  In this paper, we report on three experiments we have carried out in the
context of the EMPATHY project, with the aim of helping users make better
configuration choices in a smart home environment, and discuss our results. We
found that there are psychological traits, such as Need for Cognition, which
influence the way individuals tend to use recommendations, that there are non
obvious relationships between the perceived usefulness of recommendations in
different domains and individuals' ability to exploit suggestions on
configuration choices, and that detailed, easy-to-understand security
explanations are more persuasive than simple security warnings, when it comes
to make decisions on the applicability of rules which might cause privacy and
security risks.
