Digital Deception

Assignment 9: Lit Review/Hypotheses

Literature Review & Hypotheses:

There are many areas which relate to these ideas of initial conversations and information flow. First we have the concept of asymmetric information – a situation where there is differing amounts/pieces of knowledge held by the conversation partners. In 1969, Ekman and Friesen wrote a paper primarily regarding potential cues to deception. They discussed a range of deceptive situations, one of which being an asymmetrical salience of deception, where the deceiver has more information (particularly that they are lying) while the receiver isn’t aware of this information. The authors predict that this type of asymmetric information will lead to less detection of deception. Hypothesis 1 – Asymmetric information will lead to an increase in deception.

A closely related concept is information control. Multiple studies have been done where participants have engaged in different tasks, and the participants who had the most control over the flow of information reported the most satisfaction at the end of the task (Bavelas, 1950; Leavitt, 1951). This result was shown not only in those who knowingly controlled the information, but even in those participants who were unaware of their central role (Leavitt, 1951). Hypothesis 2 – Those who control or hold more knowledge of the situation will be more satisfied at the completion of the conversation, and will rate their partner more favorably.

Once someone has this “extra” knowledge, there have been many studies looking at how and why people manage or conceal this information. Many people believe they have the right to conceal information from others (Imber-Black, 2003), and in fact most people would agree that lying is often done to save face for yourself or your partner. Withholding some knowledge or truth is how the world often functions, and doing anything differently could create dissonance, a feeling that you are actually doing something “wrong” by telling the truth (Schein, 2004). People have developed many different strategies for hiding or managing information. One woman studied how teens manage information they tell to their parents, and reported strategies including telling information only if the parent specifically asks, telling only partial information to give an acceptable answer but still leave out crucial information, or telling all information when they feel it is necessary for safety, punishment, or other reasons (Marshall, 2005). Hypothesis 3 – People with more knowledge will develop strategies to control this information, in order to avoid dissonance or other uncomfortable feelings.

Susan Fussel has done work regarding peoples’ biases and assumptions about their conversation partners. She has shown that these biases were found to unconsciously affect the way they constructed their verbal messages to their partner (1991, 1992). Hypothesis 4 – People with more knowledge about the situation/their partner will use different strategies for conveying information in their conversation than those less or no knowledge.

Finally, Robert Feldman conducted an experiment where he studied how a person’s self-presentational goals affected their amount of deception. He found that someone with a goal of self-presenting themselves (as likable or competent) told more lies than someone without a goal (2002). Hypothesis 5 – People with a goal of appearing likable will tell more lies, and will also achieve their self-presentation goal and appear more likable than those without a goal.

Overall, I believe these five hypotheses can be summarized in two. Hypothesis A – A person who has more knowledge (asymmetric information) will engage in more deceptive strategies, and will be more liked by their partner. Hypothesis B – A person with a self-presentational goal of being likable will engage in more deceptive strategies and will achieve their goal.

posted by Kate Fenner @ 7:18 PM