Assignment #4 - Do people lie on Facebook?

In recent years, the Facebook phenomenon has rapidly spread. Suddenly everyone has Facebook profiles, which are no longer only limited to an online space since they are sometimes referred to in the “real” world.

The anatomy of a Facebook profile is composed multitude of conventional and assessment signals that compose a Facebook profile. Most of the assessment signals are near the top of the page, and include the information separated into three categories; basic (i.e. a person’s name, sex, network, hometown, birthday), contact (email, screen name, cell number) and educational. An additional assessment signal is your profile and tagged pictures. These things can be lied about, although people who have had a FtF interaction with person or know him or her well will immediately detect the lie. The conventional signals are the personal information, which include one’s interests, music tastes, etc. which can easily be lied about as even one’s closest friends might not know the true answers. Since it’s not mandatory, people neglect to supply information for some of these categories, which cut down on available assessment signals for others to make use of and add ambiguity to the information not listed.

I asked one of my friends, who is a regular visitor to the website, to analyze his profile using the Catalina’s guidelines. He listed a five for all of his basic, educational and personal information. Knowing him for a few years, I was able to verify that he was being truthful in his profile. However, he admitted that he previously lied once on the website because earlier in the year he conducted an experiment to see how many people relied on the Facebook calendar to remember birthdays. He decided to change the date of his birthday to three months after his actual one. On his fake birthday, he must have received at least thirty posts on his wall with birthday wishes. Because of the Truth Bias, people had no reason to think that he would lie, especially about an assessment signal like his birthday.

Although all of his information was accurate, he clearly used Selective-Self Presentation as expressed by the Hyperpersonal model. He is in an artsy college and therefore tended to emphasize his more avant-garde, indie interests and aspects of his personality. The pictures that he put up also showed him in certain situations, like concerts and dressing in a certain manner to add to his artsy vibe.

My experience with deception on Facebook is supported by the Features-Based Approach. Typically, people don’t lie on their profiles or on wall posts because they are accountable for everything listed, as there is a record of the information. Mostly all of the Facebook communication is done in an asynchronous form, whether it is a wall post or a personal message. Therefore there is no way for the liar to get feedback and adapt the lie, which deters him from lying. Also, he was physically removed from the people looking at his page making extremely easy to lie due to the lack of revealing cues, which corresponds to the Social Distance Theory.