Because of this assignment, I was forced to lie to one of my friends through a lean media. I decided to lie to my friend through AIM because stopping to think on a near-synchronous media is more convincing than pausing in the middle of a conversation in a synchronous media, such as the phone. I did not want the interaction to be asynchronous (email, Facebook posts, etc.) because this would not allow me to answer questions or play off his reactions.
I decided to deceive my friend by saying that I traveled to
After this, I met with this person to tell him a traveling experience that actually occurred. I told them about a time that I went to
He responded by saying that he did not think that I was lying on either occasion. I told him that I was lying in one of the stories, and he still had to think about it, but in the end he chose the correct one. He explained his thought process as he was deciding. He said that he could tell if I were lying to him in a real-time conversation by relying on facial expressions, tone of voice, hesitations, sweatiness, lack of eye contact, and stuttering. He also said that he could tell if I were lying online if I were lying on AIM if I paused for long periods. He also noted that I did not do much of any of these, which explains why he did not think I was lying the first time I asked. However, when I asked him why he ultimately decided that I was lying on AIM, he replied by saying that my descriptions did not describe personal experiences enough, while my descriptions on my other trip seemed sincere.
My friend relied on 3 methods of deception detection: verbal, non-verbal, and physiological. Only the verbal aspect was present in the leaner media, AIM. These methods are often not very accurate. It was not that he was able to pick up any of these during the interaction, since he thought that I was not lying in either occasion. However, when I told him I was lying, he decided that I was lying in the leaner media over the richer media because he did not think my experiences were personal enough. This incident heavily supports Bos et al’s research. He showed that people develop trust over FtF interactions much faster than any CMC environment. My friend ultimately relied on the truth bias, although I am pretty sure he was not aware of this, to decide which interaction was deceptive.
EDIT, Comments:
http://comm245brown.blogspot.com/2007/09/although-facebook-profiles-are-becoming.html
http://comm245brown.blogspot.com/2007/09/4-option-1-deception-experiment.html
2 comments:
Ellis, you make several great points in this post. First of all, I like the thought process you used when determining how to lie to your friend. AIM certainly allows the user to pause and think about what to say, but in a fairly rapid manner. The fact that you had done a research project on Utah probably worked to your advantage. As you said, most people probably don't know that much about Salt Lake City unless they have been there themselves. This is probably why your friend has trouble choosing which story was a lie.
I find it interesting that your friend mentioned eye contact, hesitations, tone of voice, etc. in his evaluation. As Catalina discussed this past week, most people rely on these cues to judge whether or not people are lying, but we do a poor job.
Informative post, Ellis. I thought that your theoretical analysis of your friends reaction was right on. It seems that your friend relied on content rather than other clues to determine which story was the lie. This was similar to my experience. I'm wondering how difficult it would be to manipulate either the online or face to face story to make deception detection even more difficult. For example, less color in the face to face story or more color in the online story would have possibly made it even more difficult for your friend to determine which was the lie. As mentioned in lecture, people attune to unreliable non-verbal cues during face to face interactions, so it should be functionally easier to lie face to face. However, social distance theory says that it is cognitively more difficult to lie in person. This implies that its easier to lie to a persons face, we just don't want to. One more thing, don't be too quick to bash Utah, it is absolutely gorgeous and SLC can be an interesting place.
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