tools that bolster how people detect deception, maintain situation awareness, and make robust decisions under uncertainty.

The objective of this special issue is to address CogSec work in human factors and cognitive engineering, showcasing actionable insights on strengthening human decision integrity in the face of modern information threats. We aim to bring together a collection of papers that are both scientifically rigorous and practically relevant to the design of systems and policies. In doing so, this special issue will demonstrate how human factors principles can help build resilience against misinformation and manipulation, much as they have improved safety and performance in traditional domains.

Scope

The special issue, titled “Human Factors in Cognitive Security: Trust, Decision Integrity, and Influence in Complex Information Environments,” will welcome research that spans individual, team, organizational and societal levels of analysis. We are particularly interested in work that highlights the interplay between human cognition and the sociotechnical systems in which information is consumed. Relevant domains include (but are not limited to) online social platforms, intelligence analysis, command-and-control decision environments, education and training settings, defense information systems and public discourse arenas. What unites these contexts is the challenge of maintaining trust and decision-making integrity when the information environment may be deliberately contaminated or overwhelming.

Key questions and themes include: How can we design information displays and decision support tools that help users distinguish truth from deception? What cognitive and perceptual vulnerabilities do adversaries exploit, and how can we “harden” the human in the loop against such exploits? How do we calibrate trust appropriately in information sources, in algorithms, and in our own judgments – to avoid both gullibility and undue skepticism? We also welcome research on how teams and organizations can achieve shared situation awareness and robust decision-making under contested information conditions. Overall, the scope is deliberately broad to reflect the multifaceted nature of cognitive security, yet it is firmly anchored in the human-centered perspective: understanding human strengths and limitations and engineering systems that support cognitive resilience.

Example Topics and Themes

To illustrate the expected content, we provide a non-exhaustive list of topics of interest for this special issue. Submissions may address these areas or related themes:

Decision-Making Resilience and Cognitive Agility: Strategies to bolster individuals’ ability to make robust decisions under information attack.

Sensemaking Under Uncertainty: Human sensemaking processes in complex, ambiguous information environments. SA

Trust, Credibility and Calibration: Understanding and improving how users judge the trustworthiness of information and sources, including both human sources and AI systems.

Human-AI Teaming for Cognitive Security: The role of AI in both attacking and defending cognitive security, and how humans and AI can best team up to ensure decision integrity. On one hand, AI and machine learning techniques can help detect deepfakes, bot-driven influence, or anomalous information patterns; on the other, malicious AI can generate tailored propaganda or even manipulate users’ personalized feeds.

Attention and Perception Vulnerabilities: Investigations into the cognitive and perceptual vulnerabilities that make people prone to influence. This theme includes cognitive biases and heuristics (confirmation bias, anchoring, etc.) in the context of deceptive information, as well as perceptual phenomena (e.g., difficulty in detecting manipulated images or videos). Insights here can directly inform design guidelines to reduce vulnerability (for instance, interface elements that draw attention to credibility signals).

Ecologically Valid Methods and Measures: Recognizing the importance of studying cognitive security in realistic contexts, we invite work that emphasizes high ecological validity. This could involve field studies of misinformation spread and user behavior on live platforms, novel simulation environments that mimic real-world social media or information ecosystems, or neurophysiological and behavioral monitoring in situ. Only a tiny fraction of studies (≈1%) to date have quantitatively examined how people behave with misinformation in real-world settings, highlighting a need for more in vivo research. We welcome methodological papers on how to better capture and measure cognitive security phenomena outside of artificial lab scenarios as well as results from such studies. For instance, using wearables to gauge stress and attention while participants interact with potentially false information, or large-scale logging studies of how users verify (or fail to verify) information online.

Sociotechnical Design and Policy Principles: Broader systems-level and design-oriented approaches to fostering cognitive security. This spans the design of social platforms, information systems and organizational practices.

These topics are meant to be illustrative. We are open to submissions that address a wide range of human factors research addressing cognitive security. Interdisciplinary approaches are especially encouraged.

Out of scope

Submissions that focus solely on technical cybersecurity mechanisms (e.g., cryptographic methods, network intrusion detection algorithms, or purely computational deepfake detection models) without a clear human-centered component are outside the scope of this special issue. Similarly, manuscripts that are primarily political commentary, normative opinion pieces, or descriptive analyses of misinformation trends without empirical, experimental, or design-oriented human factors contributions will not be considered. We also do not seek purely theoretical discussions of cognitive bias or influence that lack implications for system design, decision support, measurement, training, or applied human performance. All submissions should demonstrate a clear linkage to human cognition, behavior, team processes, or sociotechnical system design in contested information environments.

Timeline

Below is a revised timeline:

June 15, 2026: Official Call for Papers is finalized, approved, and widely disseminated through HFES channels, cognitive security communities, human factors networks and relevant interdisciplinary research groups. The submission portal opens for authors.
June – November 2026: Open submission period. This provides prospective authors approximately five to six months to develop manuscripts, coordinate interdisciplinary contributions and prepare submissions aligned with the special issue scope.
December 1, 2026: Manuscript submission deadline for special issue contributions. Authors will submit their papers via the JCEDM submission system, indicating the special issue.
December 2026 – February 2027: Initial peer review period. Each submission undergoes rigorous peer review in accordance with JCEDM standards. Guest Editors coordinate reviewer assignments, monitor review progress, and work to ensure timely and constructive feedback.
March 2027: Initial decisions communicated to authors, including reject, revise and resubmit, or conditional acceptance where appropriate. Authors invited to revise will receive consolidated editorial guidance and reviewer feedback.
April – June 2027: First revision period. Authors prepare revised manuscripts, respond to reviewer comments, and strengthen the fit, rigor, and contribution of their papers.
July – August 2027: Re-review and editorial assessment of revised manuscripts. Guest Editors evaluate author responses, seek additional reviewer input as needed and identify papers requiring a second revision.
September – October 2027: Second revision period, as needed. Authors complete final substantive revisions and address any remaining reviewer or editorial concerns.
November 2027: Final editorial decisions communicated for all manuscripts. At this stage, we expect to identify the full set of accepted papers for the special issue.
December 2027 – January 2028: Final copyediting, production preparation, author proofing, and issue assembly. Accepted papers may be published online ahead of print on a rolling basis, consistent with journal procedures.
Spring 2028: Publication of the special issue as an issue of JCEDM.

Biographies

Chad Tossell (USAF, Retired) is a professor of human factors and department chair for human factors, safety and social sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Worldwide. Before joining Embry-Riddle, he founded and led the Human and Sociotechnical Systems Research Program at the University of Colorado Boulder, advancing research in human-machine teaming, cognitive security and distributed decision-making for space and defense applications. Tossell’s 25-year career in the U.S. Air Force spanned leadership roles in acquisitions, operations and academia. He previously served as a professor of human factors at the United States Air Force Academy, earning the Outstanding Academy Educator Award in 2023. He deployed in support of Operations Enduring Freedom and Resolute Support, where he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal.

Leanne Hirshfield is an associate research professor at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Institute of Cognitive Science. Her research focuses on human-centered AI and using neurophysiology to classify users' social, cognitive and affective states. She directs the SHINE Lab, serves on the leadership team for the National Science Foundation (NSF) Institute for Student AI Teaming, and is the principal investigator on a large Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) focused on cognitive security.

Allison Anderson (formerly Hayman) is an associate professor in the Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research investigates human health and performance in extreme environments, focusing on developing technologies to measure and mitigate body adaptations to operational and environmental stressors. This work aims to support individuals operating in demanding conditions where the consequences of being susceptible to propaganda, deception and contested information may be exacerbated.

Mica Endsley is the president of SA Technologies, a cognitive engineering firm, and the former chief scientist for the U.S. Air Force. She is a past president of HFES and a recognized leader in the design, development and evaluation of systems to support human situation awareness and decision-making.