I think there must have been times when we’ve all slipped out of a date we didn’t want to go with a harmless white lie, or when on social media platforms it seemed like someone we weren’t, physical or personal. So, could technology that offers a thousand and one ways for us to communicate also lay the groundwork that makes it easier for us to lie?
The ways we communicate have changed a lot since the study that first investigated the link between people’s deception and technology in 2004 – for example, most of us now prefer to text through different media platforms rather than speak out loud on the phone. But that is not the only thing that has changed. Let’s take a look at how much the relationship between lying and technology has changed since the 2004 study.
What were the results like 20 years ago?
Jeff Hancock and his colleagues, who conducted research on communication in 2004; He kept a report of 28 students’ social interactions over the course of a week through face-to-face communication, telephone, messaging and e-mail, and how many times the students lied in each interaction. Obtained results; the most lies were told during social interactions, and the least lies were told via e-mail.
The findings that emerged during the study were also compatible with what Hancock called the “feature-based model”. This system; He was able to predict where people were most likely to lie, regardless of whether people were able to communicate seamlessly, whether messages were short, or whether people were distant.
In Hancock’s work, the highest number of lies per social interaction is on the phone, which is a technology tool that incorporates all these features; at least it turned out that people were not able to communicate simultaneously and the messages were saved in the e-mail.
So how have the results changed nearly 20 years from now?
In a recent study conducted with 250 people in total, including face-to-face communication via social media, phone, messaging, video chat, and email, the social interactions and lies that individuals had over seven days were recorded, as Hancock did. Just as in the 2004 study, respondents lied the most during simultaneous and unrecorded phone and video chat, when they were far from each other. The fewest lies were told via e-mail; but oddly enough, the differences in the number of lies per mode of communication were very small.
There are several possible explanations for these results; however, studies are currently insufficient to fully explain why different media environments cause different lying rates. It is possible that some media make it easier to lie than others. Some media tools, such as the phone and video chat, may cause a milder reaction from the other party if we are caught lying. Cheating rates may also differ by technology, as people use certain forms of technology for certain social relationships. For example, while e-mail is generally used for professional environments; video chat is mostly used for more personal purposes. The two most important takeaways from this study are:
First, there are generally small differences in lying rates across the media. The main thing is; is someone’s tendency to lie rather than lie via email or phone. Secondly, the rate of lying in general appears to be low. Most people are honest, which is consistent with truth-default theory, which suggests that most people are honest and that there are only a few productive liars.
Since 2004, social media has become the primary place we use to interact with other people. Yet the common misconception persists that communicating online or through technology leads to social interactions that are inferior in quantity and quality. People often believe that honesty is harder to achieve because we use technology to interact, a perception that not only misleads us but is also not supported by empirical evidence. If we come to the conclusion; The belief that lying is more common in this digital age we live in does not match the data obtained.
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