The story that I developed was about forgetting my passport at home on my trip to
When I asked for her opinion, my friend responded that she believed the gist of both stories, but did not exactly understand why I was sending her a random story through e-mail since we would normally discuss recent updates through e-mail rather than past events. Due to this aspect of the relationship between the deceiver (myself) and the receiver (my friend), it was a little more difficult for the lie to be effective. She was already questioning the media I chose to use before she could even concentrate on whether the story itself was true or false. As a result, she was correct in detecting which story was false and which was true.
According to Hancock’s study on motivation and lying over a CMC environment, I would be considered most likely to be effective in deceit. I was highly motivated because it was an assigned project, and given the CMC environment of e-mail, I was more able to edit my message and have the most control over what I wrote and when I sent it. According to the feature-based model of digital deception, one is least likely to use e-mail as a means of deception because it is asynchronous and one of the most recordable means of communication. However, the study did find that in the content of lies, asynchronous modes were most likely to include explanatory lies, which is what this story would be considered. In addition, I definitely found myself making up for the lack of truth with more words and details, as discussed by Zhou in his work on language patterns in deceit. However, my lying was not that successful since my friend was able to see through the wordiness of my story and use of e-mail as a means of telling it. As motivated as I was by the assignment to tell the lie, this still did not seem to be enough to override the ability for my friend’s deception detection.
Links to my comments:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=3186874989969223722&postID=7079150909093156753
4 comments:
I think that for the most part, the (3?) people who did the traveling lying stories all failed to mention the one thing that has been coming up in each occasion. Truth Bias
All of us have been successfull lying except for things like, I told them one was a lie ahead of time, you did it a little bit oddly, and problems that make it seem out of the ordinary anyways.
The truth bias plays a mjor role in deception detection. I think that it takes people a great deal to violate the truth bias.
I loved your entry from the very begining! I too never lie and was afraid that if I had to lie to someone in a face to face situation my nonverbal cues would give me a way. Although the truth bias would help me out somewhat because my friends wouldn't expect me to be lying, I am sure my eye gazes, my tone of voice or even my voice reflection and speed would let them know from the start that my story was fake.
My friend also knew I was lying online because of the medium I chose. SHe knew something was up if I was telling her such "an exciting story" over instant messenger rather than when I saw her earlier that day and told her another story about my vacation.
I am very impressed by your analysis of the event with Hancock's study. I wish I had used more examples of his data and theories to support my findings. I like how you supported your decision to email with the fact that your were going into an explanation and therefore thought it would be easier to lie. I didn't think of how indepth my explanation would go, but I did think that IM would be easier to lie because my nonverbal cues would not be prevalent to give me away. It is funny that while you gave yourself away by giving more details and wordings, I gave myself away for the opposite reason. My online story was much less detailed and much less imagery than when I tell a story in person.
I'm also a terrible liar, so when I chose to do this assignment, I found the same thing you did. I gave too much detail in the false travel story and my friend found it a little strange that I was telling her about a random occurrence from two years ago. All in all, I think that you made the right decision in lying over the leaner media. Although it is not face to face, your friend can still hear your tone of voice, pauses, and discomfort in your voice if it had been done over the phone, for example. I also think that you analyzed the theories well and integrated it well into the description of your experiences.
I find it interesting that your friend was able to tell you were lying, based solely on the oddness of the situation, meaning that you sent her an e-mail that was completely uncharacteristic for the type of relationship you have. I wonder perhaps, if the lie had not come over e-mail if she still would have become immediately suspicious of you. As we know, communication online, aka not face to face, removes the truth bias that most of us naturally have. Although the e-mail was of an unusual nature in respects to your friendship, I wonder if she would have been as suspicious if the lie had occurred under similarly unusual conditions, but in another media. By that I mean, what would happen if you approached her with the lie, perhaps face to face, in a manner that is also very out of character. Would she immediately become suspicious based solely on your strange behavior, or would the truth bias prevail and would she listen to your story with an open mind? Who knows, but well done!
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