People from Different Backgrounds Behave Differently in Online Deception

Abstract

Online deception is a relatively new phenomenon that plays an increasingly important role in people’s daily lives. This essay mainly focuses on the comparison of similarities and differences of this phenomenon in different countries and their citizens’ attitudes. By deeply comparing people in different countries, this essay finds out that Americans prefer deception in different social media than the Chinese do. Americans prefer more realistic platforms but Chinese people prefer virtual platforms. The cultural tradition significantly impacts people’s attitudes and acceptance toward online deception, Americans show more open-mindedness and tend to believe others due to their social atmosphere, but Chinese people are more introverted and prefer to keep a mental distance from others via the internet. To deal with different cultural and societal statuses, people will show different characters in online deception. This review brings a new perspective to existing studies and inspires further studies to be deeply engaged in that field. Future research should broaden the scope of research to cover more people and groups and pay more attention to developing countries as they are rapidly changing the role that social media plays in their social structures.