The effects of participation on the ability to judge deceit

Abstract

The principle of interactivity holds that communication processes and outcomes vary as a function of whether the communication context is interactive or not. When deception occurs in conversation, communicators who are active participants should be less accurate in detecting it than should observers by virtue of their level of interactivity. This experiment compared the judgments of participant‐receivers and observers to test this principle. Results supported all hypotheses. Participant‐receivers gave more favorable or lenient evaluations of participant‐sender performance than did observers and were less accurate in detecting deception. This finding offers strong support for Interpersonal Deception Theory's contention that interactive deception differs from noninteractive deception and advantages participant‐senders over participant‐receivers.