Chapter 12

The Nature of Interpersonal Deception

1. Defining Deception
a. Deception: occurs when a speaker transmits information knowingly and
intentionally for the purpose of creating a false belief in the receiver.
b. Deception acts fall along a continuum from high-stakes lies to low-stakes lies.
i. High Stakes Lies: lies for which the penalty (legal and personal) for getting caught
are severe.
1. Many high-stakes lies are forms of fraud, which means they are
misrepresentations of facts for the sake of material gain.
2. Examples of fraudulent lies:
a. Misrepresenting your identity by forging someone elses signature on
checks or other documents
b. Impersonating a physician, police officer, or some other licensed
professional
c. Engaging in insider trading by using privileged information to make
stock sales or purchases
d. Underreporting your income on your tax returns
e. Filing false insurance claims
3. Perjury, lying under oath, is another high stakes lie.
ii. Low Stakes Lies: lies for which the penalty (emotional discomfort) of getting caught
is comparatively mild.
1. Sometimes called white lies
2. The Elements of Deception
a. A communicative act must have three basic elements to qualify as deception:
i. The sender must know the information is false.
ii. The sender must be transmitting the information on purpose.
iii. The sender must be attempting to make the receiver believe the information.
b. You Arent Lying If You Believe That What Youre Saying Is True
i. You are not being deceptive if you did not know the information was false.
c. You Arent Lying If You Dont Intend For Others To Believe What You Are Saying
i. You arent lying when you use idioms
1. I am so hungry I could eat a horse.
ii. Most forms of teasing and sarcasm are usually not meant to be taken literally by
others.
1. We can usually tell by peoples facial expression or tone of voice when they
are joking and dont expect us to believe them.
d. You Cannot Lie To Yourself
i. The problem with trying to deceive yourself is that the sender and the receiver are
the same person and you cant logically believe that something is true while at the
same time knowing that it is false.
1. Deception requires that the sender and the receiver be different people.
a. Deception involves the transmission of information, not just the
transmission of words.
2. The moment you believe your lie, it stops being a lie.
3. Interpersonal Deception as a Common Occurrence
a. Deception is a Common Component of Politeness
i. One of the most common reasons people lie is to be polite and to avoid hurting
others.
ii. Deceptions committed in the service of politeness help maintain social harmony and
avoid disruptions in relationships.
1. Deception can serve as a social lubricant by decreasing friction between
people and helping them get along.
b. Deception is Especially Common When Communicating Online
i. Research suggests that deception occurs more frequently during computer-
mediated communication.
1. Moral disengagement may lead users to feel less guilty about lying than when
they use pen-and-paper communicators.
2. One explanation is that online communication doesnt involve face-to-face
contact and so the communicators can hide their identities, particularly if
they use screen names.
a. Some online communicators engage in gender switching, in which the
pretend to be a member of the other sex.
b. For women, the major areas of deception are age, weight, and
physical appearance.
c. For men, they are educational levels, income, height, age, and
even marital status.

The Diversity of Deceptive Acts
1. Some Reasons Why People Deceive
a. Some lies benefit the hearer.
i. Lying to be polite.
ii. Trying not to create conflict.
b. Some lying helps you get to know someone.
c. Some lies protect your privacy.
i. How did you do on an exam? Fine
d. Some lies help you avoid conflict.
e. Some lies make you look better.
f. Some lies help you avoid punishment.
g. Some lies help you protect yourself from distress.
h. Some lies help you get revenge on someone.
i. Some lies help you hurt someone for no reason.
j. Some lies protect you or your livelihood.
k. Some lies amuse you.
2. Some Deceptive Acts Are Acts of Simulation
a. Acts of Simulation: Forms of deception that involve fabricating information or exaggerating
facts for the purpose of misleading others.
i. Ex: telling a potential employer that you have a masters degree when you dont.
b. People Can Lie Through Falsification
i. Falsification: outright lying, communicating false information as though it is true.
1. Ex: indicating on an apartment application that you have rented before when
in reality you havent.
ii. Studies have shown that falsification is one of the most common ways that people
deceive others.
c. People Can Lie Through Exaggeration
i. Exaggeration: a person takes a fact that is true in principle and overstates it.
1. Ex: at a job interview you exaggerate the level of responsibility you had a
your last job to make you seem more qualified than you are.
3. Some Deceptive Acts Are Acts of Dissimulation
a. Acts of Dissimulation: the failure to convey information that, if known, would change the
nature of the story. Creates a false impression.
b. People Can Lie Through Omission
i. Omission: A form of deception that involves leaving consequential details out of
ones story.
1. Ex: Car dealer telling a customer that a car payment is $185, but failing to tell
the customer that the payment is due every two weeks. Month customers
would assume a payment for a car is per month.
c. People Can Lie Through Equivocation
i. Equivocation: A form of deception that involves giving vague, ambiguous answers to
a question to create the false impression that one has answered it.
1. Ex: customer ask waiter whether he thinks the pasta is a good choice and the
waiter says, its one of our most popular dishes. The response makes the
customer think he means the dish is a good choice, but he never actually said
that. He gave an ambiguous response he knew the customer would interpret
as positive.

Communication Behaviors and Deception
1. Detecting Deception is Difficult
a. Reasons we are arent good at detecting deception:
i. We often look at the wrong clues. The more attention we focus on the wrong
clues to deception, the less we focus on the right clues.
1. Ex: it is not true that lack of eye contact is the surest sign you are being lied
to.
ii. Most of us want to believe most of what we hear.
1. Truth Bias: unless we have a reason not to, we tend to believe most of what
we hear.
a. Truth bias is our default position because we generally expect our
communication with others to pleasant. Another reason is that it
takes a great deal of mental energy to question everything we hear.
2. Some Behaviors Are Common During Acts of Deception
a. False Information is Often Inconsistent
i. One of the most straightforward clues to deception is inconsistency in the
information presented.
1. Ex: This is why in interrogations they ask the same questions again and again
over a period of time to see if the story changes at all.
2. The more we use mediated communication the higher the chance that our
lying will be detected.
b. Deceivers Often Commit Speech Errors
i. When people are telling lies, they often make more speech errors than usual
because people often feel guilty or nervous when they are lying.
1. Taking excessively long pauses in the middle of conversation.
2. Using numerous vocal fillers such as um and uh.
3. Starting to speak but then stopping abruptly.
4. Taking an extra long time to respond to peoples questions.
c. Deception Often Increases Vocal Pitch
i. Because people become stressed or nervous when theyre being deceptive, their
pitch tends to rise.
1. Vocal characteristics such as pitch are more reliable clues to deception than
any other nonverbal behavior.
d. Two Eye Behaviors Are Associated With Lying
i. Lack of eye contact is a very poor clue that someone is lying because everyone
knows about it.
ii. Much better indicators of deception are eye blinking and pupil dilation.
1. You blink more often and your pupils dilate when you are lying.
2. Increased eye contact may now actually be a sign that someone is lying.
e. Liars Often Use False Smiles
i. On average, people dont smile any more or less when lying.
ii. What tends to change is the type of smiles people use during deception.
1. False Smile: the kind of smile people wear when they want to look happier
than they really are.
a. The upper and lower halves of the face seem inconsistent with each
other.
b. Genuine smiles cause the skin at the sides of the eyes to wrinkle.
f. Many Liars Use Minimal Body Movement
i. Deceivers exhibit fewer body movements than truth tellers do.
1. One explanation is that to avoid getting caught, deceivers may try so hard to
prevent themselves from pacing or fidgeting that they end up appearing rigid
or tense.
2. Another explanation is that there are so many things to think about why
lying that people simply dont pay as much attention to their nonverbal
behaviors as they normally do.

Detecting Lies in Different Contexts
1. Familiarity Affects Detection Success
a. People are more accurate at detecting deception by strangers than by friends.
i. Researchers concluded that truth bias prevents friends from noticing when they
are being deceived.
1. You also have large truth bias for your parents.
2. Expressive People Are Better Liars (does not mean that they lie more often)
a. According to several studies, expressive people are more successful at deception than
unexpressive people, for at least two reasons.
i. Expressive people (high self-monitors) tend to be more aware and in better control
of their own communication behaviors than unexpressive people.
ii. Expressive communicators tend to be more aware of other peoples behaviors, so
they may be more skilled at anticipating a hearers suspicion and correcting their
behavior to allay those suspicions.
3. Culture Matters, but Only Sometimes
a. The average person detects deception only about 55% of the time.
b. Cultural difference can affect our ability to detect deception, but only when we have limited
access to what the speaker is saying. In normal face-to-face conversation, culture appears
to matter less.
i. Cultural differences have more impact on detecting lying when communication is
limited compared to when communication is face to face.
c. One research study found that people generally are more accurate at detecting deception
within cultures than between cultures.
4. Motivation to Succeed Doesnt Always Help
a. Motivation Impairment Effect: A hypothesis, created by Bella DePaulo, that
motivation to succeed in a lie will impair a deceivers verbal performance, making
the lie less likely to be believed.
i. Does not predict that motivation to succeed will backfire when people attempt a
low-stakes lie.
5. Suspicion May Not Improve Detection Ability
a. Suspicion of deception tends to heighten behavioral awareness, thereby increasing the
probability of make a false positive.
b. Some studies have shown that suspicion can actually make people worse at detecting lies,
not better.
i. One reason this might happen is suggested by interpersonal deception theory,
proposed by Buller and Burgoon.
1. Interpersonal Deception Theory: argues that skilled liars can detect
when people are suspicious and then adapt their behavior to appear
more honest.
ii. Another reason why suspicion can reduce our ability to detect deception is what
researchers call the Othello error.
1. Othello Error: occurs when a listeners suspicion makes a truthful speak
appear to be lying even though he or she isnt.
6. Non-interactive Contexts Are Best for Detection
a. Interactive Context: A context for communicating in which participants can see and/or hear
each other and react to each other in real time (for example, face-to-face conversation,
telephone conversation).
i. Communication researchers have found that lies are more likely to succeed in
an interactive context than in a non-interactive one, but only when the
speaker is lying to a stranger.
ii. People engaged in conversation pay more attention to their own communication
behavior.
b. Non-interactive Context: A context for communicating in which the participants cannot
react to each other in real time (for example, a voice mail message, and email message).
i. When telling a lie in a non-interactive context, the liar has the benefit of exerting
complete control over the message.