I recently met Zack on campus. Our friendship is just beginning to move beyond that superficial stage, so Zack does not know a lot about me, putting him at a disadvantage for deception detection. Initially, I did not tell him he was my subject for this assignment.
Thursday night we went out for drinks and I told Zack a true story about a trip I recently took to Ireland. I found it much easier to pair the truth portion of this assignment with a rich channel. Telling the truth using a rich medium supports the Social Distance Theory because I was more comfortable, given the nonverbal social cues and the synchronicity of the interaction. If I had more intense feedback while lying, I would have worried more about the quality of my impression management.
I based my fictional travel story off of a vague recollection of an old friend’s experiences as an exchange student in Germany, in an effort to make it as believable as possible. I selected e-mail as my means of telling this lie, figuring it would better enable me to thoroughly explain the experience and minimize Zack ability to detect the lie based on the lack of nonverbal cues. With additional time to logically and convincingly tell my lie, I effectively deceived my friend, although he mentioned he thought it awkward that I went into such a long description of a trip via e-mail. He said that he believed me because he had no reason to suspect I was lying.
Choosing e-mail instead of richer channel supports the Social Distance Theory. If I had to lie I felt much easier to lie at a distance. The type of lie required for this assignment did not warrant that emotional need to “thoroughly convince” my friend which eliminated the need to do it face-to-face. In a way, this situation supports Daft and Lensel’s Media Richness Theory because the equivocality of the task was not so great that I needed a rich medium, although it was also not so small that a particularly lean medium would do. Fewer cues were desired to make the task easier which had little to do with efficiency but more with comfort thus leading to also support DePaulo’s Social Distance Theory. Telling this lie certainly took me out of my element, but doing so from a distance made it easier. Overall, while there were aspects of MRT that support the means of this interaction, face-to-face cues were not going to make my lie more convincing thus negating this aspect of the theory. The fact that I lied about my “actions” and the explanations surrounding my trip via email further supports Social Distance Theory. Had I told the story in person, I feel confident that my friend would have sensed my lie, which leads me to realize that there was some impression management involved in the experiment. I figured that telling the lie in person would have a negative impact on my friend’s perception of me, and there was some thought invested in my self-presentation.
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3 comments:
Melissa,
Your blog is very good. When reading, I wondered whether Zach thought it was awkward that you would send an email explaining your exchange experience. However, as you said, he would have no reason to believe you were lying. I agree that your findings are best supported by the Social Distance Theory. I think you did a great job incorporating that concept throughout your blog. Additionally, Media Richness also applies to your experiment, and I was glad to see you included that as well. I believe the Cues Filtered-Out theory is also applicable, as you chose email due to its asynchronous nature, lacking many cues that may expose your lie. Overall, nice job.
Melissa,
I thought your blog was really interesting and fun to read. I chose the option 2 so I enjoyed reading about option 1, which it is so different. I found myself wondering, however, if you typically communicate with “Zach” through email. If not, this may have been a signal that something was off. I think that using an unconventional form of communication in terms of your unique relationship standards with “Zach” would make the lie even more uncomfortable, and probably much more detectable. However, your use of Social Distance Theory was perfectly applicable here, especially since you aren’t normally comfortable with lying. I give you much credit in that sense, because I know I chose option 2 to avoid the discomfort of having to deceive someone so blatantly – something I doubt I would be very successful at under these circumstances. Overall, I think you did a nice job with the experiment, analysis, and relation to theory.
I like the way you performed the two tasks. Choosing to lie through e-mail means that you respect "Zach" enough not lie to his face. Using a distance approach where lies are more commonly found will not hold any significance to your relationship with "Zach." Using the Social Distance Theory was appropriate in analyzing your conversation through email, good work with that! I was wondering how well he would have been able to handle a lie in a richer media, considering he hinted that the email was a little off. Do you think he would have been able to pick up on it?
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