Aubrie Adams

When Is It Acceptable to Lie? Interpersonal and Intergroup Perspectives on Deception

While deception is generally viewed as an undesirable and unethical action, people evaluate some lies as more detrimental than others. This study examined factors influencing deception assessments, including the seriousness of the lie and whom it benefits. The effect of an intergroup versus an interpersonal context for the lie was examined. Utilizing 24 vignettes varying in terms of these conditions, 259 participants evaluated a lie’s appropriateness, deceptiveness, and complexity. Altruistic and white lies were viewed as less deceptive and more acceptable than self-serving and more consequential lies. Lies evaluated as least acceptable were interpersonal, serious, and self-serving compared to altruistic lies and those embedded in an intergroup context. Intergroup and interpersonal deceptions are recognized as distinct forms of lying and are evaluated differently.

Communication Accommodation in Text Messages: Exploring Liking, Power, and Sex as Predictors of Textisms

ABSTRACT This mixed-methods study applies Communication Accommodation Theory to explore how liking, power, and sex predict one’s likelihood for using textisms in digital interpersonal interactions. Textisms are digital cues that convey nonverbal meaning and emotion in text communication. The main experiment used a hypothetical texting scenario to manipulate textism amounts (none/many) and participant’s perceived power levels (low/equal/high) during texting interactions to examine the number of textisms participants used in subsequent responses in comparison to the number of textisms they viewed. Primary results show that (1) participants moderately converged to use similar amounts of textisms, and (2) those with low power who viewed many textisms were more likely to use textisms themselves during subsequent responses. Through the examination of adaption behaviors in text messaging, scholars can better understand the contexts in which users will include textisms to intentionally convey nonverbal meaning and emotion in digital communication.

Reliable deception cues training in an interactive video game

Abstract Well-designed video games can teach people to decrease their reliance on heuristics and biases, especially in deception detection, where people might be resistant to training or unaware that training is needed. We created the serious game VERITAS in which users ask questions of pre-recorded actors and attempt to determine the veracity of the answers supplied. The efficacy of the game was tested in two different experiments with college student players. We hypothesized that reducing reactance and enhancing self-affirmation of players would mitigate the resistance to training about bias relevant to a deception detection context. We found that compared to a traditional lecture, VERITAS players were more engaged and motivated by the training and outperformed the traditional lecture in training participants about their knowledge of deception cues, and to identify truthful statements but not deceptive ones. The players of VERITAS also showed improvement from the first to the second scenario in the game. These results reveal that perhaps truth and deception detection are separate skills which require different types of training.