Assignment 4: Travel deception?

For Assignment 4, I chose to complete option one. I chose this because I have too big of a guilty conscience to knowingly tell as big of a lie as a traveling story to my friends, so I decided to test the waters and see how good my lying skills are. I chose to tell a true story over the phone, a richer medium, because I knew that I would sound more comfortable and wouldn’t hesitate while telling the story. According to the feature based model of media and deception, the more recordable a medium is, the less likely users would be willing to speak untruthfully; however, despite being one of the least recorded methods of communication, fewer lies are told over the phone and more are told over email or instant messaging, much more recordable media. I told my friend Jess about a time when I was skiing with my family; my parents, my brother, and I were on the chairlift when we saw a man ski down the mountain straight into a tree, and drop dead (I told her more of the details over the phone). Her first reaction was to ask me if this story was true or not. Although I tried, I could not avoid this question, so I told her it was true. She also asked me why I decided to tell her this story at this particular time, so in order to avoid telling her I was completing a class assignment, I said that I would talk to her later.

I then started to talk to Jess online a few minutes later. I told a false travel story over this lean media because, according to DePaolo and the social distance hypothesis, lying makes people uncomfortable; using a less rich media such as instant messaging allows for a greater social distance between the target, my friend, and the deceiver, myself. I also chose this over emailing because we talk everyday over instant messaging, so it would not be considered out of the ordinary, whereas email would have been.

Because Jess and I are close friends, I told her a story about my trip to the Galapagos (a trip that actually occurred); although the trip to the Galapagos happened, the event that occurred did not. When I asked her if she thought I was lying, she said, without hesitation, yes. She told me that she knew I had been to the Galapagos but that the sea lion almost attacking me and my friend was a little too unrealistic. This was not an easy task to accomplish because I had not fully prepared this story. Because of my lack of preparation, I was planning on working off of Jess’ reactions; however, she did not react or reply in the middle of my story. Therefore, while I was telling the story, it was very asynchronous, much like an email, and decreased my opportunities for unplanned or spontaneous deception. We were also in a non-disturbed setting, which made it a little easier to lie, especially about an event that occurred in the past. I did not have to lie to her about something I was doing at the present time.

Jess relied on our close friendship to know whether or not I was telling the truth. When we talked over the phone, she could sense by how I told the skiing story that it could have been true. I was lively and there was no quiver or hesitation in my voice. However, online, there was hesitation. When I was writing the story, there were many breaks. Even though she knew I had been to the Galapagos, she knew I was lying to her by the way I told the story. I appeared uncomfortable and did not sound like myself while we were instant messaging.