The Perception of Lying of Indonesians Living Abroad

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There are four common requirements of the definition of ‘lie’; they are (1) falsehood of a statement, (2) speaker’s belief regarding the falsehood, (3) intention to deceive the hearer, and (4) belief that the hearer will be deceived by the statement (Mahon, 2015). Speaker’s belief or subjective falsity is the most important element as argued by philosophers and linguists. This argument is true for speakers of English (Coleman & Kay, 1981), Arabic (Cole, 1996), and Spanish (Hardin, 2010; Eichelberger, 2012), but not for Indonesians (Adha, 2020) or Chinese people (Adha & Li, 2021). Indonesians and Chinese people consider objective falsity as the most important element in the definition of ‘lie’, but the latter group also emphasizes on intention, speaker-hearer relationship, and situational context. Since cultures have a role in shaping the choice and moral judgements about truth and deception (Fu, Xu, Cameron, Heyman & Lee, 2007), would Indonesians living and experiencing foreign cultures have a different perception about a lie? Specifically, would Indonesians living in China have a perception that is similar to Chinese people? A questionnaire consisting stories in Chinese Mandarin was distributed to 45 Indonesian respondents. All respondents have lived at least one year in China as foreign students in a Chinese university and have at least lower intermediate levels in Mandarin language. The result shows that the Indonesian respondents living abroad exhibit more uncertainty in their responses compared to Indonesian respondents in Adha’s (2020) study. Thus, it is feasible to argue that a new environment with a different culture may affect one’s perception.