Given my past experiences with lying, I thought this assignment option would be more trouble than fun. I’ve never been the type to get away with anything sneaky. My mother used to always look at me with a grin and say, “Spill the truth. You’ve never been able to tell a good lie, Josh!” But while conjuring possible travel stories and lies, I wondered to myself, “Why am I not a great liar? What does it take to successfully get away with a lie?” In the past I’ve always tried lying face-to-face. But then I questioned: Have I been going about my lying schemes in the wrong way? Does the method of lying and medium used really have an impact?
For this little experiment I felt that it would be a bit odd if I were to contact one of my close friends or Cornell peers regarding my travel experiences (seeing how I usually only talk to my friends about recent news and happenings). For this reason I decided to contact a former co-worker of mine from the law firm I worked at this past summer while in Colorado. This co-worker and I are close, but haven’t spoken since my return to Cornell. I took the initiative to email my co-worker and tell her about my return trip and how the plane was experiencing technical difficulties, causing us to make a stop at a desolate and miserable airport in the middle of Nebraska. I then proceeded to mention the fact that I was stuck in the air plane for nearly 5 hours with little water to drink and surrounded by unhappy airline customers. I did not want the story to be too lengthy or outrageous because I wanted it to be believable. I then concluded the email by saying that my co-worker should give me a call when she had a free moment. Two days later my former co-worker phoned me. She began by inquiring more details regarding the story I had shared in my email, but I smoothly shrugged her inquiries and right away motioned my experiences at the Syracuse airport once I landed in New York. I told her that when I went to pick up my rental car, they were out of compact sedans so they upgraded me to a luxury-trimmed SUV for no extra charge. We then chatted about other things and the conversation ended with me saying I’d call her later that evening.
When I did call her back, I had informed her of the experiment I had put her through. She simply laughed at the thought of one of the stories being fictitious; she stated that they both seemed plausible and factual. I asked her if she knew which story was false, and I was shocked by her answer: she said that she didn’t believe that I had been upgraded to a luxury SUV. She said that not only did it not make much sense for the rental car company, but there was something about the inflection in the tone of my voice. She said I seemed to stutter a bit as though I were nervous while telling her; she could envision me fidgeting while sharing my experience with her. You could only image how surprised she was when she learned that the SUV story was actually true.
Hancock’s study on motivation and lying by means of a CMC environment suggests that deceit and deception can be achieved more efficiently. Because I used the environment of email to relay my lie, I was able to edit my message and control all details being stated. In addition, even though the feature-based model of digital deception mentions that one is least likely to use email as a means of deception because it is asynchronous and a recordable mean of communication, the study did find that in the content of lies, asynchronous modes were most likely to include explanatory lies (such as the one I relayed to my former co-worker). Furthermore, my email follows Zhou’s work on language patterns in deceit.
In the end I guess I learned a new trick and tip: when trying to tell a lie to my mother, perhaps I should send her an email!
-Joshua Navarro
My Comments:
http://comm245purple.blogspot.com/2007/09/assign-4-mind-over-medium.html
http://comm245purple.blogspot.com/2007/09/assignment-4-travel-deception.html
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
I specifically chose your email because most of the other blogs were about Facebook.
It's interesting how you took this assignment to brush up on your lying abilities.
It seems you proved a definite fact: it is easer to lie over email (lack of cues) than it is over the phone (more cues). Your friend was able to hear the changes in inflection of your voice!
Interesting story. I had fun reading it.
I am impressed with the way you ran your experiment. The only way I was comfortable doing it was by saying upfront what I was doing. I think you did a great job of running it clean and getting solid results
One thing that I did notice by describing the experiment first was that in doing so, I found that the way the lie was detected was in the content, but that that content would have been ignored had they not been prompted one was a lie. So she believed that they were both true, doesn't that say something?
Choosing email as your media for lying was a good idea. The message-based deception worked perfectly through this socially distant form of media, and since there were no visual cues (your co-worker could not hear your voice, see your eyes, or observe your body language) to notice while you were telling your far-fetched story, it must've been quite easy for your friend to believe you.
You put thought into your experiment, I liked it a lot! Good idea choosing someone outside of the University to try and convince that your story was true.
I find it interesting that you can't lie to your mother- I have the exact same problem! I think that there are certain people who just know you well enough to see straight through the small parts of your personality that change when you tell a lie. Although you may think you're getting away with it, a person like your mother can tell otherwise. Interestingly enough, you chose somebody who you were not nearly as close with you tell your lies to. In doing so, you gave yourself a little leeway, in a sense, to get away with a lie. Thus when she thought she detected a lie you were in fact telling the truth. I wonder if your mom would have known better?
Hey, I'm Brendan Suhrland. Well it seems as though you have a friend who's a little pessimistic (joking, of course). But in all seriousness, I liked the way you formulated the experiment. It seems as though all parts of your interaction with your friend flowed together very well, and that nothing seemed too contrived or forced together. Still, I do find it funny that she was more willing to accept the negative story rather than the positive one. Maybe we've all been stuck at one too many airports, and are still waiting for our free upgrades.
Hi, you wrote a fun story =), and it's really great that there's finally a post not about Facebook.
I totally agree with you: it's way much easier to lie via email than phone..not only because of the control over the content but also the lack of cues for people to find out whether it's a lie.
I thought you went about this in a very interesting way. I'm glad someone chose to do this option. You discussed your past experience, and applied it well. I'm glad you have improved your lying technique, I'm sure that will come in handy. It makes sense that the lack of cues and the asynchronous nature of email cmc communicatoins would allow for more sucessful deception, especially to a target who knows you well enough to sense a lie.
Post a Comment