Comments on: The Impact of Communication Technology on Lying Behavior

By: Sakura Kinomoto

Sakura Kinomoto — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 21:20:03 +0000

I think it’s largely a matter of what the topic of discussion is. In email or IM conversations, I’m typically either making plans and scheduling things, or just idle chatter. There’s little reason to lie about anything there. On the phone, I might lie about what I’m doing if I’m in a hurry and need to finish the conversation, and the discussion tends to be about more personal things that I might not want to be entirely honest about. In a face-to-face conversation, I might omit or change some details simply because I don’t want to try to explain them, because I’m not very good at that and I don’t think the other person will really understand them, so a little white lie about their nature avoids a long awkward conversation.

The length of the conversation and the magnitude of the lie are two important factors I don’t see mentioned here. A longer conversation is more likely to contain a lie, and a small variation from the truth is quite different from completely making something up.

By: Beppo

Beppo — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 23:48:22 +0000

While I agree that a lie can seem to “help” someone deal with an unfavorable fact, I still don’t see that it is right. Deceiving someone corrupts their reality. We should live in truth & reality, not fantasy.

For example, if a female friend gets a bad hair cut/style and asks how it looks, most people will tell her it looks cute or fine, even if they don’t think so. Their lies will make her feel better, but she’s believing a lie, and it would actually be better for her to know the truth so she can do something about it, instead of thinking it’s great while the people around her think it’s bad.

In response to comment #5, there are times you don’t want to tell everybody everything. And obviously you can use such methods to deceive someone without technically lying. But I believe it’s wrong even to deceive someone. It’s not fair to them, and we will have to answer for it.

Also, lying and deceiving can be a way of covering up our faults and not being accountable. Ideally we wouldn’t do things that need covering up, but when we mess up, we should “take our medicine” (when applicable).

By: suggester

suggester — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 22:00:40 +0000

Might I suggest that the lying is based on the SITUATION.
Phone and face-to-face may pose immediate obligatory responces, while unexpected calls to obligation are less common over email and IM. Furthermore, the applications of IM an email are usually not in the same personal context. Motive is the key ingredient here: the necessity of lying in an IM conversation is minimal. Think about it: Who do you usually speak to via IM, and what are usually the topics?

By: markselby

markselby — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 19:58:58 +0000

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By: Otso Koski

Otso Koski — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 07:00:11 +0000

Various aspects in the definitions of lying will make this conversation even more interesting. For example a "weaker" mind might need a longer period of time to accept all the details of a commonly shared reality and thus could suffer a serious emotional trauma if provided "with all of the aspects" in certain situations. Truthfulness appears to just open up awareness a little bit faster than lying, for some people it might be too fast. Would you call restricting information generally a lie? Where do you draw the line when it comes to choosing or manipulating content and maybe taking the intention of the "modification" into account? From an ethical point of view one should probably be more worried about lying that does not intent to help or take care of someone and instead manipulates a mind to behave in a way that is profitable for the "liar". Especially when lying involves a financial aspect it seems to fall into the category of fear of loss and fear getting caught on steeling. This is when the detectability of untruthfulness becomes interesting. "Get it in writing" is a saying that describes the lack of trust in an unwritten communication. "Hearing" only half of a conversation would corrupt the understanding of a potential witness standing by making a phone call the number one on the list.

By: Beppo

Beppo — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 16:07:03 +0000

I disagree with the opening statement :

> Lying is a frequent, and sometimes necessary part of our lives.

It is not “necessary” — it’s just convenient. And maybe it’s “politically correct”, but it’s morally and ethically wrong. I realize people want to throw absolutes out, so they can justify their behavior. But I suspect most of us do not want to be lied to, so we know deep inside it’s something that shouldn’t be done.

Also, isn’t 30 volunteers an extremely small sample set?

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 00:23:02 +0000

Email is usually stored and can be retrieved easily. Thus if the lie is discovered an email would be fairly conclusive evidence. Phone and face to face conversations tend to be one off instances and so if the lie is detected at a later date the liar can use “that’s not what I meant” or even a flat denial to reduce the risk of being labelled a lair. Wouldn’t you be more careful what you said if you knew every phone call you made was being recorded?

By: Greg

Greg — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 01:07:23 +0000

Might be interesting to investigate correlations between the intimacy of the communication and the need to lie. For example, verbal conversations via the phone, face to face, and even IM might contain more intimate topics than those held via email. Perhaps people feel more compelled to lie about things closer to them. Call it the “Intimacy Theory”.

By: Barry

Barry — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 23:48:05 +0000

I suggest that the persistence of the communication is the key to the truthfulness of the communication. Email persists over time — and can be circulated to others, greatly increasing the likelihood that deception will be exposed. IM can similarly persist. However, phone and face-to-face conversations have no persistence whatsoever and fact-checking will depend solely on the parties’ memories, thus increasing the probability of deceit.