Pinocchio Needs Email

I started up a face to face conversation with someone I am very close to about travel stories. I told him a true story and he even told one of his travel stories, too. Later that day, I emailed him and told him I had thought of an even better story. This time, I searched online for interesting monuments in Berlin in order to come up with a believable story. This person knew I had been to Germany, but I elaborated by saying I had gone to Berlin and seen these certain monuments. Later, when I confronted him about the stories, he stated that he thought that I was being truthful in both interactions. He said that both the face to face and email communication had been very normal and could not pick up on any lying cues and did not even think to be suspicious.

Some reasons come immediately to mind for these results. The fact that I have known him for several years and have established a very trusting relationship clearly created a trust bias even more so than the bias one might have with a lesser known acquaintance. Since his previous experience with me has been trustworthy, he did not think to question my honesty this time. Besides knowing me well, he also mentioned that he did not feel that I would lie about this subject since there really was no reason to. Without a motive or gain from lying, he was therefore more biased towards believing me. Another reason for this very trusting exchange could be because we had a truthful repartee in person about the same subject. This backs up the idea that trust needs touch. Since I was truthful in person, the trust was already there for the information from leaner media to be trusted.

The leaner medium of email allowed me to draft the lie and even look up more detailed information to make it more believable. My victim was oblivious to any deceit because he did not see a reason for me to lie and the story was not ridiculous enough to doubt. The fact that we have a trusting relationship as well as the previous truthful conversation definitely also factored into his truth bias as well.

It was easier to lie in the leaner media for me because, like the social distance theory would predict, he may have detected my lie more easily if I had done it in the same room because he knows me so well, making email the best choice. The media richness theory would suggest that I would rather lie in a richer media because of the equivocality of lying, but that was not the fact here. The email made it easier since he could not pick up on my lying mannerisms or anything like that. He could not provide feedback or ask questions since it was over email and this also made it easier to lie to him. Similarly, my experience goes against the Feature Based Approach because I don’t think I would have been able to craft my lie as easily on the phone in this situation since it was not a spontaneous lie, but one that needed asynchronicity. For me, using distance to reduce detection cues allowed me to use his truth bias to my advantage and my lie went unnoticed. I bet Pinocchio would also appreciate a little social distance for his lies.