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.
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4 comments:
I agree with all of your views on what is lacking in all of the theories. I am glad that someone else finds the theories discussed either
a.) ambiguous
b.) unapplicable
c.) narrow-scoped
I found that two "polar" theories, social distance and media richness, could interpret my results two different ways and come to two opposite conclusions. Both of which, mind you, would be equally valid and logical.
I like how you noted that people who know each other have it easier. I purposely chose not to do this option because I din't want to lie to any close friends, even though they wouldn't mind if they found out why. I would be uncomfortable, on top of already being a bad liar.
Really interesting post. I'm right alongside you and Joshua on this whole theory thing. I often find that everything can be explained by a theory, but that seldom do theories explain things other than specific cases.
I though it was interesting how you decieved your roomate with relative ease (considering you call yourself an awful liar). I guess this supports the Truth Bias. I have found in my own experience that filling in with enough details makes almost anything believable. Way to go.
I think your results may help shed some light on why people lie the least in emails. Like you said, it seems people inherently distrust information more from a mediated source, like email or a facebook message, more than a FtF encounter. The truth bias associated with FtF encounters can help explain this in a way.
Your roomate may also have been assuming that the lie she didn't notice right away was the socially farther, more disconnected choice. Like the study we looked at in class, people over-estimate their ability to detect lies in FtF, so she may have put unfounded faith in her lie detecting abilities in FtF.
I agree with Chris. I think it is interesting how your friend responded to the Social Distance Theory. Since she knew one of them had to be a lie, she assumed that you would have lied to her through facebook. Also, I wonder if she initially detected the lie or was forced into choosing which was a lie because of your questioning. Would her answer have been different if you posited the question like this: "Out of the two stories I told you, which was a lie one,both, or neither?" Then afterwards, ask what she used to detect deception. Overall, for everyone who engaged in the experiment, I think that would have yielded more interesting results. But of course that wasn't the assignment ;)
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