{"id":27463,"date":"2021-11-08T05:49:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-08T05:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=27463"},"modified":"2021-11-10T10:48:59","modified_gmt":"2021-11-10T10:48:59","slug":"are-people-lying-more-since-the-rise-of-social-media-and-smartphones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/are-people-lying-more-since-the-rise-of-social-media-and-smartphones\/","title":{"rendered":"Are people lying more since the rise of social media and smartphones?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

David Markowitz<\/a>, University of Oregon<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Technology has given people more ways to connect, but has it also given them more opportunities to lie?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You might text your friend a white lie to get out of going to dinner<\/a>, exaggerate your height on a dating profile to appear more attractive<\/a> or invent an excuse to your boss over email to save face<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Social psychologists and communication scholars have long wondered not just who lies the most, but where people tend to lie the most \u2013 that is, in person or through some other communication medium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A seminal 2004 study<\/a> was among the first to investigate the connection between deception rates and technology. Since then, the ways we communicate have shifted \u2013 fewer phone calls and more social media messaging, for example \u2013 and I wanted to see how well earlier results held up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The link between deception and technology<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Back in 2004, communication researcher Jeff Hancock<\/a> and his colleagues had 28 students report the number of social interactions they had via face-to-face communication, the phone, instant messaging and email over seven days. Students also reported the number of times they lied in each social interaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The results suggested people told the most lies per social interaction on the phone. The fewest were told via email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The findings aligned with a framework Hancock called the \u201cfeature-based model<\/a>.\u201d According to this model, specific aspects of a technology \u2013 whether people can communicate back and forth seamlessly, whether the messages are fleeting and whether communicators are distant \u2013 predict where people tend to lie the most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Hancock\u2019s study, the most lies per social interaction occurred via the technology with all of these features: the phone. The fewest occurred on email, where people couldn\u2019t communicate synchronously and the messages were recorded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Hancock Study, revisited<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When Hancock conducted his study, only students at a few select universities<\/a> could create a Facebook account. The iPhone was in its early stages of development, a highly confidential project nicknamed \u201cProject Purple<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What would his results look like nearly 20 years later?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a new study<\/a>, I recruited a larger group of participants and studied interactions from more forms of technology. A total of 250 people recorded their social interactions and number of interactions with a lie over seven days, across face-to-face communication, social media, the phone, texting, video chat and email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As in Hancock\u2019s study, people told the most lies per social interaction over media that were synchronous and recordless and when communicators were distant: over the phone or on video chat. They told the fewest lies per social interaction via email. Interestingly, though, the differences across the forms of communication were small. Differences among participants \u2013 how much people varied in their lying tendencies \u2013 were more predictive of deception rates than differences among media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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