I might have messed up this week’s assignment, but then again, it provided more insight and support for some theories and ideas.
For my experiment, I emailed a story from a trip I took, and then told another to my girlfriend. The one I emailed was about when the track team went to
She was able to pick out the truth and the lie, but I think it helped a great deal that I told her one was a lie, and the other wasn’t. When I asked her what would have happened if I didn’t tell her, would she have doubted them, and she said no. I think this sheds a great deal of light in that people are open and honest enough to defend the truth bias. It did help however that since she knew one was going to be a lie, she was looking for clues as to tell her which one was lying. She didn’t know at all, admitting that she could not find any external cues to decipher my deception.
All in all, my experiment shed no light on either side of the question. The deciding factor for my girlfriend was not any external cues, nothing in the way I told the story, but of the content of the story. She knew me well enough to know that I would have been frustrated sitting at the pool and would have done that.
Due to what I experienced this weekend in doing this experiment, I think that the medium does not necessarily play a major role in deception detection, but it is still the content of the story that matters the most. This would be a little bit more interesting if it was done with someone telling the same story (a lie) anonymously to a number of people changing between mediums, just to see if it picks up on either hypothesis more, that either vecause of the truth bias, and faulty cues, people are less accurate in FtF or that because of the concentration of resources in CMC people can detect it easier.
1 comment:
Hi Peter,
I was intrigued by your post (and not only because of the fact that it had nothing to do with the facebook option!). I also performed a similar experiment; however; I think you handled the experiment in a more interesting way. It was interesting how you informed your friend that you were going to tell two storied--one true and one false. Do you think this minor detail prepared your friend to be skeptical for both stories? I would imagine your friend being more suspicious while being told both stories. In a sense your experiment makes your friend ignore the truth bias.
I must also say that I agree with you--though the medium used does play a minor role, the key to lying successfully is making sure the content of your story is believable!
Good job!
-Josh Navarro
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