For this assignment I chose option 1, which was to deceive a friend in a rich and a lean medium. For my rich medium of choice, I decided to talk to my good friend from high school who attends school here with me. I sat her down and told her an experience I had during my study abroad semester in Australia.I decided this would be my opportunity to experiment with my acting skills, so I told the biggest lie about a make- believe adventure that I had going to the outback. In my story, I went to the outback for a week and was bale to ride a kangaroo through the desert. AL though the views were spectacular, the trip turned out to be a disaster because the people who I were traveling with got lost and we had to sleep in the car for a couple of nights. During the narration, I tried my best not to exaggerate the lie, but I continued to make it up while I went along. I then went to explain how there were wild camels, sheep, and horses in the outback and the only regret I had was not being able to stay in an aboriginal town. Surprisingly she took my story with awe and amazement, not having a clue that it was a lie. I really would of thought that she picked up on it when I mentioned that I rode kangaroos, but I guess that since she did not know much about Australia,s he took the information with an open mind of anything is possible. Despite the FtF interaction, she did not pick up on my nonverbal cues of mot directly looking her in her eye.
I told the truth to my friend online through AIM. I gave her an insight on an actual experience I had down under about how I went surfing for the first time but miserably failed. It was a funny story that she enjoyed without the digital deception. She did automatically ask me if it did really occur. I honestly found that weird but I guess since she is prone to people making up stuff through CMC, she had to double check. My FtF experience definitely confirms the deception detection theory in which people have a harder time telling whether or not the truth is being spoken to them.
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5 comments:
Wow you must be a really good liar to get your friend to believe that story! I think it's really interesting what you said about how your friend immediately questioned your story, even though it was true, when you were conversing over CMC. It supports that the level of trust, or truth bias, goes down a lot when you are talking to someone online versus talking to them in person, especially considering the story she believed when you were talking to her face to face. I wonder if the reason she asked you if you were telling the truth was really because she felt you were giving off cues that made her think you were lying or if it was more of an automatic thing she would say to anyone online, regardless of what they were telling her.
I enjoyed reading your post! I am going to be studying abroad in Australia this coming spring. It's funny that your friend believed your crazy story. Is it possible to ride a kangaroo? Although, Australia is a wild place and there are tons of things to do there, so I guess your story wasn't so unbelievable.
Hey Susannie.
That's an incredible account... and it's very good of you to not mention your friend by name ;)
It sounds to me like you were able to win your friend into believing your lie through the use of nonverbal cues in the FtF interaction. In appearing congruent (as I assume you were) with the lie you were speaking, you solidified your trustworthiness. I might even hypothesize that the lie was also aided in the storytelling. Since you succeeded, I am guessing that the story was well told and was delivered in a natural manner, which contributed to raising her buying temperature in absorbing her with your narrative (transportation theory).
Have you ever considered hypnotism?
:) Great job
RJ
The fact that your friend believed your story about the kangaroos shows the implicit trust humans have in each other. It is possible to use this trust in order to deceive each other both FtF and online. Did you do anything while talking to help convince your friend that you were telling the truth? It's interesting to think about social distance theory with respect to your experiment. SDT says that you would want to be socially distant from your friend when telling a lie but you chose to do so FtF. I think, however, most people would not have believed your story about riding a kangaroo, and this experiment demonstrates a lot about humans trust in each other.
Hey Susannie.
Wow, you actually had your friend messing up on both of them. I guess my friend is really gullible then, or we sidetracked too much.
Anyways, this is a great application of Media Richness Theory.
Though for some reason, I think it's a case of she-knows-that-you-know-that-she-knows. I mean the way she reacted showed that she was clearly expecting a truth in FtF and a lie in CMC even though you went a little overboard with Australia. I don't know if this counts as a reverse of Social Distance Theory or still just a good case of MRT.
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