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.