Today I signed up to volunteer in Africa for three weeks during my winter vacation. Despite my excitement, my friend with me at the time responded with “It was nice knowing you, you are going to die from malaria.” I decided to tell her about my experience three summers ago where I volunteered in a third world county in the Caribbean. I told her about how I built a house and jumped thirty feet into a lake, which were all true. I also decided to tell a lie about how I got violently sick by food poisoning. Later on, I also decided to tell the same story to my friend online. Although neither suspected me of lying, partly because of my nature and partly because they either did not care to prove me wrong or knew nothing about the trip to assume I was lying, I found myself having two very different experiences lying in each media.
As to be expected, it was unbelievably easier to lie online than it was face-to-face. To my advantage, online communication lacks all the nonverbal cues that hinted to the fact that I was lying. Since talking online is an example of editable, asynchronous media, I could take my time and think about what I wanted to say before I said it. Therefore, it was not weird to take a few seconds to respond and she could not hear my voice falter or my eyes look up to try as I tried to make my story plausible. I also said the truth with the lies in similar styles so nothing seemed out of place. On the other hand, even though she might not have noticed, while talking face-to-face, I played with my hair a lot and had to pause to think about what I was saying before I said it out loud. Yet, when I was telling the truth, I told the story fast, animatedly and with many more details than I included in the lie. This experience relates to the Social Distance Theory which states that lying in uncomfortable so we use the more “socially distant” media in order to tell lies. I definitely felt much more uncomfortable face-to-face yet felt completely relaxed when I was telling my other friend the stories online.
Although lying is extremely uncomfortable, I wouldn’t conclude that I would always follow the Social Distance Theory and choose lean media everytime. I feel that rich media allows me to appear genuine as if I have nothing to hide, which lean media doesn't offer. This allows me to get away with many more lies even though it may make me an immoral person who will probably get food poisoning on my next trip.
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3 comments:
Hi Jillian,
Interesting post! I strongly agree with you that lying is easier online than in a richer media, like FtF. Your experience supports the Social Distance theory that lying occurs more in lean media than in rich media. Hence this does not support the Media Richness theory, where there is less deception in lean media and more deception in rich media.
CMC media lack the verbal and visual cues from rich media so it is harder for others to detect deception. It is true that you have more time to think about a response online than in FtF, where you may show visual cues of lying like your eyes looking up. Although you said you can take your time before you send messages online, sending a response a lot later may cause the receiver to detect deception.
If you are a good liar you can use rich media effectively to be convincing while giving verbal, non-verbal and physiological cues. For an easier method of lying, I would go for the leaner media such as IM.
I wanted to note that I think you meant that online communication lacks all the verbal cues that may hint you were lying, not nonverbal cues.
** Unrelated comment: I wanted to commend you for your volunteer work. =] **
Hi Jillian. Reading your blog was very interesting, and I definitely agree with your conclusions. I do not consider myself a lying person. Whenever I do lie during face-to-face communication, I become extremely uncomfortable and the person finds it very easy to detect that I am lying. Online, however, this is completely different, as you discovered. Since the person cannot see you, they do not see you turn red or sweat or see any nonverbal cue. I also agree with your conclusion of using the Social Distance Theory whenever you lie. The one point in class that I did not understand, and relates to your blog, is that humans are bad detectors of others lying during face-to-face communication. I personally feel that whenever I lie face-to-face the other person knows I am lying within seconds. My nonverbal cues are beyond obvious!
Jillian,
Africa sounds like its going to be a great time. I did this option as well and its interesting how I found it easier to lie in the richer media, supported by media richness theory rather than a lean media. I think the distinction is more of a mental state than anything else: if you are trying to actively deceive than you are more apt to choose the richer media as you have more of an opportunity to do so with the increase in cues, whereas if you are trying NOT to be caught than you would choose the Leaner media as per social distance theory. Great post!
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