Saturday, September 30, 2006

lonely no more - an essay on lonelygirl15

Hi all,
The title above links to a short essay on the lonelygirl15 phenomenon we discussed in class last week. A very interesting case of digital deception (or not).
--Jeff

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

A5: Facebook lets you lie like a rug

The anatomy of a facebook profile is not very complicated but can be quite detailed. Only some of these components generally become targets for deceptive activity, although, it is possible to lie about anything on facebook: even the (startup) email address or your name/nickname.
You can lie about the number of friends you have in real life by friend-ing people you either don’t know or aren’t really friends with. Your picture can be easily falsified, and very often is in many ways: for example, the person I analyzed used an image that was edited in Photoshop to create odd effects. You could also use a picture of someone/something else to lie (you can even crop photos, though ths brings up other issues). Most groups can be faked because they are open, making them easy to join for lying about your interests and activities. Even closed groups can be faked into letting you join by using other types of fraud mentioned above.
In terms of the profile responses, everything is based on your input, so it’s possible to practice deception and lie in every one. The one exception is relationships status, which has to be verified by the other person. Yet, this still can faked to some extent: you can be in a relationship with another profile that you/anyone can easily fake, or you can pretend to be in a relationship with someone. In fact, the latter is practiced regularly.
At Cornell, the directory can act as a verification for anyone. Phone numbers, addresses, school (and perhaps major), name and other things (like websites) can be easily verified through the directory. This makes them less likely fields to be used for deception, and indeed, I have found that people rarely lie about these things, choosing either to include them truthfully or not include them at all. Mini-feed has made it possible to track your friends, so perhaps the practice of deception in certain profile information will lessen.
So, the person I analyzed was somewhat disappointing in that he/she almost never lied about anything despite having almost one hundred different instances of profile information. The person rated fives for just about everything from “looking for” to favorite books. I was able to independently identify nearly al of it through others and my own powers of observation. One place he/she did lie, to an extent, was in the status. It said he/she was doing one thing, which clearly wasn’t true anymore, but it was dated from when he/she did participate in that activity. Does this make it a lie still? Perhaps, although the other cues available would suggest that no.
The only thing he/she rated less than a five was one of his/her favorite books, which was rated a four. WHY? He/she just felt that the book wasn’t quite up to par with his/her original thoughts of it, especially compared to other books on the list.
So in theory, facebook is certainly deceptive. In practice? I guess it all just depends.

Taking page-jacking to the next level....

Assignment 5 Option 2


This may well be the first time I’ve ever gone online to purposely find fraud. Usually it finds me, whether in the form of a “double play” e-mail from some firm I’ve never heard of, a “mimicking” message from a bank I don’t belong to, or a “dazzling” pop-up advertisement for some product I most certainly don’t want. However, I went online searching for a specific type of fraud which was not mentioned in any of our literature but which I believe is more dangerous (if more difficult) than anything mentioned in Grazioli & Jarvenpaa or Dhamija et al. Instead of simple page-jacking, hackers were going to the next level and doing DNS hijacking. For those of you who don’t know, DNS stands for the Domain Name System – the series of backend Internet servers which resolve the human readable domain names (such as cornell.edu or google.com) into machine readable IP addresses (such as 192.168.1.1). In a DNS hijack (alternatively called DNS cache poisoning or DNS pharming), the hacker breaks into a DNS server and changes the records for a domain name to point from a legitimate server to his own more malicious server. The hacker will typically have his own server set up with pages that perfectly mimic the site he is trying to phish/pharm information from. The unsuspecting user will then type in the website he or she would like to visit correctly, or click on the correct link from a search engine and will be brought to the fake site where they will be prompted to enter personal information. The scary part is that this type of pharming is almost undetectable to users. Almost all of the methods Dhamija et al. explain and suggest won’t work – the fake server could have its own SSL certificate, could link to real authorities who will verify that the domain name is correct, etc. The only real way of detecting such an attack would be to physically look up the IP address of the target domain via an internet DNS lookup and compare it with the IP address provided by a local DNS lookup. This is a lot of work, and something that users who can be tricking into thinking a “vv” is a “w” probably won’t go through the effort to do.

Thankfully, this kind of attack hasn’t happened much. Perhaps because DNS is such a redundant system with some security measures in place and that hacking one server would only effect a limited number of users at a time (depending on the server and which end of the system the hacker went after) it is a fairly time consuming act. However, there is one notable exception to this. In 2000 a 17 year old hacker going by the name of “Coolio” changed the DNS records of RSA Security Inc. Although he simply defaced the RSA site, this act was especially embarrassing for RSA which is a company specializing in Internet security (for more information on the attack, go here). This type of attack could become more prevalent as potential victims become more aware and simpler methods prove to be less effective as Grazioli & Jarvenpaa predict.

Setting up a false website via DNS hijacking with a malicious intent to collect personal data is unquestionably a deceptive act. It fits in nicely with the Theory of Deception presented in Grazioli & Jarvenpaa as well as with both Vrij and Nyberg’s definitions. The pharming website is certainly a deliberate attempt to create a false belief in the viewer about the veracity of the page without any forewarning (unless for whatever reason the end user does DNS lookups for every website he/she visits, but that would be very time consuming and a little extreme). It also fits nicely into Nyberg’s showing/hiding model of deception – especially the mimicking subcomponent. Conclusively, online fraud is a major form of deception.

So how can one watch out for and identify a DNS hijacking attack? The reality is that a user really can’t unless the deceiver doesn’t put much effort into the “fake” website. Would I recommend that you watch out for it? Yes, certainly. Can I say that I wouldn’t fall victim to such an attack? Not at all. Even being aware of it doesn’t make the detection any easier. I can only hope that the DNS systems are continuously upgraded to prevent such malicious online fraud and deception.

Digital Deception

Assignment 5: Fudging on Facebook

The Expectancy Discordance Theory suggests that men place a greater emphasis on physical attractiveness and youthfulness while women put the onus on financial resources and social status. If the Facebook were to be used as primarily as a dating mechanism, we might expect then that summer internship categories and perhaps even majors would be slightly distorted for males. Any female young enough to have a Facebook profile need not worry about youthfulness, but if dating were a primary objective then we might anticipate that the picture would be distorted.
Ultimately, Catalina’s study found that women lie most in their picture.

In my Facebook analysis with a friend, I found this also to be the case. What she perceived to be a “good picture,” was a picture of her in an outfit substantially more revealing that she might normally wear. This is not an unusual finding for females on Facebook – a quick glance over the profiles of my friends and friends of friends reveals that scant clothing is a trend in Facebook pictures, and it is very doubtful that this is truly representative of every girl pictured.

The Facebook picture is an obvious method of self-presentation. What better way to accomplish impression management than by freezing a moment in time that would lead a viewer to arrive at a particular conclusion about an individual? Furthermore, the alternative makes for a very, very negative impression. Having a picture is the norm, so not having one makes a person look mysterious and as if they are intentionally hiding something.

Additionally, the reduced cues also facilitates impression management. Viewers can only draw on what they are overtly given.

According to the Feature-Based Model (Hancock et al 2004), the more synchronous and distributed, but less recordable a medium, the more frequently lying should occur. Inaccurate interests, favorite movies, or summer internship information can be identified once two people get to know each other.

It’s harder to pinpoint that a picture is a lie. A picture is documented proof that something happened; the property of recordability attributed to the picture itself undermines the recordability of the picture in the Facebook profile. Essentially, even if a picture does not truly represent its subject, its very presence lends credibility to its message.

Interestingly, although Facebook is in no way synchronous communication, it still very readily lends itself to deception. The Facebook anatomy I analyzed was deceptive in a lot of different places. For example, the number of friends was greatly exaggerated. It listed over 300 current friends but many of them were characters from my subjects’ past. The groups listed as part of the Facebook profile I analyzed were mainly jokes and inside jokes at that, so they were also slightly deceptive to the outside viewer.

Monday, September 25, 2006

More Than Usual Facebook Stalking

It is no surprise that Facebook, a creation of Mark Zuckerberg during his free time at Harvard, has exceeded expectations of a simple social networking tool. The website boasts 4.5 million users and between 200 and 250 million hits per day. Zuckerberg et al. might not have left much room for creativity like a MySpace profile, but it manages to incorporate a fair opportunity to deceive.
Additionally, Facebook has been changing over the last few years. What started out as a fun searching activity to connect friends at various schools became a mechanism for facebook friends to mutually stalk each other incessantly. Photo albums entered the scene, then high school students, and now we've got the news feed.
Facebook's bare bones:
1. Picture! The most important visible feature on the page, best doctored up with sufficient photoshopping.
2. Basic Info: Everything including birthday, hometown, relationship status and looking for are all chances to deceive. Are you a guy who doesn't want to appear attached? Leave out your relationship status. Are you a girl who wants to incite curiosity and intrigue? Say "it's complicated." Are you a sketchy person who wants to stalk unnoticed? Leave out your birthday.
3. Contact info: phone, address, screenname, etc. For safety and my mother's health I leave most of this out. I suppose you could easily provide phony info too.
4. Let's get personal: political views drop down, but religion, activities, music, movies, TV shows, quotes, books, and about me are all space allotted for creative exposure. Say what you want, lie if you want, leave it blank--whatever. Honestly, if I include Weezer as a favorite band, all that tells someone is whether or not we have similar taste in music. I think it's all harmless.
5. Education is mostly drop-down
6. Work is a feature being used by Facebook pros who recently graduated and need time-wasters in their cubicles. I don't know may people who use it, or subsequently lie in that space.
7. Courses are drop-down, though I suppose a real character might feign some crazy classes
8. Election info includes candidates you support and issues you care about. Leave it blank if you're undecided or unaware, but liars don't really fit here.
9. Cornell "friends?" Um, I have 363. What are friends? Is friending someone more like a) asking someone out or b) asking permission to publicize having met once? Is it socially acceptable to decline a friend request? These are new questions to ponder thanks to Facebook, and deceit is a factor. I'd be lying if I said I knew more than what exists on a facebook profile for a majority of my 363 at Cornell. I'd also admit to considering myself much more facebook popular than I am in reality.
10. Status is similar to an AIM away message, ready to be manufactured
11. Photo albums don't have to be visible in your profile and can be limited to friend viewing, but more than the album the tags are important. Tagee can easily untag a disapproved photo, and thus only show approved (hot) tags. Girls will untag photos because they look pasty or pale, if they've repeated an outfit, or if they are underage and holding an alcoholic beverage. Guys might keep tagged photos that show them with lots of ladies. Deception is all over these albums.
12. Groups--they are sort of curious because they may be proof of real membership to organization or show attendance at an upcoming event, but the majority of them are simply evidence than some Facebook users have entirely too much time and waste it being silly and ridiculous trying to be creative and witty.
13. Friend Details--how you know someone. There are more ludicrous lies in this feature than I'm sure Zuckerberg et al. ever intended or expected. The majority of the people who I'm closest to now have crazy details spawning from marriage to dating to parenthood to an awesome hook-up...All made up. I'm single, have no children, have never been married, and wouldn't publicize a real hook-up on Facebook if I were paid.

According to my friend (a true friend, and roommate who I know well beyond her public Facebook profile), certain aspects of her profile are inaccurate. With no priming or explanation of intention here's how she rated her profile:
5 for all the basic info and her own photo (which she cropped)
-->This picture is a good representation
2 for # of friends
-->her accuracy sums it up. She is friends with a much smaller group than the big number that Facebook indicates
2 for groups (she belongs to 18)
-->There are a few dubious groups, and some outdated that she no longer belongs to
5 for contact info
-->She included email, screenname, cell phone # and lives in Collegetown (vague, but truthful)
4 for activities, interests, music, movies, books, and quote
-->I think she was less accurate just from knowing her. Activities should be more like a 2, I expected music to be more elaborate so maybe 3, and I didn't expect her to include books at all, so a 1.
5 for about me and education info
5 for wall posts
-->Her wall posts are all from close friends, and she hasn't deleted any posts in awhile.

After picking apart my friend's profile I did some personal analysis. Creating an honest online profile isn't as easy as it looks!

Assignment 5: I was easy to deceive...when I was a kid.

I chose option 2.


I’d say that now I’m pretty decent at detecting fraudulent sites online (although the assigned articles made me doubt that ability slightly), but when I was an inexperienced kid it wasn’t as easy. A looong time ago, there was an online game that I frequently played (remember Neopets, anyone?). There were many things you could do in this game, and one of them was that you could buy and collect different items, and also you could choose to sell your individual items to other players in your own personalized store. I’m not sure the technical details of how this was accomplished, but some people would alter their stores so that it appeared that they were selling very rare items for a very low price, which would entice unsuspecting people to click on the ‘purchase item’ link. These links would actually bring the user to a page not hosted by the original site, but a site that was made to imitate the original site (and trust me, it looked identical). This page, however, prompted the user to re-enter their username and password, and then it redirected them to the original site. The usernames and passwords were then used by the deceivers to gain access to others’ accounts.

This was a clear example of what Grazioli calls mimicking. As Grazioli would say, this was simply an act of desire for “immediate gratification.” This was not a very evil or criminal plan, as the deceivers were simply gaining access to others accounts on an online game – there was no personal or financial information they could have accessed. So while this was not very harmful, deception did still occur, and many people were fooled by these misrepresentative pages.

I think the reason the deceivers were successful in their deception is that they were deceiving a population of young (pre-teen was the approximate age target by this game), computer-inexperienced crowd, who doesn’t even know that they should be looking out for phishing or deception scams. Also, they used images and text that appeared to be from the original site, which the users would recognize and consider trustworthy.

This situation is deception according to all of the main definitions we have studied – it used showing (in the form of mimic) and hiding (in the form of disguising) to control perceived assumptions, and it was knowingly transmitted to foster a false belief. There was no reason for any of the users to suspect that they were being directed to a page outside of the game – they were following Nyberg’s strategy of “letting it happen” by allowing a person to acquire that false belief.

Assignment 5: Anatomy of Facebook

A facebook profile has many different components, but only a few seem to be used deceptively in order to portray a certain image. I found ten different things that I think people could use to deceive others with their facebook profile. These ten parts include the picture, number of friends, mini-feed, information, wall, photo albums, groups, notes, and relationship status. The first part of a facebook profile that people can manipulate, is the picture. It might seem strange that a person would manipulate their picture on facebook since many people on facebook probably have seen the person in real life. Even so, most people will pick a picture that will portray him or her in the best light. There are also ways to crop a photo, so that a certain body part is left out of the picture, or even another person in the picture might be cropped out. The next part of the facebook profile that can be deceptive is the number of friends a person has. There are some people on thefacebook who request the friendship of any person they have ever come into contact with, whereas other people only request the friendship of close acquaintances or people they are actually friends with. When I see a person with 500 friends, I usually think that there is no way that this person is friends with all of those people. It is usually more reasonable when a person has between 100-250 friends. A person might request the friendship of people they barely know just to increase his or her friend count in order to appear popular. The next feature of a facebook profile that somewhat prevents deception, is the mini-feed. The mini-feed displays a person’s activity on facebook, so it shows when a person writes on someone else’s wall, joins a group, displays pictures, etc. There are now controls, however, that allow people to hide their actions, so that nothing shows up on their mini-feed. The part of the facebook profile that has the most ability to be deceptive is the information section. This includes interests, favorite movies, television shows, and music. I do not think that the facebook wall or photo albums are particularly deceptive. Groups are another part of the facebook profile that could be deceptive, since most groups are open for anyone to join. It could look like a person is a member of a lot of different groups, when in fact, they are not. Relationship status is another tricky component, because a lot of people play around with it for fun. There was an instance, however, when someone I knew had his status as “married” on facebook in order to lure people to his profile. Then once, a person scrolls down on the page, it said that he was not actually married but just put that there to lure people.

I chose one of my best friend's facebook profile when doing this assignment. I have known him since highschool, and he also goes to Cornell, so I have been able to see how his attitudes on certain subjects have changed. That is why I thought it would be interesting to see what he had to say, and then to do my own verification. When I printed out my friend’s facebook profile, and had him rate the different components, he said overall that each component was accurate. He did rate his picture on not being very accurate because he has his hands up in the picture, and appears taller and leaner than he is in real life. When I independently verified his profile, I mainly agreed with all of his ratings on the different portions. I would say activities, interests, and favorite music was somewhat exaggerated, but movies and books were accurate. His friends were also very accurate because he recently joined facebook, and is only really facebook friends with his real life friends.

The implications for the Hyperpersonal model say that selective self-presentation is key, and I think this is true with regard to thefacebook. People on facebook select certain elements of their personality to display, or certain pictures that make them look more attractive. I think Catalina was correct when she noted that the anticipation of future interaction would decrease deception online (Walther, 1994). Joinson and Dietz-Uhler discussed the in-group, out-group phenomenon, in which people will portray themselves in order to appear as part of a certain group. After browsing profile of a few of my friends, I can say that this appears true, as most of us have the same interests. Thefacebook does not have as many outlets to deceive as myspace.com, or some other dating websites, but it is still possible for the user to portray his or herself in a particular way, without warranting suspicion from most people.

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

The Good, the Bad & the Ugly

The Good
While I am inclined to say that for these many reasons, this study is flawed, I think it many ways it has been helpful; it would be way too easy to say this has no bearing on my life as a liar, especially as a way to distance myself from any unpleasant results. Going back and looking at all the little (and in one case, not-so-little) things I had said made me realize just how important it was to not always be able to tell the truth. We’d all be in deep trouble if we didn’t … or maybe we’d all be better off? I consider myself to be an honest person — and I don’t think this study changes that — but I found that I do a lot of subtle lying. I’ll address this more later, but seeing all the little lies I told certainly made me want to be more honest.

I learned a great deal from studying my own lies. For example, I found that my lies are very spontaneous! I basically never lied unless thought would get away with it or I didn’t care if I got caught. I never lied to a group, and I was very wary of being caught, which made me avoid recordable lies unless I knew they were essentially undetectable. I thought using comfort level measures was really smart, and it seemed to be an incredibly obvious factor in the reason I lied: to be more comfortable. I found I made fewer lies to family, but also many more subtle lies (mostly simplifications) to them. In general though, I had more subtle lies than anything else, which doesn’t surprise me considering I don’t really like to lie and this is probably some kind of cognitive dissonance effect (where I say to myself, “well, you didn’t really lie.”) I had more outright lies to people who I knew less well, and this was probably related to impression management.

The Bad
There were many problems, methodological and otherwise, with this study, which (as I discussed) is one of the reasons why I found this study’s results easy to ignore. The idea of carrying around something and writing down all my lies is one that was much easier to do in imagination than in reality. I either couldn’t remember to do it, or just found the idea totally impractical. There were many other problems as well. There’s no record-ability of many types of lies, so how can you be sure to remember them all? How accurate can you really be if you’re doing something from memory? How impartial can you be if you’re writing down lies you told, especially in the heat of the moment? And there’s certainly bias in looking at things after the fact … And sample size? My weekend was not a good sample of my general interaction scheme because of the things I did and people (or lack-thereof) I interacted with, which certainly biased my results.

I had many problems arise while filling out my surveys. For one, the relationship to target is inadequate because it doesn’t account for people you know who aren’t your acquaintances, or other strange variations. The questions ask you for your perception of many things when an outsider could find a fact much quicker: how long have you known your partner, how serious was the lie, etc… which is good for some questions but not all. How long know partner is misleading in terms of correlations (if any are used, that is), for example, I’ve known my Jeep’s mechanic for six months, but I’ve met him twice. Intimate doesn’t necessarily mean meaningful/superficial conversation, although I think this measure was okay.

Another problem was the idea of speaking to vs. heard or saw. What if someone was eavesdropping on my conversation in FTF, or reading my away message (an outright lie at one point). How many targets is this? How many partners?
Furthermore, how well I know an individual is one thing, but trying to apply that measure to a group is completely different. The measure fails in the group case I believe.

There are others, but I’ll spare us from rehashing our prior class discussions.


The Ugly (a.k.a. theory application)
I realized pretty quickly that neither Hancock et al. nor Media Richness theory applied to my results, although if anything, the latter was more appropriate for my results. The frequency of my lies was heavily skewed towards FTF and email, slightly moreso FTF though. I lied to any number of people (friends, family, strangers, etc…) whom I cared or did not care about managing my impression for. This is probably because of the small sample size of the data, but also because I think I feel comfortable lying (when I do decide to), since I try to make them airtight and as small as possible, so the medium I use isn’t necessarily an issue. Although, I will say I chose my media for a reason, and that I let my cell phone ring a bunch of times purely for that reason.

What’s more, I don’t really use the phone that often. I only call a few people on the phone, and the rest I talk to in FTF or in some form of CMC. Basically, this makes me biased against the Hancock model. Sorry Jeff.

50% of the time I lie all the time

Well, this diary study has certainly proved to be interesting. It offered me a glimpse into my communication habits that I’ve never really had before. At the same time, it’s shown me just how many times I actually do lie (in exactly half of all my social interactions), and which media I lie the most in (FtF). However, I have to qualify these results by saying that this past weekend does not necessarily reflect my usual media habits. On both Friday and Saturday I had lengthy meetings and activities that boosted up my FtF frequency while limiting the time that I could spend communicating by other media. At the same time, my internet was out for a good part of Sunday morning. This is usually a time where I will delay the start of my homework by answering e-mails from the previous week or catching up with friends over IM. Instead, I just went back to bed (which in my opinion was also a very good choice). In all, I think both my IM use and electronic deception was lower than it would be on a standard weekend.

I wasn’t particularly surprised by the types of lies I told. Since the majority of the lies occurred in FtF interactions they tended to be either subtle lies or just exaggerations of stories or actions. However, I was surprised by how the lies made me feel. The small ones, I rarely felt worse after telling the lie than I did before or while telling it. Of course this changed depending on the size of the lie and who I was lying to. Still, it surprised me.

Overall, I think there are some major issues with the method itself. Specifically, it is really not suited to social FtF situations where one may interact with many people over a period of a few hours. My Friday night, for instance, consisted of a party where I interacted with 20-30 people for around five hours. It isn’t practical in that situation to carry the diaries around, so I had to do the best I could remembering who I talked to for any length of time, what stories I told, and how I responded to others. After five hours of many conversations, I’m sure I missed many lies and non-lie social interactions.

On a similar note, what about lengthy interactions which include multiple lies? On Saturday night I sat down with one of my best friends and we talked for 5 ½ hours straight (I know it sounds like a lot, but we actually did just sit on a couch and talk). In the conversation various small lies were told along with many truths. Yet according the diary study method this only counts as one social interaction. Which lie do I record? Since there were many more truths than lies in the conversation, shouldn’t it also somehow count towards a non-lie social interaction? This was the largest methodological problem I encountered in the study.

Probably because my media use was so irregular this weekend, I found that the Hancock et al. feature based model didn’t quite fit my pattern of lying. While I did lie the most (in terms of lies per social interaction) on the phone, it was followed by e-mail, then FtF and finally IM. Because of my media use, I think it is also important to note the frequency of lies in each of the media. While I told only had three interactions on the phone which involved lying, I had seven instances in FtF. In terms of lying frequency then, I pretty much followed the Media Richness Theory – FtF, phone, e-mail and then IM. Again, IM is last because I hardly used it as a communication medium this weekend.

Overall this study did open my eyes to the frequency in which deception entered my social interactions. I still wonder if certain situations like the ones I participated in this weekend aren’t more conducive to lying than other situations. After all, party stories and a long, lively conversation are almost always going to have some exaggeration and lies in them. I think it would be interesting on my part to run the study again on a more “normal” weekend (as if there is such a thing in college) of media usage.

I lie

Assignment 4

Apparently, I don’t mess around. At least, that’s what my diary results would suggest. According to my diary, I am really not one for the casual lie. While my lies were spontaneous, they had a higher level of severity than I would have expected (mostly in an attempt to protect another’s feelings; not malicious pre-conceived plots to mask my identity). Now, this finding may represent the methodological flaw we’ve addressed in class at length: it is not easy to remember your lies at the end of the day. Perhaps it is not that I only lie when it’s important but rather that I only remember it in those cases.

Furthermore, this study did not require us to write down specific lies. While there is space allotted for it on the Lie-D forms, the directions only recommend filling it in if the lie doesn’t readily match up to the categories provided. Frankly, in this situation I would not have been comfortable filling in my specific lies as they would most likely have identified me as the test subject, revealing not just my specific lies but my feelings on them. Nevertheless, without the specific lie documented next to my coding for it, I lost my ability to revisit my coding for things like severity etc after I’d gained the perspective of monitoring my lies for an entire weekend.

Prior to having been involved in the study, I would have said that what I remembered more than the severe lie itself would be the uneasiness that accompanied it. Interestingly, I did not feel heightened discomfort when lying, a finding inconsistent with DePaulo’s in her analysis of discomfort. In reviewing my coding, I think the reason I didn’t feel uneasy is because the lies I told were frequently other-oriented.

Another methodological issue was avoiding the documentation of lies in front of the person you lied to. Forrest, Feldman and Happ use a retroactive ID technique that would be more effective for identifying lies.

My personal diary experience was also inconsistent with the Feature-based model described by Hancock et al. According to the feature-based model, the more synchronous and distributed, but less recordable the medium, the more deception will occur. Hancock et al did not find that the feature- based model held in their diary study and neither did I in mine. Hancock et al found the highest frequency of lies occurred over the telephone. Perhaps it is merely that I do not talk on the phone terribly often, but I did not lie once over the phone during my diary study. In my limited sampling, face-to-face was the medium under which I lied most often.

Consistent with DePaulo’s findings, I, as a woman, told several other-oriented lies – more than I expected. Because the experiment was conducted over a weekend I didn’t get to test out DePaulo’s findings on intimacy.

My average lie count was right on-par with both DePaulo and Hancock’s findings, just above 2 per day.

Monday, September 18, 2006

Assignment 4:No more lying

To tell the truth, I think I stopped lying. When I realized I would be recording my lies this past weekend, I seriously reconsidered every interaction I had with people. I even limited some conversation and didn't send any emails. I consciously decided to go to the movies and interact with no one instead of going out to the bars or something more social. I slept more and made myself invisible on AIM. My reaction to heightened awareness is an obvious methodological problem with studies designed to capture the essence of deceptive behavior. It's hard to measure or analyze accurately when it exists less than normal.
However, I did lie a tad. I was very surprised I lied to people whom I'm closest to, which doesn't follow previous research either. Those lies were self-oriented, another anomaly. They weren't serious lies, but I was uncomfortable telling them. I even regretted one regarding an outright lie to my Mom, "I don't feel well, I might be getting sick" when in fact I was not feeling well, completely hung-over, that I called the next day to explain my illness once it subsided. Both lies occurred on the phone. I was also surprised how few interactions I have every day, considering I speak to my Mom almost every day, live with 5 people, and this weekend included two sorority social events. Since I had fewer interactions, I also understand my fewer lies, but the proportion is comparable. One of our social events included activity that might have limited my ability to remember anything, let alone lies, so a PDA or clicker device would have been an improvement for the task and situation. In regards to circumstantial influences, I certainly felt my interactions were unlikely for an everyday diary, and would be more appropriate to record in a routine day during the week.
Another note which I found interesting through the diary study this weekend is how rarely I interact or lie to guys. Face-to-face interactions are usually less than the 10 minute suggested time frame, and, apparently, I'm not trying to impress anyone on first meeting. So much for impression formation. This realization is a reminder I need to get out there and...Lie!

Assignment 4: Am I lying now? Now? Now...?

In theory, the diary study seems like the best possible way of studying peoples’ lying habits. But after participating in it over the weekend, I found a couple things very frustrating and limiting. Despite this, I can’t think of any better way of studying lying, but I think results from these studies should not be taken as completely factual or unbiased.

I personally had two major issues with this assignment – one a methodological problem, the other a simple problem of our specific assignment. First, I was continuously very conscious of this assignment, over the three day period. I think that having ‘deception’ on my mind was a serious bias to my social interactions, and I believe it may have restricted me from lying in certain situations. Obviously, the big question is whether this method is better, or whether it is better to try and remember lies from the past. I’m afraid, however, that either result set would be slightly skewed, given my personal experience, and given the findings from the Caspi paper which implied that people found it hard to remember their past lies.

My second issue was just that this assignment took place over the weekend, and personally, my social interactions over the weekend are very limited (most of the time being spent working, or with my boyfriend, or my roommates). I simply think that more people are encountered during the week, when I am attending classes and my job. Also, the people who I spend time with during the weekend I am very likely to be completely truthful with. I think that if this study had been extended to a week, the data would have averaged out better, but I think that because it was only over the weekend that my data was slightly limited.

I actually thought that I would lie more often than I actually recorded, given all of the statistics we had mentioned in class, from the Depaulo and Hancock papers. I believe that my results are partly due to the assignment being present in my thoughts, partly due to self-reporting errors, and largely due to the timeframe of the assignment. Also, I simply found it very hard to judge things that I have said myself. One consideration I’d suggest is slightly changing the diary study, to have people record their social interactions for a given amount of time, and then after a week instruct them to look back and try to remember which interactions may have included lying. I think that this might be more accurate, because they would be presented with a clear record of all of their social interactions, which would help them remember each specific interaction, but they would not have dealt with the bias of having deception “on the mind.”

Assignment #4

When I looked over the diary entries today, I realized that I lied a lot less that I thought I would have. I was not really surprised by the lies that I did tell, because they were very minimal. Since the lies were pretty minimal, I didn’t feel any twinge of regret for telling them. This weekend was a little unusual, though, because I was sick and did not interact with as many people as I would have normally. I think that if I continued to do the study that I would find that I lie a lot more. My lies were also almost completely self-oriented, which is unusual because the DePaulo study predicted that women would tell more other-oriented lies. I usually do tell a lot of other-oriented lies, but for some reason I just did not have to this weekend. Most of my lies were socially distant, for example over the phone or through email. This was due more to the fact that I was not able to speak to the people face to face, rather than because I felt more comfortable lying over those mediums.

Some of the methodological issues are of course that not everyone remembers the lies that they tell. This could be because we choose not to remember them or we simply just forget to write them down. I found it a little difficult to record some of the social interactions involving more than one person. In some cases, I knew one person very well and the other not so well, but there was only a likert scale for one person. This was also an issue for rating how much you liked your interaction partner. If there are three interaction partners and you only like one of them, how do you rank that? This could be problematic when you are in a group of two or more people. Another problem I think, with this class study, is that we recorded our lies over the weekend. I personally think that I may lie more during the week because I interact with more people that I do not know as well. Over the weekend, I may see less people, and not feel the need to lie to the people I know very well.

I think that the Hancock et al. feature based model is still the best to use when studying lies and deception. There are always going to be situations that do not fit the model, but it comprehensively covers most deception situations. The only thing I noticed is with recordability and lying over email. When I am telling a small lie over email, I do not really care that it is recorded, because it is something that can never be detected by the other person. If I told that same lie face to face, the person would probably be more likely to detect the lie.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

A3: I'm Naked & I'm Not Lying (in CMC)

As we’ve come to realize, people lie everyday in every medium of communication —face-to-face, e-mail, phone, instant message, and even in the age-old art of hand-written letters. Ultimately, the medium itself doesn’t matter; lies will still be told and people will still be deceived. As we have also seen, however, the medium does matter when we look at the characteristics of the lie. As Hancock et al. pointed out in their study, telephone conversations had the highest frequency of lies per social interaction while e-mail held the lowest. Such differences are generally attributed to the pertinent features and characteristics of the communication mediums in question. By extension then, since each medium must have properties which allow for the differences, lies and their characteristics will differ from medium to medium.

For our project, we propose to look at the distribution of deceptive messages throughout a computer mediated communication conversation. Are lies more frequent in the beginning of conversation, the middle or the end? Do they get told more often around certain points of an exchange? There is some existing linguistic research on where lies occur in normal FtF conversation, but would those predictions hold true in the online world? Like so many other properties of deception, we initially believe that it will prove to be different in a CMC medium. We hope to examine the existing research in light of CMC theories and make a few predictions on the matter. From our hypotheses we expect to be able to suggest a study by which our predictions can be either supported or refuted.

By further examining the differing characteristics of lies in dissimilar mediums we can get closer to answering the “old wine, new bottle” question. If the distribution of lies proves to be similar between the two mediums, then it looks like deception really could be nothing more than a “new bottle.” However, if the distribution appears differently, as we expect it may, then it would lend credence to the idea that CMC deception really is further separated from deception in other mediums and could be considered new wine in a new bottle.

BARRETT AMOS & JOSH PERLIN

Monday, September 11, 2006

Assignment #3: Detecting Sexual Predators Online

Kaitlin Dufton and Nicole Colwell


It seems that almost every time we turn on the news, there is a story involving a child and a sexual predator. In the past these mainly dealt with kidnappings in public places, such as malls and school playgrounds. Now, there is a whole new way for sexual predators to seek out their prey, and that new way is the internet. Instead of having to do all of the hard work of lurking around schools and neighborhood playgrounds, predators can now just sit in the comfort of their own homes and deceive young children.

My partner and I are interested in doing research on sexual predation online, specifically, how does sexual predation online take place, and how can it be detected? Children are taught at a young age to be careful of strangers, but with the development of the internet, it has becoming increasingly difficult to for parent’s to monitor their children’s activity online. This research could benefit society by informing parents and children how to detect sexual predators online and to hopefully give them a better understanding so that they can protect themselves. Certain things may help parents and children detect a sexual predator online, such as textual and linguistic cues.

By researching this topic, we hope to find ways that children can better protect themselves online, such as limiting access to certain information in online profiles, etc. A short conversation can reveal a lot about someone, without the person explicitly giving out his or her information. We hope to find out what information is or is not safe to post about oneself in a chat room or in an online profile. Also, what are the motivations for these sexual predators to use CMC? The Social Presence Theory could help explain why a sexual predator would choose CMC over Face-to Face interactions to find his or her victims. DePaulo et al. have argued that because lying makes people uncomfortable, users should choose less rich media in order to maintain social distance between the liar and the target. Email and IM are relatively low on the social presence scale, which would make them ideal for a sexual predator to deceive a young child. In the article by Carson et al., it says that the medium used to communicate plays a significant role in whether deception will be successful or not. Since text-based mediums allow for rehearsal, editing, and planning, it would be the ideal medium for a person trying to conceal his or her identity. Additionally, the internet opens up a world of opportunity in terms of the ability to access millions of people with the click of a mouse. Chat rooms practically advertise the types of people using them. For example, it would be relatively easy for a predator to find a 12 and under chat room through AOL or through another internet provider.

Overall, my partner and I hope that our research will give society greater insight into how sexual predators think and also how children can protect themselves from possible predators online.

Assignment 3: The Affect of Viewing Online Profiles on Introductory Conversations

(I am working individually.)

I will be studying the situation where two people meet in an online situation, and one of the participants has had access to online information about their partner, and how this “asymmetric information” is handled. I previously found that people will introduce this information using a probe – they ask their partner questions, even though they already know the answer to the question. This is a very odd type of lie – they are misleading the person to give them the impression that they do not already know this information about them. I am really interested in looking at this type of probe question in more depth, and in more realistic scenarios. I hope to find out people’s motivations for doing this, and the effect it has on conversations.

This is important primarily because meeting people online is quickly becoming more and more common. Last semester I found that most people in the study had met someone new online at least once. With the growth of social networking sites, and the popularity of online dating sites, it is very likely that we’ll all meet someone new online at some point. And with these social/dating sites comes the completely new idea of a “profile” that was never experienced in Face-to-Face situations. Previously, the only way you could find out about someone was through conversations with a mutual acquaintance (or through physical spying/stalking, but that’s obviously not commonly done), but online you are able to read huge amounts of personal information that the person themselves chose to divulge (not to mention anything you can find through other sources, like search engines). With all this new information, it seems likely that it will be impacting first-meeting conversations, but it is unclear as to how. It’s important for this class, because the internet really made this kind of deceptive probe as common as it is.

I plan (eventually) to do a full-scale study to look into these questions. For the scope of this class, I may only get to a few smaller pilot studies, to test my procedures and get an idea of the results. I will also be doing as much background research as possible, to see what has been found relating to this topic already, which will also help direct my study in certain ways. I will give participants access to another student’s Facebook profile, have them talk online, and then use a variety of questionnaires and other information-gathering methods intended to gather information about this deception.

Sunday, September 10, 2006

Digital Deception

Assignment 3: Lie to my face...or my computer?

In the age of Facebook, MySpace and Friendster, we frequently meet other people online. Computer mediated communication greatly changes the process of impression formation. For one thing, it eradicates any nonverbal cues that we might otherwise rely on to get a feel for another person. As we discussed in class, body language, eye movements, gestures, hand motions, fidgeting, etc. are not available in online conversations. Add to this that we lose the tone and inflection given to comments when spoken, and we are left to rely almost entirely on linguistic features.

Carlson cites research which found that linguistic features affect speaker credibility and can serve as valid indicators of deception. Deceivers in CMC frequently use past tense verbs, qualifiers, indefinite pronouns, absence of pronouns, and verbal hedges. As for the specific message content, Carlson says that there a several things that impact its manipulation, specifically the way that the CMC context influences the deceiver’s ability to plan a message and recall prior interactions.

But what if there were no past interactions? And what if this conversation were not a premeditated attempt to con another individual, but instead an innocent first conversation between two people who had just met online?

I plan to study spontaneous deception in an online forum. Specifically, I want to look at the difference in the type and frequency of spontaneous lies between initial interactions face-to-face and initial interactions online.

DePaulo describes a taxonomy of lies in her article. She breaks lying down into the categories, feelings, achievements, actions and plans, explanations and facts. Obviously, it would be easier to lie about certain physical attributes in CMC than it would be face-to-face – it would be hard to lie about gender or physique in person than over the internet. For other types of lies, however, I’d be curious to see if similar medium-based trends exist.

Friday, September 08, 2006

Digital Deception and the Great Debate

Hi all,

I just wanted to weigh in on the debate: is digital deception new, or is it just the same thing but dressed up differently.

First, you all did a great job and both Catalina and I were impressed. A few points stuck out for me:
- the old team's point that the fundamental characteristics of deception are no different for digital deception
- the new team's point that if one instance of digital deception is different than regular deception (e.g., a pedophile deception that wasn't previously possible) then the old team's case is in serious jeapordy

It seemed to me that everyone agreed that the definitional characteristics of digital deception do not change, but that the character (including frequency), cues, transmission, and ultimate effects of digital deception may be different. This was also reflected in Catalina's judgment.

Jenna's rhetorical question, I thought, had the biggest punch of the day: Why are we taking a course on digital deception if its not different? Indeed, why should we do research on digital deception if its not different? Great question, and its one that I hope each one of you considers when thinking up your research question. Its certainly something that each of us (and that includes Catalina and I) have to address when we write about digital deception.

So, to let you know where I'm at with my thinking, I'll quote Josh: Its old wine in new bottles, but those new bottles can change the taste (this would get at the cues issue and the impact/effect issue). Or, to quote Corey: Its old wine with an improved distribution system (which gets at question of frequency and prevalence).

--Jeff

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Assignment 2: Choice 2

According to Nyberg, deception is the “the shrewd and sober art of showing and hiding which is meant to control what is and is not perceived, assumed or understood.” In the Carlson et al article, deception is explained as: “an intentional act that occurs when communicators control information in a message to create a particular effect. Using this definition, deception may take a variety of forms ranging from its most direct form, fabrication, to more subtle forms like half-truths, vagueness, equivocations, and concealments.” Deception is part of everyday life, and there are verbal, non-verbal, contextual and meta-clues available o help detect deception. Different media afford different levels of richness (Media Richness theory) and social presence (Social Presence theory).
In the case of computer mediated communication, however, non-verbal cues are not necessarily available. Depending on the type of CMC used — how many channels are afforded — there are various numbers (greater or fewer) of cues available. These cues not only change senders’ and receivers’ perceptions of communication, they change people’s abilities to deceive and detect deception. So, deception in CMC is different in that new techniques and ideas can or must be used in order to deceive or gain an advantage for deception.
It’s important to note that CMC deceivers now have new tricks, as this does change one’s ability to deceive and detect deception. I think that because CMC deceivers have new skill sets that make them good or bad at what they do, it makes people more wary of their deception. It’s now important to not only be able to control one’s self and regulate expression: having experience in the medium, especially with deception in the medium, is posited as being a potential positive for successful deception. Impression management through channels s also critical for success (Carosn et al.). But people seem to be catching onto this, and especially new users of CMC are likely to distrust anyone online, making deception in CMC possibly even harder than in FTF.
Regardless of how deception is carried out or if it’s successful, these changes do not make CMC deception fundamentally any different from the current definition of deception. For example, if you were hypothetically teleported into the 1940’s — phones were definitely not computers back then — and had to lie to someone over the phone, would you not be practicing deception? Changing the medium does not change the definition of the deception used, it merely extends the current one it into new avenues.
So in a sense, I see this as a bit of a combination between the old wine-new bottle and new wine – new bottle. It seems to me that the wine is the same, but — as with all things over time — the bottle is changing, and this in turn is going to change the taste of the wine (you know, the whole light filtration thing). Simply, I think that because CMC is a new media for deception, it’s going to change the ways we do things. But it’s still that same old deception, just in a different way.

New Deception, Same Old Tricks

Option 1

With all the banking fraud, phishing e-mails, and “Nigerian letter” type scams circulating cyberspace from its earliest days, one would think that the public would no longer fall for such deception. Apparently this isn’t the case according to a recent IRS report. The report, which was quoted in this Washington Post article, explains how scammers have adapted the old e-mail phishing scam into new markets. Most relevant to the IRS are the e-mails from fake debt collectors, claiming to represent the IRS in disputes over unpaid taxes. The scam is simple and classic: the recipient receives an e-mail purporting to be from a reputable collection agency or the IRS itself, complete with logos and official looking letterheads. The e-mail will contain part or all of a bank account number, credit card number, or social security number, and will ask the receiver to go to a website to verify his or her information to determine if the stated debt is correct. The receiver, who most likely does not owe any taxes to the IRS, panics and enters the information into the deceiver’s website. The scammer now has access to the recipient’s financial information and can go on a spending spree. Most worrisome to the IRS is that they have recently and publicly contracted out debt collection to private agencies, meaning the phishing e-mails could seem more legitimate to many Americans.

But what makes e-mails like this successful for the deceiver? Obviously most of the public is informed and aware of such scams and would think twice about giving out financial information online, especially to the IRS. Yet it still seems to be very prevalent with similar e-mails showing up in my inbox almost every day, most of them looking legitimate. Applying the model Carlson et al. (2004) developed can explain part of why these scams continue. First, the deceivers have had a lot of practice with these scams. E-mail has popular for over a decade now, and the scams were there right from the beginning. Thus, according to the model, there is a much greater likelihood of deception success. Second, e-mail provides the perfect communication medium for these scams. It has high levels of symbol variety (think of the rich text e-mails you get everyday with company logos and pictures), tailorability (individualized e-mails with your name and some or part of your financial information), and easy rehearsability. E-mail as a channel also severely limits cue multiplicity, further decreasing the likelihood that the receiver will detect the deception. E-mail does, however, have a high level of reprocessability. In most cases this would be make deception harder, however, because the scammers do not need to have any future interaction with the receiver and only need to deceive them once to get the financial information, it poses little problem to these particular frauds. Finally, e-mail as a text based medium affords a greater likelihood that receivers will be duped.

These scams are successful because they are so easy to pull off. Sending out one million phishing e-mails costs the deceiver almost nothing, and if it can pull in even one or two naïve internet users it is wildly profitable. No wonder the IRS is worried.

Monday, September 04, 2006

Assignment 2: Brett Favre on MySpace?!

Link to Article

Option #1:
MySpace is one of the most popular web sites currently available, with over 100 million registered users, and many more regular visitors. The majority of these people use this site for its intended purpose, listing their personal information, and networking with their friends. This article, however, describes the many people who are putting up deceptive profiles – not simply lying or exaggerating their own information, but actually pretending to be someone else. In this case, the author is talking about people who are impersonating celebrities, in this case the football player Brett Favre.

This is definitely deception according to Carlson et al’s definition – “a message knowingly transmitted by a sender to foster a false belief or conclusion by the reader.” (pg. 6) These false profiles are created by an individual, usually with the intent of trying to pass it off as the celebrities’ personal MySpace site. In fact many people have been successfully fooled by this profile, posting messages they believed they would actually be seen by Brett Favre.

This mode of digital deception is really easy to accomplish and pull off successfully. Someone who pretends to be Brett Favre is probably just creating the profile for fun, but also does not want to get caught breaking the rules of the site. This slight chance of getting in trouble creates a moderate level of motivation, which Carlson et al believe would increase deception success (pg. 16). Carlson et al also believe that deception is more successful via a text-based medium which allows you to edit and rehearse your thoughts (pg. 18) – “Brett Favre’s” creator was allowed as much time as desired to write this profile, and they are allowed to edit his profile at any time, to make it appear more accurate.

Carlson et al’s fifth prediction seems to best illustrate why these fake profiles are so successful. This prediction states that if the deceiver’s experiences help with the requirements of the deception, that they will be more successful at deception (pg. 18). Someone creating Brett Favre’s profile only needs to have basic information about how to create a MySpace profile and using computers, which is a skill that many people, especially teens, know and can pick up easily. The creator also has to have “experience” in the form of knowledge of the celebrity – if a person knows or simply looks up the readily available information about many celebrities, they could easily put it together to create a plausible looking profile.

Assignment 2 Option 2: It depends

Nyberg and Vrij provided some basic tenets of lying and deception. We understand the showing, hiding, passive and aggressive aspects of deception. We've taken courses that let us discuss computer mediated communication. Carlson and Rowe delved further to tell us more about deception online, a wholly different monster in my opinion. How and why would digital deception be different--it depends.
Looking at the four basic requirements of a lie: a statement, a speaker's belief that a statement is false, intention to lie, and character of the person being lied to (or relationship/context), I can't help but place digital deception outside those parameters due to the medium through which deception occurs.
First of all, as Alex mentioned, the number of people being deceived by a single message, such as a virus, is unconfirmed. According to Rowe, an overall conclusion about digital deception is the general difficulty confirming any information about the participant. Who actually sends viruses anyway? We usually have no idea who the "speaker" is to determine any of their intentions, benign or malicious, before actually finding out.
Additionally, the most troublesome for me is the character of the person being lied to in context: Is it simply anyone who happens to be vulnerable? Is it anyone who is unaware of the dangers of offering private information like a credit card number?
Another point that Kristen brings up is if there's a sender, a false belief, and a receiver then there's deception. What then of an email encoded with an unknown attached virus? People forward messages all the time, sometimes even forward them without opening them. Email could very well allow a deception to occur WITHOUT a falsehood ever intended from the sender. This is just one example.
In her post, Lauren touched on Carlson's views that apply to the perspective I hold that deception online is "new wine in new bottles." Carson et al focus on the importance of the chosen medium, in this case specifically the internet. The most relevant aspect of this model is the idea that "deceivers will be most successful when they use media that afford and elicit high levels of social presence"(p.20). This implies that deceivers choose a particular medium to reach their desired end, and richer media bring them more success in their deception. In my mind, if different media clearly result in different degrees of attained falsehood, the deception is new. It's not just new bottles. The deceivers tailor their lie differently to fit their medium. Digital deception is more like serum in a vial than wine in a bottle.

Digital Deception

When the Beard is to Painful to Remove

You have the Leave it To Beaver life – the perfect wife, adorable kids, a beautiful home in the suburbs. You drive a nice car, hold a good job and are respected by your neighbors. But deep down inside, you harbor a secret which -- if revealed -- could rock your whole perfect world: you are gay. “For gay men in heterosexual marriages, even after the status quo becomes unbearable, the pull of domestic life remains powerful,” writes Jane Gross in an August article from The New York Times.

Online support groups and internet chat rooms have become very common outlets for gay men in heterosexual marriages. These groups are bastions of deception – the individuals in them are not lying to one another, but they deceive nearly everyone else they know by hiding their sexual preferences. Within the subcategories of ‘hiding’ defined by Nyberg, their deception would meet the criteria for disguise – group members make their homosexuality unrecognizable by getting married to women and living as heterosexual males.

In some cases, technology enables them to find others in comparable situations. If online support group communication leads to an affair between members, then technology has allowed them to further propagate the deception. Interestingly, this runs the counter to the interactional goal of most support groups. While support groups usually focus on helping members cope with the truth, this would be a situation in which the group could further cement the lie.

Deception, for these men, is the result of role strain. Role strain, as described by Carlson et al, is the psychological state produced by stressors that occur when an individual is involved in multiple roles. Specifically, the men in these chat rooms are experiencing what Carlson would call role conflict: the men are conflicted by the roles of parent, spouse, and sexual human being.

Carlson cites outside research saying that the likelihood of lying for a role was related to role commitment. The research he cites finds that those with high level commitment are less inclined to lie. In this case, the converse is true: it is precisely because of a high level of familial commitment that homosexual, married men deceive those around them.

http://global.factiva.com.proxy.library.cornell.edu:2048/ha/default.aspx?ftx=deception

Sunday, September 03, 2006

Assignment 2: Love's Little Lies: Deception through online dating

Today the average person with a computer does not have to leave their house in order to accomplish day to day tasks. Everything from grocery shopping, to clothes shopping, to dating can be done online, making it so Americans, theoretically, never have to leave their homes. Since activities that we used to do face to face can now be done online, it is more difficult to pick up on some verbal and nonverbal cues. In this blog I am going to look at how deception can be used over digital mediums, using the reading by Carlson et al. to analyze it.
Numerous online dating sites containing thousands of profiles have sprung up over the past few years. Each user of the site relies on the profiles to find their perfect match, and this is where the issue of deception comes in. Not everyone who uses online dating sites is attractive, young, and wealthy, but it would be difficult to believe that by just looking at profiles. According to Buller and Burgoon deception is "a message knowingly transmitted by a sender to foster a false belief or conclusion by the receiver." This definition fits in perfectly with the deception used on dating websites. Each member wants the other members to see them in a certain light, even if they are not that way in reality.
Carlson et al. talks about the different motivations that people have to deceive others, including role strain, outcome value and relevance, and the likelihood of perpetrating a successful deception. In the case of online dating, I believe the motivation for people is the outcome value and relevance. Most people join an online dating site with the goal of meeting a future partner, so their first impression is very important in order to find the possible love of their life. In most cases, the user's motivation is pretty high because he or she wants to find a partner, so this increases the amount of deception that will be used. For example, Peter, a "fortysomething," rolls back his age to the previous decade. Despite possessing a reputation as the "life of the party," he claims he's forced to lie because attractive women are only interested in men his age if they have money. Overall most of the users of online dating sites probably use deception in one form or another. The level of deception, however, all depends on the motivation and outcome value of the individual.