4 Picking Up Girls on Facebook: A Scholarly Treatise

As Jamie Zawinski once said, "Social software is about making it easy for people to do other things that make them happy: meeting, communicating, and hooking up."

I couldn't agree more. Social software is basically good to the extent it gets its users laid. And while there have been other dating websites in the past, none have been nearly as effective as facebook. Why? Facebook is designed for lying. Not the bad, evil kinds of lies. The good kind. The kind that make you look cool. The kind that get you laid.

Of course I would never do this personally. Women find me attractive enough already. But if a friend were to ask me, I'd go through the seven lies of highly effective Facebook. This strategy will totally 100% get you laid. Trust me.

1. Get as many friends as possible. If you don't have at least 100 friends, you should probably kill yourself.


2. Write on lots of people's walls. Then they'll be obligated to write back on your wall, and you'll look really cool.


3. Make sure you're profile picture has alcohol in it. This will make it look like you have lots of friends and get invited to all the cool parties.


4. Under interests, list things like your favorite clothing brand and where you last went on vacation. This will subtly hint that you have lots of money in a tasteful way.


5. Say that you're married to another guy. Everyone will think you are really funny. Trust me.


6. If all your music tastes are really obscure, add at least one trashy pop album. This will make you look like a man of the people. Alternatively, if all your music is generic rock, add at least one album that no one has ever heard of. This will make you look classy.


7. Join lots of political groups about things like ending discrimination and saving Darfur. This absolves you from real world responsibilities like helping others and voting. If Martin Luther King Jr. were still alive today, this is exactly what he'd be doing.

Remember, success comes first on your profile, then in your pants, never the other way around.

So, what does this look like in practice? Let's borrow my friend's girlfriend as an example.

"Katie" has 436 friends at Stanford. Of course that's counting Leonhard Euler, who, as Wikipedia tells us, died in 1783. And although I can't prove it, I suspect that most of her 435 other friends are bullshit as well. Except me, I totally care.

Kate also has 265 wall posts. Mostly from hot guys. I asked her and she claims it's just coincidental. By the way, why do all my wall posts keep disappearing???

As for interests, indigenous ethnomedicine? The "ultimate truth"? 'Nuff said. And I'm sure you're totally blasting Gregorian chant on that iPod.

Talking with her later confirmed my suspicions. While many elements were "based in truth," Katie confirmed that several others were basically PDOMA.

Almost all of the signals I've mentioned thus far are classic message-based deceptions. That is, like conventional signals, these are low-cost displays that are associated with a characteristic. It is very easy to fake your interests or snap a few pics of yourself drinking with friends to make you look smarter or funnier or cooler than you really are. Even your choice of social network is arguably a form of message-based deception. As Danah Boyd writes, "MySpace and Facebook are new representations of the class divide in American youth." The idea is that Facebook and MySpace users tend to self-segregate along socioeconomic grounds. The fact that Katie is on Facebook and would send positive signals to future spouses and employers about her socioeconomic background.

In addition to false messages, Katie's profile contains identity-based deceptions as well. Like assessment signals, identity-based deception is a more costly form of signaling. If messaged-based deception is like telling a lie, identity-based deception is the equivalent of living a lie. Going to Stanford would fall under this category because the purposeful visibility of both the financial cost and the admissions selectivity. The same arguably goes for her many pictures from exotic vacations (that signal wealth), since these places stay a part of you even after you leave. And of course once she graduates her future employer will provide yet another form of identity-based deception in the form of social proofing.

4.2 The Search for "Self" on the Facebook

After asking my friend to rate his Facebook profile and reviewing it myself, I have come to the conclusion that he is trying to portray his ideal self. Therefore, his Facebook profile is laden with inaccuracies; which does not surprise me since Facebook is the perfect medium for identity-based digital deception. It is also important to note, although he deceives frequently throughout his profile, the magnitude of the deception is not that great, since they are essentially "variations" of the truth, instead of blatant irrefutable lies.

We started with his profile picture which he rated as a 4 and I agree. His current profile picture is him wearing a suit and tie, which I think is a combination of his ideal self and his true self. It is ideal because he strives to be a successful business person. Yet, at the same time it is his true self because he has always been a motivated person with a focus on his profession but one couldn’t take him seriously when he wore wrinkled polo shirts, a fitted hat, sagging jeans, and Timberlands. Basically, it is not his actual self because most likely if you saw him walking down the street or even on his way to work, he would not be wearing a suit.

Next, he rated his tagged photos as a 4. Interestingly enough, he is one of the few people I know that does not untag his photos. His pictures range from his younger partying years, to his educational trip to Japan, and to time spent with his family. The only reason I believe that his tagged photos are deceiving is because it doesn’t portray his actual self, since those are not qualities he expresses at present. By looking at his tagged pictures, you would think that he goes out to party a lot more than he currently does; now that he’s matured and has a serious long-term girlfriend he tends to shy away from the “party scene.”

He rated his basic info as a 5, which is lie. Part of your basic information is your hometown. He displayed Red Lake Indian Reservation, which he lived about 2 years of his adolescent life, but he grew up for 18+ years in Chapel Hill, NC. I believe he utilized the social associations as a self-presentational tactic. He is trying to associate himself with his Native American heritage, because his culture is important to him and most people mistake him for Latino.

He rated his personal information, which included “Activities,” “Interests,” “Favorite Books,” “Favorite Quotes,” and “About Me,” between a four and a five. Once again he utilized social associations, by filling his quotes section with Native American proverbs and by quoting Emerson which would suggest that he is philosophical and educated (which is an over-attribution of his personality based on limited information). He used his “About Me” section to utilize the self description, which is another self-presentational tactic. Once again he took this opportunity to present his ideal self; he stated characteristics that he was trying to achieve (i.e. “Trying to live with respect to life”).

His education and work information is accurate, which he confirmed with his rating of a 5. I believe this is true because it is a lot more costly to deceive people about your education and work. Lying about education and work information is a much greater magnitude than fluffying about your favorite book or TV show.

Lastly, he rated his wall a 1. I decided to add the wall aspect of Facebook because it adds an interesting dynamic. Although, he does not write the messages on his own wall, he monitors it since he has the ability to delete entries or disable the wall all together. I feel that Facebook’s wall demonstrates the ought self. In society, especially because of online tools such as Facebook, people feel that they should have a lot of friends. Facebook takes it one step further, not only is it important to have a lot of friends but to truly show that you are popular and loved, you need to have sufficient wall posts. Although his wall is packed full of posts, none of the people who write on his wall are truly his friends. Most of them are old partying buddies and he rarely or never returns their messages. Let me make myself clear, it is not that he does not have friends but it’s the fact that his true friends rarely post on his wall because they usually call or talk to him in person. So why does he keep the posts on his wall? It could be sheer laziness or it could be the social pressure to have a bunch of meaningless wall posts on your Facebook page.

Assignment 4.1 - I am a terrible liar online.

After struggling with this for a while, I finally decided to use my roommate for this assignment. Anyone who knows me well is aware of certain verbal and physical cues that give away when I'm not being completely honest, and since my day-to-day life is fairly routine (and the people I'm close to know my routines - I'm accused of lying when I break them), there is very little I could lie about to a friend about and not be laughed at. Meanwhile, my roommate and I don't know each other well enough for her to have recognized these cues, but we're comfortable enough around each other to discuss certain aspects of our lives. However, I think that either of the participants knowing the other well in this kind of experiment will dramatically affect the results, and it has just as much to do with whether or not deception detection is more accurate in FtF vs. CMC as the type of lie (in terms of subject matter) told.

Lie #1:

I told my roommate I was going to NYC this weekend to meet up with a friend from high school who'd opened an art gallery. This is a bit on the outlandish side, all things considered, but I threw in finer details such as the name of the gallery, the street, and type of art. She looked skeptical at first, but seemed to believe it once I supplied a good amount of detail to support my story.

Lie #2:

Since she's constantly on Facebook, I sent her a message saying I was going to a party downtown and to lock the door (she usually leaves it unlocked) if she left for the night because I wouldn't get in until late. She responded with "ok, have fun" and left it at that. I got back to our room at 8pm that night to find that she'd locked the door.

Conclusions:

I reminded her of both instances (both lies were told on separate days) and explained the experiment I was conducting. When asked to guess which one was the lie, she almost immediately guessed the Facebook one. Her reasoning? "It doesn't make sense to go to a party Sunday night if you have Monday-morning classes." Not that this has stopped anyone before, mind you. She was actually surprised to learn the opposite, since apparently my story was really convincing and I gave no physiological or verbal cues that I wasn't being truthful.

As the theories discussed in last week's class are concerned, I may have been working with an inherent truth bias due to us all possessing it to one degree or another, and the fact that I've never given her the impression that I was less than trustworthy, so there was no need to be suspicious of the FtF lie. This may have worked against the Facebook lie because of the common belief that everything is dubious (at best) on the internet, regardless of its source. However, the fact that she said it "didn't make sense" to go partying on a Sunday seemed to have more to do with an assumption regarding my habits (and, by extension, my view on that kind of thing) than it not being inherently believable, since Sunday parties aren't at all uncommon. I would also point out that I had time to pre-plan the FtF lie; I didn't rehearse it, however - I merely planned the scenario and that alone would've reduced the latency periods and speech disturbances while I concocted the details.

It seems as if the deception detection theory doesn't take any of this into account, and would be best applied in a controlled setting with two strangers.

4.2 Not Too Far Off

Facebook is a psychological space in which members can manage their impression through selective self-presentation. Donath distinguishes between two types of signals that can be found in the facebook profiles. Assessment signals are costly displays that are difficult to change or come by, which includes the profile picture, networks, major, email address, phone number etc. Unlike assessment signals, conventional signals are comparably low cost displays that are easily changeable and therefore an easy target for deceptive identity manipulation such as activities, interests, favorite music, and favorite TV shows. Given the extent of control over assessment and conventional signals, do people engage in deception on their facebook profiles?

To answer this question, I applied Catalina’s method by asking a friend to report the accuracy of the elements in his profile and then rate it based on a scale from 1 (completely inaccurate) to 5 (completely accurate), which I then verified.. For elements in “basic information” and “contact information,” he rated the accuracy as 5 while for personal information that included interests and a general “About Me” section, he rated it as 4 because he did not update recent changes in interest. After verification, I found most of his profile to be accurate except a comment (clearly a joke) that says “People usually mistake me for Brad Pitt.”

Unlike online dating profiles in which Catalina found that people tend to lie frequently to appear attractive yet subtly to appear honest, people do not lie frequently and with very low magnitude on their facebook profiles. The difference between the frequencies of lies may be due to the differing self-presentational goals. Catalina predicted that the goal is to appear attractive, which is why people tend to lie frequently while the facebook profile is generally used to present themselves to people they already met. These findings do not support the Social Distance Theory that predicts the people tend to lie more through leaner (socially distant) media because lying does not come easily. A theory that does predict that people will deceive less on lean media is the Media Richness Theory, due to the lack of cues and the unavailability of feedback. Yet MRT does not sufficiently explain the results from the study. Instead, the accuracy found in facebook profiles support the Feature Based theory, which says that one is less likely to deceive if the media is asynchronous, recordable, and undistributed. Although it is distributed, because the facebook profile is asynchronous and most importantly recordable the chances of getting caught and the consequences of putting up even a jokingly deceiving message up is detrimental to one’s image. This is perhaps why he no longer claims to look like Brad Pitt and instead his “twin brother who is not exactly identical but yet not too far off.”

Comment 1
Comm 245 Blue: Assignment 4/Option 2 - My Best Friend Lies!?

Comment 2
Comm 245 Blue: Assignment 4-1 Lies and Deceptions

4 An honest facebook friend

Seriously, though. Looking back, one of the most striking things we saw last week was the graph of reported vs. actual (weight, height, etc etc)--striking to me because even though deviations existed, the mainstream web surfer was actually relatively accurate. I almost threw my friend out of the assignment when I asked him to rate his profile (photo, info, groups, pictures) and he gave me back all 5's, but I decided to take a look first and make sure I could yell at him later and maybe guilt him into a free sandwich for being clearly wrong and putting no thought into helping me.

As it turned out, my findings vibed with Joe's (see below) so much that I almost feel like writing this post is pointless. Not only was everything exactly what I would have written about this guy, down to the ironic facebook groups and the laid-back photos of him and his girlfriend, but thinking about it later made me feel like that's what I should have expected. (I'd been primed to expect some serious untruths.) Like Joe said, the point of a Facebook profile isn't to stand out as a potential mate--that's a whole different ballgame and the rules are completely different. The goal of Facebook is to make sure your friends are up to date with what's going on in your life. Why would you want to deceive them? Our definition of digital deception is "intentional control of a tech-mediated message to create false beliefs." Finding that among my friends on Facebook is rare, especially given that we're looking for intentional manipulation. I think this is an example of Media Richness Theory--even if he wanted to max out the equivocality and lie about himself, Facebook is asynchronous (thus verifiable) and even with photos and video it's still a text-based environment (very lean). It also looks like a blow to Social Distance Theory--because you can't control who looks at your profile, it's about as impersonal as you can get, and lying should be easy. What's more, I know from real life that he's not one to avoid a white lie. So Social Distance Theory seems like it got it backwards.

Overall, I kind of wish I'd thought about it a little more and chosen the other option so I could play around with deceiving others a little more--that way I could have at least guaranteed some deception to analyze.

(1) For Assignment #4, I chose option 1: I created my own deception experiment. I decided to call roommate from last year to invite her to lunch. When we actually got together for lunch, the topic of weekend activities arose, and I found my perfect chance to insert a little lie about what I did. I started to tell her about my weekend, and I told her that I went to New Jersey to visit my family and go to my cousin’s sweet 16. I tried to elaborate on some details of my supposed weekend activities—for example: how my bus ride was incredibly long and boring, how the weather was really cold, and how my cousin’s huge birthday bash was a success. I made up details, telling her how my cousin looked “gorgeous in her grayish-blue dress.” My friend then asked how my cousin’s hair was done, and I hesitated before I responded (to give the effect of me actually trying to remember this tiny detail) by describing to her the typical up-do many prom-goers happen to fashion off. This was all a huge fabrication and I continued to make up details as I went along with the conversation. This was a lie using rich media.

Later that day, I called my roommate to see if she wanted to study sometime soon, and I again, brought up casual conversation (this time over the phone). I steered it into the direction of my boyfriend, and as we continued our discussion, she asked how he was doing. I told her about my previous weekend, where I went to visit my boyfriend in New York City. Again, I relayed the long bus ride down, except I told her everything I did (from doing homework, to napping, to playing with my Rubik’s cube, to watching a couple of episodes of the hit television show The Office). I also gave her a day-by-day breakdown of what I did, where we went to eat, etc. I told her the truth using lean(er) media. My roommate then asked how I could afford to miss two weekends at Cornell (we are both really busy, over-achievers, and have a tough time taking time away from school), where I then told her that one of my weekends did not actually happen. I asked her to guess which weekend didn’t happen, and she said it was the weekend I spent with my boyfriend.

(2) She was surprised to discover that she was wrong! In order to maintain my appearance of not lying and not deceiving her when talking to her in person, I attempted to keep my story straight and flowing. I threw in random, fabricated details which I felt would give my story some substance. I felt that with the face to face interaction, I had more control over what I could convey. I used my hands (like I always do when I talk), and I was able to add in gestures, such as hesitating to recall a small detail. By using an extremely rich media, I was able to pass along more social cues such as controlling my expressions, and hand motions. My actions were very in harmony with the Media Richness Theory, which states that the leaner the medium, the less ambiguity about a message would exist. Thus meaning, that the richer the medium, the more ambiguity a message could have. The leaner medium was our conversation over the phone, therefore, the phone conversation was supposed to be the unambiguous exchange (which is true in this case). While I tried very hard to go unsuspected, I’m still a little bit surprised that she didn’t catch onto my lie because according to a study, “it appears we have to concentrate when we lie” (Wallace 51), and I definitely spent more time trying to “recall” the details of my weekend with my cousin. I figure it would have been easier for my roommate to detect my concentration in person since there are more social cues to critique.

(3) My partner relied on mainly the content of what I told her, as well as some of my hand gestures and motions. She knew how important family was to me, and she knows that they come before my boyfriend which is why she chose the first weekend to be true. The Social Distance Theory says that she would think I was lying when talking to her over the phone because the theory claims that people are uncomfortable when they lie, and thus, choose to distance themselves from lying by choosing a leaner medium to communicate through.

A4.2 - Facebook Speaks the Truth!

After hearing the assignment of performing a similar interview to Catalina's study I immediately had reservations. I doubted as to whether this would support the findings of Catalina due to sizable role difference of Facebook and online dating sites. The goal of keeping in touch with friends presents vastly different requirements than trying to attract someone to a relationship. Knowing this it seemed clear to me that people on Facebook would lie less, or not at all as this betrays trust between friends who can relatively easily verify your claims. With this prediction in hand I started my interview.

A Facebook profile consists of a mix of conventional and assessment signals. Assessment signals consist of a Cornell email, major, certain address information and the myriad of uploaded photos. Conventional signals are the interests, about me, and favourite ..., parts of a profile. After going through the profile, my friend listed the accuracy of everything at a 5 save for interests and music which she rated a 4. Those 2 fields rated at a 4 were simply because they were slightly outdated. As for validation, I noted the she did indeed listen to the music and watch the movies she listed. In addition she had already talked about books on her list to me prior to the assignment. So far my predictions have held true, but why?

Numerous theories are available to explain why my friend did not lie on her Facebook profile. Media Richness Theory (MRT) and Feature-based theories directly support my findings. The complex task of lying is difficult to accomplish in a small, simple text/still photo environment especially when coupled with the feature based arguments that Facebook is an asynchronous and recordable environment making it easy to verify information.

The third theory, Social Distance theory, is a little more difficult to explain. SDT predicts that people will use the media with the largest social distance to lie in order to separate themselves from the target and avoid the unpleasantness of lying. With that in mind, many people may propose that an asynchronous CMC based media such as Facebook would be ideal for lying. As a result, my findings contrast with SDT predictions. However, I propose that Facebook is not as socially distant as it may first appear. Many people check Facebook multiple times throughout the day, commenting on changes to profiles in FtF and other CMC based media. It is also possible for wall posting to approach synchronous communication. In essence people often quickly know what and when information on your profile changes (thanks to the newsfeed). This vastly reduces the social distance as friends can easily challenge one about changes to a profile. The very nature and makeup (almost friends only) of Facebook reduces its social distance to the point where even SDT would predict that people would not lie on Facebook.

A few interesting observations arose during the experiment that warrant extra attention. Firstly, how do we define lying on Facebook? Certainly explicit lies would count, but what about omissions? A profile may be completely factual, but is it the whole truth and would we consider that a lie? Or do we simply view omissions as a compromise to keeping a profile short and sweet? Secondly, theories predicting how people lie seem to fail to consider the purpose of similar media. Arguably, Facebook and MySpace are exactly the same. However, Facebook primarily is for friends already met in real life. The origins of Facebook only strengthen this as it was meant for college students only in the beginning. Myspace in contrast is more of a general networking site. Lying to friends is a lot more serious than to the random strangers found on Myspace. We can see that the issue is more complicated than any one theory can predict by itself. Personally I find it reassuring that people, at least from my observations, are more real on Facebook than what our gut reaction may lead us to believe.

Comment 1

Comment 2

4 - Globe Trekker

Firstly, I would like to make the disclaimer that I am the worst liar in the world. This is evidenced by the results of my experiment. I am, however, a good storyteller, so I kept my friend interested when I told her of my ‘treks across the globe’. My lovely housemate Maria volunteered herself for the project, however I mistakenly asked for her assistance after realizing that she already knew a little about my traveling history. This made the challenge of lying more difficult, and may have affected the results of this experiment.

Nevertheless, I was excited about testing my skills as a deviant on Maria. First, I told her face to face of my travels to Bangladesh with my best friend, Sumaya. I didn’t see too much of the country since there wasn’t all that much to see, however I spent most of the time in Sumaya’s family’s house, where most of her extended family lives. They were incredibly nice to me, even though they could only speak broken English at best, and fed me Bengali food in mass quantities. I went on to describing how in Bangladesh they have no toilets, and how people would have to do their #2 in a hole in the bathroom.

My second face to face story was a brief synopsis of my trip to California two summers ago, where I visited my family and did some trite things like visit the Golden Gate Bridge. It wasn’t extraordinary, but it was a story to tell Maria.

I think readers of this blog might have already guessed that the fake story, although very detailed, was the first. My mistake in this experiment is that previously, in my knowing Maria, I have already shared with her my most riveting stories of traveling to France and Italy. I had no problem being equivocal yet fluent in my story about Bangladesh, which agrees with the Media Richness Theory in that the more dodgy communication becomes, the richer one’s medium of preference becomes. Sumaya had told me these stories before, and I simply retold them as if I were on the trip myself. Interestingly enough, Maria did not use non-verbal and physiological means to detect my truthfulness (methods that are available distinctly for FtF interaction), but simply used logic in her understanding. According to her, people tend to embellish when they lie, and she discovered mine right on the spot. This mindset does not necessarily add to evidence proving Media Richness Theory.

Webmail saved the day as my lean medium for Globe-Trekker journal keeping. Digital deception came strongly into play here as I looked up tourism facts on Thailand to tell her my story. In this lean medium, I was given more time to research a feasible lie rather than be forced to think on my feet, and thus was able to tell her of the mountainous landscape of Phuket and its world-famous diving areas. The Impression Management Model became very apparent to me as I found it very comfortable to fabricate a tall tale via e-mail. The locus of my conversation was myself, which gave me reason to prefer a lean medium that gave me more control. Depaulo’s Social Distance Theory was the clincher, since I actually found it uncomfortable to lie about a subject I was not very knowledgeable about. Again, a “socially distant” media like email suited my purposes. One thing I realized that didn’t completely match the Impression Management Theory in this case was that my story had a positive valence, however I felt as if I preferred talking about Phuket in a mediated condition as opposed to an unmediated one. Talking via email gave me time to research my story.

My second story via email was a factual story about a trip to Ontario when I was much younger. It was somewhat vague in memory since it happened when I was about 4 years old, however I remembered vivid details like wearing a yellow parka that I thought was pretty nifty at Niagra Falls. Maria was able to see through this set of stories as well since the latter sounded more like I was telling a story, i.e. a natural series of events was occurring, as opposed to the story about Phuket which seemed more factual.

From my experiences, certain theories matched with particular lies on a situational basis. Media Richness Theory worked with the FtF Bangladesh story, but not with O’Sullivan’s Model or Social Distance Theory. The Impression Management Model and Social Distance Theory worked well with the CMC Phuket story, but not with Media Richness Theory. Although Maria saw through both lies, my rationale for having created each was concurrent with certain theories. The most important thing to consider, however, is if I need to work on my lying skills….

Assignment 4/Option 2 - My Best Friend Lies!?

In considering the anatomy of one of my closest friend’s Facebook profiles, I realized that some of the simplest and most modest aspects of her self-description were unintentionally deceiving. Though her profile consists only of a default picture and a collection of assorted interests, I feel that a stranger could get a good idea of her personality or just as easily come away with a somewhat distorted perception.

To begin, my friend’s default photograph is a picture of her from the 9th grade. While her appearance in the picture is clearly different from her current appearance, a stranger may not have guessed that this was a phony. Rather, a given person might have assumed that her date of birth or year in school was a lie based on her picture. Due to the lean nature of the media, only the viewer who knows my friend will be aware of the contradiction. In addition, while she rated over 50% of her self-proclaimed Interests as 5’s (completely accurate), 20% were 2’s and 20% were 3’s. Her most accurately rated Interests were fairly predictable – what was surprising were her least accurately rated Interests. Some of the things I associate with her very highly (“being late,” along with some jokes with her friends and boyfriend) were not among her most accurately rated. Had I misjudged my good friend? Or been led astray by this lean media? Seeing that 40% of her self-proclaimed Interests were 2’s and 3’s, I considered the medium at hand – Facebook – to blame.

Because, by nature, the Facebook profile is readily editable, hers contained fewer identity-based assessment signals than conventional signals. Conventional signals are entirely temporary and thus prone to change. Her photograph and her interests can be altered with the click of a button. The deception of my friend’s Facebook profile can be attributed both to the Social Distance Theory and the Hyperpersonal Model. The link to the Social Distance Theory is merely that, due to lean media, it is easy and more frequent for deception to occur. The Hyperpersonal Model is a better way to discuss this phenomenon: selective self-presentation is the main factor. According to the theory, people lie subtly to appear more attractive. None of my friend’s lies were drastic, nor were they out of character. They were merely a bit different than her truest beliefs. The reduced cues of such an asynchronous medium as Facebook allowed deception to go unnoticed to the unsuspecting profile viewer.

Essentially, while my friend’s lies were minimal in significance, they were fairly common among her limited profile. They were undetectable to even me until I asked her to assess her interests – thus, proving the effectiveness of lean media subtlety and the truth behind the Social Distance Theory and Hyperpersonal Model.

Assignment # 4: Can you detect my deception?

Part I: This weekend, I resolved to conduct my own deception experiment. To begin, I invited a friend I had met over the summer to come to dinner with me so we could catch up. As we waited for our food in Applebee's, we reminisced about the time we spent in Cleveland this summer. As we laughed and joked, the conversation turned to what we were currently up to. I thought this would be a perfect time to test out my deception skills. Thus, I told him about how I went to New York City to see my favorite band, Paramore, play at the Crazy Donkey in Long Island. He knew how much I loved Paramore, considering the fact that every time he came to visit me I was playing a track off the their new album, Riot!. I explained to him how my best friend had found out that they were playing around where we live and she thought that it would be fun to see them live. To make the story more believable, I mentioned how I had never seen a band preform live. Thus, the opportunity to see them in a small venue, where I could be close enough to touch their instruments, was novel. I went into detail about how I took the Shortline last Friday night with only enough clothes for the concert. I told him about how my heart sank when the bus was delayed for about 1 hour and how the person in the seat next to me insisted on eating something that smelled like a dead cat. He sat there and laughed at the sheer chaos that was my trip to see Paramore. As I went into detail about the environment prior to the show, highlighting the army of wannabe fans, and the fight that I could tell he believed me because he asked questions about what songs they performed and how close I was to the main stage. I answered all of his questions with as much detail as possible so that there would be no doubt that I did in fact attend the concert. In this scenario, I used rich media, face to face communication, to conduct my deception experiment.

Part II: To continue my deception experiment, I decided to call up my friend the next day when I knew he had a break from work. He told me how bored he was at work and thanked me for rescuing him with my phonecall. He asked what I was up to, and I thought that this would be the perfect time to tell the truth about what I did last weekend. I told him that I was uploading pictures onto my computer from my friend's surprise birthday party last weekend. I told him how I helped throw her a surprise birthday party at Stella's for her 21st. As I went into detail about how I contacted all of her friends with personalized invitations, I could sense the confusion in his voice. I mentioned how I was planning the party for weeks and how many times she almost found out about the party. In the middle of my talking about how I had a friend pretend they would be taking her to dinner at Stella's, he finally asked how I could have possibly went to New York City for the weekend and planned an elaborated birthday party in Ithaca. I used lean media, the telephone, in the second scenario.

Part III: Afterwards, I asked him to tell me which traveling story was the truth and which one was a lie. He hesitated for a second and then informed me that he thought the second story was a lie. The result of the experiment was that the truth was not detected correctly for the lean media. Instead, the lie was reasoned to be true, in light of the rich media.

To accomplish my lying, I worked on my self-presentation goals- i.e. appearing honest. The deception strategy that I used was lying subtly. I had in fact attended a Paramore concert at the Crazy Donkey, but had done so two summers ago. Thus, we did not have to stumble over inventing details because we had somewhere to draw from. I think that this helped to accomplish lying because there were no nonverbal cues to pick up that would help him to detect any deception on my end. In addition, I knew that since the media used was rich, I needed to make sure that my self-presentation was methodical. However, with respect to the use of the lean media, the telephone, I realize that the only thing that my friend had to focus his attention was the content with which we told our initial lie. When it came to discerning which story I told that was a lie we realized that the reason why he had such difficulty was because we had failed to display cues such as gaze aversions or "ah" speech disturbances. Overall, we feel like the truth bias also played a vital role in the outcome of his choice. He believed that I was going to tell the truth when I spoke with him, and trusted that I would not misrepresent myself.

Assignment 4

This weekend I spent a great deal of time with my friend Jessica. This allowed me to conduct an experiment to determine whether she could detect lies regarding my traveling memories in both rich and lean media. Here are my two encounters:

TRUTH in LEAN MEDIA
This morning I emailed (lean media) my friend Jessica to tell her about my weekend. I told her that on Saturday I went to Rochester to see a local band play at a venue. I told her about the car ride, the city of Rochester, the musicians and the great restaurants we ate at. I described in great depth the outfits the performers wore and my thoughts and feelings throughout the trip. In addition to giving a very detailed account of the events, I also used emoticons, exclamation points and larger sized fonts to better convey my emotions.

LIE in RICH MEDIA
On Sunday I ran into Jessica on the street (face to face interaction), by College Town Bagels. She asked me what I had done the previous night. Instead of telling her the truth (I stayed in and went to sleep early), I explained that I had gone to a friend’s house, watched several movies and hung out on the porch until the morning. I decided to lie because I wanted her to think I had an exciting, eventful and memorable time and not a ordinary and dull one. Because I was telling a lie, my facial expressions and hand gestures were not spontaneous but instead were forced.

Today, I spoke to Jessica and explained to her my experiment. She told me that she believed my story about my trip to Rochester but had doubts about the story I had told her on Sunday. When I informed her that I had lied, she responded that she had noticed something strange in my behavior when I was narrating my story. This supports the Media Richness Theory, which states that we are more likely to lie face to face (rich media) than we are via email (lean media).

To accomplish lying and make my story sound plausible, I tried to make lots of hand gestures and eye contact. Also I chose my words very carefully and diverted the attention off of me several times by asking her questions about her weekend. The media negatively affected my strategy because I lacked a buffer between Jessica and I and felt extremely exposed. This supports the Social Distance Theory which states that lying is uncomfortable and that we use the most “social distant” media to do it.

Jessica told me she was able to detected my lying during our face to face interaction. She relied on the usual cues. She stated that my eye contact seemed too excessive as well as my hand gestures and that my refusal to discuss my weekend made her even more suspicious. Further, Jessica revealed that I took long pauses between my sentences, giving the impression that I was carefully selecting my choice of words. This is something I didn’t know I was doing. Deception detection is more accurate in face to face interactions (rich media) because there are more cues (my hand gestures and facial expressions) and chances for feedback than in a lean media interaction (i.e. email) which can help uncover lies. Also, in CMC, liars can take more time to rehearse lies because of the asynchronous nature of the environment (i.e. time is expected to elapse in between email responses).

In conclusion, I communicated to my friend Jessica two traveling memories: a true one in a lean media (email), and a lie in a rich media (face to face). My lie was noticed right away. What gave it away were my facial expressions, hand gestures, delays in between responses and unnecessary eye contact. All these factors contributed to Jessica’s deception detection.





COMMENTS:
http://comm245blue.blogspot.com/2007/09/assignment-4option-2-my-best-friend.html

http://comm245blue.blogspot.com/2007/09/4-cancun-or-bahamas.html

Assignment 4 Option 1

I decided to conduct this experiment on my housemate Andy. I figured he would be a good subject because we are friends but he doesn’t know much about my past before I got to Cornell, ensuring that he wouldn’t be able to discount my lie based on knowledge of my past. I chose to tell him the false travel story face to face. My choice was supported by the Media Richness Theory, which states that a person will choose a rich media for more equivocal tasks and a lean media for less equivocal tasks. Since I was going to be telling him an ambiguous story with the intent to be deceptive, my communication was highly equivocal, therefore appropriating a rich media such as face to face. Since I was going to be deceptive, I wanted the ability to see his reactions to my story and adjust accordingly to make it more believable. While telling him the false story about the time I went to Spain with my family I took advantage of the ability to do so, changing the direction of the story when I saw he was beginning to doubt the truth of my statements. For example, I started to tell him that my family participated in a running of the bulls and when I saw from his reaction that he didn’t believe this at all I began to talk about the food we had there, getting away from the risky detection topic.
I chose to tell him the true story using Instant Messenger, a lean media. The Media Richness Theory would support this choice to use a leaner media for a less equivocal task, such as telling a true story about a travel experience. I told Andy about my trip to Europe two summers ago and how I visited Paris and London. He seemed very interested and overall the conversation went well.
After I had told him both stories, I asked him if he could tell in which one I was lying. To my surprise, he got it right. He correctly predicted that I was lying in person and telling the truth on Instant Messenger. I thought that the Social Distance Theory would have cause him to think I was lying on IM since it states that people are uncomfortable lying and choose to distance themselves through leaner media. However, he believed what I said on IM and not in person. When I asked him how he knew I was lying in person, he stated that I was rocking back and forth when I was telling the story and not really maintaining eye contact. He also stated that my statement about the running of the bulls was too unbelievable and over the top.
His detection is supported by the hypothesis we spoke about in class that detection is more accurate in face to face communication. The first part of the hypothesis states that there are many more cues and feedback in face to face communication as compared to leaner media. One of the reasons Andy detected my lie was due to my nonverbal cues (nervous rocking and lack of eye contact). These cues would not have been available in other media. The last part of the hypothesis states that lies in CMC can take more time and are editable. Due to the fact that I was coming up with the story on the spot, I made up the eccentric tale of running with the bulls. If I had been in a CMC communication, I would have had more time to simulate my story and be sure to not send a comment such as the above.

http://comm245blue.blogspot.com/2007/09/assignment-4-1-lies-and-deceptions.html
http://comm245blue.blogspot.com/2007/09/4-lies-and-truths-of-travel.html

4 Little Black (Face)Book

I asked my friend to rank his Facebook page in the manner discussed in the assignment and here were his responses.

Photo - 4

Housing and School Info - 5

Information (Holistically) - 4

Activities - 3

Music - 4

TV - 3

Movies - 3

Books - 4

Also worth mentioning is that he admits to frequently untagging photos of himself and deleting comments on his wall.

I concluded that the profile picture and the housing and school information sections of the profile are the most analogous to assessment signals, whereas the rest of the information is similar to conventional signals.  

The profile picture is costly because it displays all of your visual characteristics, and once you posted a picture of yourself, you now have to be consistent with that image.  If you change it to reflect a different gender or race, people will notice and your deception will be detected.  Similarly, your school/residential information is relatively public and people can use another source to confirm that information.  In this way, lying about either would be very noticeable.

Your other information is less costly.  Changing your favorite books or movies is less likely to tip off a viewer.  Deception in these areas is easier because the information doesn't have to be as consistent and you can change it whenever you want.   

For the most part, I agreed with my friends accuracy scores.  He knew and was willing to admit to me when his page embellished certain attributes and where it reflected him accurately.  I did find it interesting that he felt overall he was providing information that scored 4, but when asked to break it down, his mean score was a 3.4.  This indicates he thinks he is more accurate than he is. 

All his confessions fell in line with Catalina's research.  He agreed that he only listed the books, movies, and activities that sounded the coolest, or conveyed a more attractive self.  None of his listed activities were fictional, he just used selective self-presentation to put forth his best foot, so to speak.  This supports Catalina's idea that deception is frequent but subtle, as well as strategic.  This allows my friend to appear attractive and honest simultaneously.  Especially drawing on the fact that he posts more pictures of himself surfing (one of his listed activities) than he does collecting baseball cards (one of his not listed activities).  In this way, he can further support his selected self-presentation, while appearing honest. 

I have one qualm about all this, however.  Catalina's research makes sense for a dating site.  Facebook is all about social networking, but I don't know too many people who "meet" on facebook.  For the most part, facebook friending occurs meeting in real life first.  If we understand this to be true (which you can argue isn't) than why do people feel the need to deceive and present themselves in such a favorable manner?

Facebook Actually Doesn’t Lie… More or Less

After interviewing one person on the validity of their Facebook profile I had thought that perhaps I interviewed one of the few who are honest about themselves online. In order to test my assumption I interviewed two more people. Of course their answers were almost identical to the first subject. The conclusion that I came to is that although Facebook offers a variety of ways to display oneself, it also makes it hard to lie about who you really are. One question I asked my subjects is why they did not lie about themselves on their profile. All three subjects said that their friends would see it and question it, or write on their wall and tell them to change it.
After the interview I noticed that the worst score of all of the subjects was a four out of five. I was particularly surprised by this because the social distance theory would suggest that because Facebook can connect people all across the world; people would create impressions about themselves that may not be particularly true but because they are also connected with close friends, they are not able to do so. When comparing the amount of deception with the chart which we went over in class it would be most similar to email, where less then 10% of lies were told.
I think it would be interesting if the same study was done with a new category specifically for Facebook. My prediction would be that Facebook would have the lowest percentage of lies when compared to; face to face, telephone, instant messaging and email. I also noticed that some of my subjects had numerous parts of their profile where they had nothing written. Turns out that they all decided to leave that section of their profile blank because it is where they would have most likely twisted the truth about themselves. This was a perfect example of selective self presentation and also how one can tell the truth but yet not be completely truthful.

4 - Facebook Deception

Facebook is a social networking site. I decided to have my friend analyze their Facebook profile, and to identify any false statements that he may make in his profile. I had never actually taken the time to fully read this person's Facebook profile, so I was very interested to learn about the truths and lies in his profile.

Social distance theory directly relates to Facebook profiles and the ease people tend to have in being deceptive in their profiles. Facebook provides users with the opportunity to create false impressions, both about their physical appearance and personal traits, hobbies, background, etc.

My friend's profile was mostly true; he identified only two items that he lists under hobbies that are no longer true, but were accurate at one point in time in the past. Other than these two items, everything else he mentions in his Information and Education sections are true.

His real-life personality indicates that he would not lie in his Facebook profile. His pictures were true to his appearance. In addition, he is tagged in many photos. Photo tagging in Facebook can, potentially, lessen someone's ability to lie about their appearance; however, we can choose to un-tag ourselves if we don't like the way we look in any photos.

His photos portray a very easygoing, happy individual who enjoys hanging out with friends. For the three years I have known my friend, I have personally witnessed these characteristics and believe that his Facebook pictures accurately portray elements of his personality.

The online impression I get of my friend based on his Facebook profile resembles the impressions I have of him after face-to-face interactions. However, after examining my friend's Facebook profile in more detail, it was evident that social distance theory did play a small part in my friend's profile design. Even after he pointed out that two items were incorrect in his profile, he did not go back and remove the items. Here, social distance theory presents the idea that my friend sees no urgent need to update his profile because it is in an online profile; he would not lie about his hobbies if he were introducing himself to someone face-to-face.


Comment 1
Comment 2

4- Cancun or Bahamas?

I decided to tell a friend a lie about a traveling experience in rich media and the truth about a traveling experience in lean media. I wanted the lie to contradict the actual truth, so I lied about my travel during one specific time period. This way, there was a contradiction within my two conversations with the same person, so it would then be obvious I lied in at least one of the conversations. I told my friend, face-to-face, about a trip I made to the Bahamas my spring break of my senior year in high school, which is the lie. Then on AIM, later that day, I recalled my trip to Cancun during spring break of my senior year in high school. Clearly I could not have gone on both trips, so my friend pointed out the contradiction prompting me to ask, “In which conversation do you think I was telling the truth, and in which do you think I was lying?”

My friend immediately responded on AIM that he thought I was lying about going to the Bahamas. His reasoning did not have much to do with the social cues of our conversation, but rather his personal encounters with spring-breakers. He told me he knows that a lot of high-school kids go to Bahamas for spring-break, where spring-break in Cancun conjures up images of college-kids on MTV spring-break shows. So, he thought I went to the Bahamas and not Cancun, which is the opposite of what I actually did.

Just as the study on online dating predicted, I lied about a fact/achievement in ftf communication. This is consistent with the Media Richness Theory. I wanted to be ambiguous in my lie, and lies by nature are ambiguous, so I used the richest media, face-to-face. I thought my facial expressions and tone of voice could help me convince my friend I was telling the truth. I also gave many details of the fake trip. Face-to-face is recordless and synchronous which are two features that made telling a lie mentally easier. I told the truth over IM, and Media Richness theory predicts there would be less lies told over IM since it is normally used for unambiguous messages. I tried to use this idea to my advantage by telling the truth, and attempting to make it seem like a lie by taking a lot of time between sending messages to create the idea that I was taking time to think of how to phrase my lies.

While Media Richness Theory guided my decision over which media to tell a lie in and which to tell the truth, Social Distance theory may have played a role in my friend’s guess over in which conversation I was lying. My friend knew that I lied in one situation and Social Distance theory would predict it was in a mediated conversation because there is a greater distance and time to formulate lies and responses. Face-to-face could be more difficult to tell lies in because it is more-fast pace and there are so many more social cues. My friend perhaps did not pick up any obvious social cues in our face-to-face chat leading him to believe I lied in the Instant Messaging chat where I would have more time to create a false story, which was not the case.


My Comments:
Comm 245 Blue: Assignment 4 Option 1

Comm 245 Blue: 4.2 Not Too Far Off

For the fourth assignment, I chose the second option. I specifically chose one of my housemates as my victim, knowing that our friendship of three years would come in handy for this assignment. I typed up a survey similar to Catalina’s and gave it to my friend. She circled 5 for every single section of her profile and then I looked over her profile carefully, testing my knowledge of her personal information, education and interests. With the exception of a couple of inside jokes and sarcastic comments about her major and semester job, her profile was 100% accurate.

I have to admit, when I first saw Catalina’s experiment with match.com profiles, I thought I would have similar findings for this assignment. However, when I really thought about it I realized that most people on Facebook get an account to keep in touch with old friends from high school and to ‘stalk’ people at their own school after meeting them on campus. Why would someone lie about their interests, education or personal information? Personally, I knew most of my friends before I made my Facebook account and I wouldn’t really friend anyone who would judge me based on what I choose to share on my Facebook. Depending on how you interpret assertion and conventional signals, Facebook consists of mostly conventional signals --- It would be really uncomfortable and in most cases pointless to lie about personal information or education. However, I guess it would be easier to justify lying about interests to portray a certain persona.

After discussing the assignment with my friend and evaluating her profile, she agreed with my observations and voiced her opinion that it just wasn’t worth the time or energy lying about some of the information you could possibly put on Facebook. Unlike math.com, we didn’t think that the purpose of Facebook was to find a prospective significant other or to impress anyone. If that was the case, then anyone could potentially adjust their information to fit anyone’s preferences quite easily if they really wanted to.

I think that the Social Distance Theory applies most to Facebook. In most cases, Facebook is not that socially distant. I know that if I tried to lie on my Facebook, I would get called out on it right away with tons of wall comments and it would just be awkward. Perhaps since you don’t really expect your friends to find you on a dating network, it is less awkward to lie and the added social distance accommodates one’s desire to cover up flaws without worrying about being called on it. Maybe that is why Catalina’s experiment detected some lies. After all this speculation the Social Distance Theory definitely makes a lot of sense. A lie on Facebook would be detected by good friends in a heartbeat. Being caught in a lie in public is quite embarrassing and I don’t know anyone who would enjoy being called out on lying on Facebook.

http://comm245blue.blogspot.com/2007/09/4-facebook-deception.html

http://comm245blue.blogspot.com/2007/09/4-facebook-profile-interview.html

4 Facebook deception interview

Facebook profiles offer a variety of different signals which can be used for deception. Assessment signals on facebook include the organization you are associated with (i.e. the university you attend or the company you work for) and perhaps your popularity (it is harder to fill up your wall if nobody wants to talk to you). Nearly everything else on your profile can be classified as conventional signals. Your interests, contact information, major, and activities may all be tweaked by the profile owner to create a certain impression. Even your name, age, gender, and pictures could be faked.

I interviewed an individual about the accuracy of various elements of her facebook profile. When asked to rate on a scale of 1 (completely inaccurate) to 5 (completely accurate), she responded with either 4 or 5 for every part of her profile. She told me that everything she would have lied about, she instead just omits from her profile. The only reason why some of her profile elements received a 4 instead of 5 was because she had not updated her profile in a long time, and some of her preferences have since changed. My own observations (based on what I know about her) have confirmed that her facebook profile information is very accurate.

Facebook is a relatively lean medium, and lying is an equivocal task. Thus, media richness theory predicts that lying does not happen all that often on facebook. But since facebook has the ability to connect people who are geographically distant, social distance theory suggests that lying is easier. Feature-based theory says that lying is unlikely on facebook. Facebook is largely an asynchronous medium, and most lies are constructed on-the-spot. Additionally, facebook is largely recordless, so lies can be removed at any time. As mentioned earlier, facebook is also distributed, meaning it is easier to lie to someone you aren’t geographically close to. But two of the three features necessary for extensive lying aren’t present on facebook, so the feature-based theory makes the same prediction as media richness theory. My interview results rejected social distance theory in favor of media richness theory and feature-based analysis.

These results oppose Catalina’s findings regarding online dating sites. One reason for this could be the type of audience expected. On facebook, your profile is subject to a wider audience. Therefore, close friends will tend to point out inaccuracies in your profile, making it less likely for you to lie in general. This portion of the audience is non-existent on dating sites, so it’s easier to lie – especially since you can cater your impression for one type of interpersonal relation.

Comment 1
Comment 2

Assignment 4: The Truth About Facebook

For assignment four I decided to do the second option and use Catalina's study against a friend and their Facebook profile. I had decided that I wanted to base this assignment on someone who fulfilled these necessary requirements: i) that I knew the person fairly well, and ii) they had a certain amount of information about themselves on their page.

Meet Subject X. Subject X was put through the “Two-step Approach” where she did a self-report of herself regarding her Facebook profile and then I conducted a cross-validation from the information she gave me with the facts I knew about her to check if it all matched up.

Subject X’s information given was as follows and is rated on the scale of 1 (completely inaccurate) -5 (completely accurate):

• Relationship status: 3 (nothing was posted)
• Political views: 5
• Hometown: 5
• Interests: 4.5
• Favourite Music/Movies/Books: 4.5
• Quotes: 4
• Groups: 1
• Wall Posts: 4
• Pictures: 5
• Friends: 5
• Other Applications: 2

My findings are as follows:

• Relationship status: 3 (nothing was posted)
• Political views: 5
• Hometown: 5
• Interests: 3.5
• Favourite Music/Movies/Books: 3.5
• Quotes: 3
• Groups: 1
• Wall Posts: 4
• Pictures: 3
• Friends: 3.5
• Other Applications: 3

For the most part I felt Subject X was fairly honest with her profile except there was always room for deception. Since there was no relationship status it is hard to argue she is lying but she is being deceitful because people who do not know her are forced to make assumptions based on their own observations. As far as her favourite music/movies/books and her interests she selected only a handful of what she really does like and the information she put up were all fairly common to see. To name a few examples: stilettos, best friends, Wedding Crashers, Justin Timberlake, etc. Another area where I actually found the most deception was her pictures. She would detag pictures she did not like of herself and keep all the pictures where she looked good in. The pictures in her profile are also predominantly of her “party side” which is inaccurate because she only spends a fraction of her (lets say week) out partying; so this too is very deceiving. I guess the best way to describe her Facebook profile is to say it is just a snapshot of her personality: you do not see it all and there are many assumptions left for interpretation and what she decided to put up ultimately means, from what I gather, she wants people to think of her in that matter and see that side of her.

Side Note: according Catalina's study most people are very truthful about their relationship status on dating websites. Although Facebook is regarded more as a networking site versus an online dating site I do not know if this behaviour would be part of the norm for this study. Would this same rule apply for sites like Facebook?

4 Facebook profile interview

In my subject's analysis of his own profile, he rated personal details very truthful, with an average of 5. These included sexual orientation, relationship status, birthday, hometown, and all contact details. He rated his interest areas, which included actives, music, TV, movies, and the about me section, much lower. On average, this section was rated 3.4. This rating may be misleading because the subject gave his “about me” section a rating of 1, when for the purposes of this class it was no so much deceptive as it was sarcastic. Neglecting this section, the average rating for interests rises to 4.

While none are truly assessment signals, the personal facts would be more difficult to keep a deception up about on Facebook than the interests categories. They can be part of a deception, but they would not be subtle, in the sense that some of them are not difficult to corroborate. Goffman and Baumeister's notion of Self-Presentation goals suggests that people will lie in order to project a better image of themselves, but they prefer to do it in ways that are subtle. Deceiving about interests is one way to do this, as they are not readily verifiable, unless one has prior knowledge of the participants.

In class we looked at a study of online dating profiles and how truthful users were when using them. The study found that gender differences were most often the subject of lies in such profiles. While Facebook isn't explicitly a dating site, some parts of the study are supported by the subject's rating. In the study, the most truthful thing people put on their profile was their relationship status. Likewise, the subject gave his relationship status the highest rating of truthfulness.

Another study we have looked at in class was one about the frequency of deception compared in different media. Using the media features analysis of this study, Facebook would be asynchronous, have records, and be distributed, which is the exact profile of email. The results of the study could be extended to say that Facebook would have a similar deception frequency as email, the lowest of the four medium compared in the study (FtF, phone, IM, email). The subject's lower rating of his interest section may seem to be in conflict with this conclusion, but having prior knowledge of the subject, the deception there may not have been more due to lack of updating his profile than deliberate deception.

comments:
http://comm245blue.blogspot.com/2007/09/assignment-41-i-am-terrible-liar-online.html#links

http://comm245blue.blogspot.com/2007/09/a42-facebook-speaks-truth.html#links

4 A Loveable Little Girl...

Our generation knows everything about one another. How can we not? With websites such as Xanga, MySpace and Facebook, our profiles are splashed across the Internet for nearly everyone to see. Facebook, in particular lends itself to be the most inviting since it has become the "cool" site where you can secretly stalk any of your friends without them even knowing it. Facebook also allows for easy access to digital deception. There is nothing on Facebook that cannot either be left out or changed completely, including your name and your picture. Anyone can change their display name on Facebook so the idea that Facebook correctly shows everyone's real name is false. A part of your personality such as a name which would normally be an assessment signal since it is directly related to a person's character, can easily be changed in a format such as Facebook. We have the ability to be whomever we want, even on Facebook.

I interviewed one of my friend's about her profile only to find out that she was extremely truthful in what she wrote. Like myself, she kept her details to a minimum, but she did share certain personality characteristics with the rest of the Facebook world. Her contact information was rated as a 5 because her name, email address, IM screenname and residence were all correct. She felt no need to lie about information like this because she does not mind if people contact her in a lean mediium such as email or IM, and she felt that putting her sorority house as a residence would help let people know how to contact her along with a little bit of an idea as to what type of person she is. However, when I asked why she did not put her phone number on her profile, she quipped that she does not want random people that are not her close friends to have her phone number. Understandably so, she is worried that putting her phone number on Facebook for all to see would be too invasive of her privacy. I know that she is generally a very open person, but she is definitely not the type of person who would give her phone number out to someone without actually telling them face to face. Telephone conversation is a richer medium than either email or IM and she does not want people contacting her by phone unless she really knows them. My friend's relationship status is posted on Facebook as well, but it is listed as, "In a Relationship With..." and the person is one of her best friends who happens to also be female. Anyone who knows my friend would see this as just part of her funny and sarcastic personality, so she is being extremely truthful in the way that she portrays this type of information on Facebook.

When it comes to my friend's interests, she was a little less accurate and truthful simply because some of the information was posted in a joking manner. Like her relationship status, my friend posted some funny quotes that really encapsulate her sarcastic personality. She rates her books, movies, music, etc. at 4's simply because they are conventional signals that are constantly changing as time goes on as she listens to, reads and sees new material. The information that she has on her profile now completely describes her actual personality. She is funny and eclectic, and her "Favorites" section definitely accurately reflects this. However, it is definitely true that she still wants to make herself look good as everyone does when they have the ability to control what people see about them. The selective self presentation model fits really well here because my friend is choosing what information or photos to post about herself so that other people will see her in a good light. Her photo right now is a picture of when she was five years old, and when I asked her why she chose to post this picture, she asserted to me that it makes her look cute. She chooses to have everyone see a picture of her when she was extremely innocent and adorable. After all, no one can make fun of a five year old little girl without feeling a little guilty. Even though the Facebook picture is an assessment signal since our appearence does not really change, she chose to post a picture of herself as a child which does in fact portray to others a very different persona of herself.

When it comes to my friend, her Facebook profile was extremely small in magnitude because she really did not lie at all. She was very honest in how much information she chose to divuloge about herself, and other than the picture which was chosen to elicit an engaging response from others, the magnitude of her lies was very minute. She also had a very low frequency of lies since she barely lied at all. My friend is happy with the way she created her Facebook profile, and I am as well because it truly does show the real her. It is an accurate portrayal of the fun, interesting and adorable girl that I know and love.

http://comm245blue.blogspot.com/2007/09/4-cancun-or-bahamas.html
http://comm245blue.blogspot.com/2007/09/4-little-black-facebook.html

4 - The lies and truths of travel

In order to attempt this assignment, I needed to find a friend who didn't know the extent of my travels. After doing so, I decided to first tell a false travel tale over Instant Messenger after setting up a dinner date. Then, over dinner, I told my second, this time true, travel memory about a trip to Disney in Florida.

Initially, I decided to lie online because I thought that my facial and other physical cues would more likely give away the fact that I was making the memory up. For a similar reason, I thought that the physical cues I showed would confirm the fact that the memory I shared face to face with my partner was in fact a true memory.

There wasn't any specific way I tried to lie over instant messenger. I stayed consistent with how I normally would IM with this person (or any other friend, for that matter). I did, however, use additional online resources such as an image search on Google or Wikipedia articles to supplement my fake memories of my family trip to Chicago. I tried to insert as many obscure details as I could (like which hotels we stayed at, what restaurants we ate at, etc.), assuming that this would make the story seem more legitimate.

After dinner, I told my partner about this assignment and asked if he could tell which story was true and which was false. He thought for a while, and decided that the story about my trip to Chicago was false. When asked why, he said that I provided more uninteresting details about Chicago that most people would probably leave out, whereas with my true memory, I focused on stories involving my family's adventures in Disney (like how disappointed I was over a certain attraction being shut down, and my mom writing a letter of disapproval after our trip--it resulted in free admission tickets which we still haven't used).

Given the theories we've learned about thus far, I'd have to say that my experience best reflects Social Distance Theory simply because I did exactly as the theory predicts--I chose IM to lie because it is more socially distant than lying in person. However, one thing this theory doesn't cover is intent. It suggests that lying is uncomfortable, so we will pick a way to communicate to be more comfortable. I didn't choose IM to lie because I was uncomfortable to lie face to face, I chose IM to lie because I thought it would be easiest to disguise the falsehood of my story with fewer cues for my partner to use. In other words, I went into the communication knowing I was going to lie, so I chose the medium with which I thought would be easiest to deceive my partner (which kind of supports the notion of Media Richness Theory). It makes me wonder if any studies have been done on intentional lying as opposed to psychological lying (telling white lies, etc.)...

Assignment 4: Lack of Anonymity

For Assignment #4, I chose to investigate the second option, analyzing deception in Facebook. Facebook is an online social networking site in which users can share their lives and connect with others. A users profile page contains a number of features including a default picture, additional tagged pictures and photo albums, basic details, contact information, a list of friends and a wall with friends’ comments just to name a few. One of the most significant features of Facebook is its lack of anonymity. This lack of anonymity sets Facebook apart from almost every other online social networking site. For example, the majority of Facebook users that use Facebook to connect with their “real-life” friends register under their full first and last names—Facebook doesn’t have a nickname option like Myspace or Xanga. Additionally, any small change you make to your Facebook profile is broadcasted to your entire list of friends through Facebook’s distinctive “News-feed” feature. This leaves little room for deception when those you have added as friends are also your “real-life” friends.

Unlike other online sites, Facebook is jam-packed with assessment signals. Many people voluntarily share their full names, phone number, home address and email address. Although these features can be easily edited, omitted and/or forged, in any typical “university network” (such as Cornell University), they reflect upon a users’ “real-world” identity. Facebook’s conventional signals, on the other hand, are much more transient. These signals include the text one may write on a friend’s wall, one's interests, favorite quotes, or relationship status. These “low-cost” features do not necessarily define one’s “off-line” identity and can be easily edited at the click of a mouse without needing much explanation.

After administering Catalina’s method of rating to my friend, I discovered that she didn’t lie at all on her Facebook. Her contact information (assessment signals) mirrored her actual residence, email address and IM name. Her personal information (conventional signals) reflected her interests, activities and favorite quotes quite accurately. Additionally, the groups she belonged to reflected things she felt passionately about and her pictures accurately helped to display what her day-to-day life was like.

Although my friend didn’t place anything in her Facebook profile to intentionally deceive, like any other online profile, she did have similar goals of “appearing attractive and appearing honest” in mind. By using selective self-presentation, she didn’t include any information in her profile about herself that may make her seem ignorant or uninviting, nor did she tag any pictures of herself that may have made her look physically unattractive. Although she wasn’t exactly lying about herself in her Facebook profile, she was deceiving others by intentionally omitting parts of herself from her profile.

The communications that take place through my friend’s profile are always asynchronous, allowing her time to construct the manner in which she puts her message across. Since everything she writes on someone’s wall or sends in a message leaves a trace, I would consider her Facebook to be a recordable media. Therefore, according to Hancock et al.’s feature-based model, my friend would not be expected to deceive over a media such as Facebook because it is asynchronous and recordable (for the most part). However, since the people that my friend communicates with over Facebook are physically distributed for the most part, she has a small opportunity to deceive and selectively self-present herself.

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assignment number 4, option 2

After asking my friend about her facebook profile and seeing other people’s profiles, I came to realize that many people do not lie about their interests, hometown, activities, relationship status etc. Lots of my friends joke about being “in a relationship” with their best friend, or “married” to their housemate, but it is all in good fun and not meaning to be deceiving. The facebook profile I decided to assess was 100% honest. My friend passed Catalina’s scale test with flying colors, giving herself all fives. “Why would I lie about my interests and music taste?”, she asked me after I was done quizzing her about how honest she actually was. This was a good point and I told her that it probably happens more on dating website profiles than on facebook. Since I live with the girl I interviewed, I know her well and was able to verify that she did in fact like the movies and tv shows and music she put down. She is in a relationship with a kid who goes to Hobart College. It says this under her “relationship status”. She is clearly not in the market for a boyfriend and so this makes it publicly known who she is dating and where he is from. From the theory standpoint, this does not really support any of the theories we learned about in class. People do not usually lie on facebook, but they just simply leave things out. For example, you have this weird obsession with pogs, but if they are not cool or hip at the time, chances are you will not put it down under interests. You are not lying, you are just not telling the whole truth. If there was a height and weight section, I bet many people would leave it blank, unless your height and/or weight was ideal and you wanted to brag about it. So the whole O’Sullivan and Media Richness Theories are not really appropriate for this situation because they talk about where people lie most and being efficient vs. not being efficient. A facebook account is something which can be changed and is not permanent. This means that people may take chances to see if saying a certain thing is working and getting people’s attention in a positive way. If they don’t get good feedback, a simple click of the mouse will take it away forever. This creates more of a conducive environment for lying and being sneaky with what you say and how you say it. The rich vs lean media comes into play and causes the atmosphere of facebook to be casual and easy to lie on. This being said, it is interesting that more people don’t lie about themselves and their habits. It is probably because people who you are friends with on facebook see you often and so you would not be able to get away with much. It is such a small world that eventually, no matter what you say or do, it always comes back to get you.