Liar, liar, pants on fire...

(Assign 2, Option 1) Word count: 493

In order to better observe which medium (rich or lean) I was detected lying more easily, I employed a truthful anecdote and a false one in my FtF encounter and online. Even though I was caught lying both times, the interviewee acknowledged that it was easier to detect my false statement in person. Thus my encounter confirms the hypothesis that deception detection is easier FtF rather than through CmC.

The interviewee expressed that I did not make as many key facial expressions to describe my encounter, for example I would not look them in the eye, I gesticulated less, and my tone of voice was flatter. This is aligned with the idea that because FtF communication allows for a greater exchange of nonverbal cues, deceptive behavior can be spotted easier through incongruous body signals.

Another point under this hypothesis is that via CmC, people have more time to respond, giving people more time to fabricate a more credible story. Even though online chatting is synchronous, it is less synchronous than FtF. If I were to pause in the middle of my sentence in person, and use conversations gaps such as “umm,” a person would be more suspicious of my behavior during my anecdotal narration rather than if I was chatting online and excused myself to answer an incoming call, when in reality I am using that time to generate a more elaborate lie.

Finally, in a CmC medium, it is easier to edit ones remarks..one may untype to unsay. This permits a person to better manipulate the fluidity and consistency of their lie. In my case during FtF, I was not able to think back about the specific details I had mentioned earlier during my conversation, and as a result I provided contradictory details in my story that raised suspicion

Overall in order to accomplish my lie, I was in line with self-presentation manipulation of the HYPERPERSONAL model in the sense that I was controlling the information I wanted the interviewee to hear about me and my story. Whether I was successful in persuading them is a different story. I also used cues of trust such as “remember I told you about that one time? Oh I didn’t? Well I meant to tell you that…” in order to confirm a bond of closeness, and utilizing the trust bias to my advantage. I also tried to express more emotions via CmC in order to overcome the lack of nonverbal cues present that decrease the amount of information received, which is stated by the CFO model.

In order for the experimentee to detect my lie, he read into my nonverbal cues, and since FtF is a richer medium, my incongruence was more detectable. But as a side note, I have to point out that by asking the listener if they could detect which story was lie, decreases the validity of the experiment since it can become a 50-50 guessing game, replacing psychological analysis with probability.