Digital Deception

Assignment 1 - Liar Liar Pants on Fire

New York Times Article (link)

The Associated Press reported a story, yesterday, on Greg Anderson being held in contempt of court and being ordered to 16 months in jail. Anderson is the former trainer of Barry Bonds and Gary Sheffield, and according to the book Game of Shadows, knowingly sold the pair illegal/banned, performance-enhancing drugs. The report goes on to explain that both Bonds and Sheffield denied under oath that they knowingly took these drugs – and that they thought the drugs were legal – but Shadows goes into great detail about how their testimonies and interviews are inaccurate or untrue (and that they really did know what they were taking and the ramifications of doing so).
According to Vrij, deception is "a successful or unsuccessful deliberate attempt, without forewarning, to create in another a belief which the communicator considers untrue.” Assuming the overwhelming evidence against the players’ testimony and media responses in Shadows is true (and temporarily ignoring Nyberg’s discussion of truth), Bonds and Sheffield have clearly lied.
Vrij believes that deception "is part of social interaction” and that it is hard to detect liars because (1) we are untrained/uneducated in doing so, (2) not motivated to catch liars and (3) some people are very good liars. Only the third point seems to apply in this case. Interestingly, both players have proved for years that they are very good at speaking their minds, regardless of how (un)true or arrogant they sound. What’s more, neither has ever shown much affinity for the news media, treating reporters and questions like distant, irrelevant people. So how could they lie in this situation? Perhaps the court/mass-media is viewed by the pair as a "distant group of people”, which according to Vrij’s (and others’) studies, means they would be more likely to lie in these interactions. Motivationally-speaking, it would seem the pair has numerous reasons to choose to lie: it would have a (1) positive impact on baseball, allow them to (2) obtain an advantage in the eyes of the baseball Hall of Fame Selection Committee, and (3) avoid punishment (for cheating). The pair used outright (to the media: "I never took performance enhancing drugs”) and subtle (court: "I never knowingly took steroids”).
However, they have been able to lie in quite a complex situation – with federal officials, congressmen, lawyers, reporters and other athletes all critiquing different aspects of their case – and the consequences being very severe (prison, banishment from baseball, eternal ridicule) which makes their self-oriented lies very impressive.

posted by Josh P @ 11:56 PM