Deception Theory Research Articles

Privacy Practices Below the Lowest Common Denominator: The Federal Trade Commission's Initial Application of Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Authority to Protect Consumer Privacy (1997-2000)

In this paper, the author reviews the first six actions taken by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to safeguard consumers' privacy under the agency's authority to prosecute unfair or deceptive trade practices. Six conclusions can be made from these cases: First, the FTC has chosen to take enforcement actions only in cases with strong merits. Second, the protection of children's online activities is a priority of the FTC. Third, deception is the principal theory on which the FTC has relied to enforce violations of the FTCA against online businesses. Fourth, it is possible for the FTC to pursue a privacy claim under an unfairness theory. However, the unfairness theory is more likely to be successful when pursuing violations of children's privacy. Fifth, a strong showing of consumer harm is not required for an action based on unfairness. Merely misrepresenting privacy practices or violating a guarantee of privacy is sufficient to actuate agency action. Under the deception theory, there is no requirement to demonstrate harm. Last, monetary damages have not been assessed in FTC privacy actions against online businesses.

Toward a Theory of Deception

(2003). Toward a Theory of Deception. International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence: Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 244-279.

The effects of participation on the ability to judge deceit

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.

How people really detect lies

A primary focus of research in the area of deceptive communication has been on people's ability to detect deception. The premise of the current paper is that participants in previous deception detection experiments may not have had access to the types of information people most often use to detect real-life lies. Further, deception detection experiments require that people make immediate judgements, although lie detection may occur over much longer spans of time. To test these speculations, respondents (N=202) were asked to recall an instance in which they had detected that another person had lied to them. They then answered open-ended questions concerning what the lie was about, who lied to them, and how they discovered the lie. The results suggest people most often rely on information from third parties and physical evidence when detecting lies, and that the detection of a lie is often a process that takes days, weeks, months, or longer. These findings challenge some commonly held assumptions about deception detection and have important implications for deception theory and research.

Does Participation Affect Deception Success? A Test of the Interactivity Principle

Communication episodes may range from highly interactive to noninteractive. The principle of interactivity refers to the constellation of structural and experiential features associated with interactivity that systematically affect communication processes and outcomes. One such feature is degree of participation. In deceptive interchanges, senders may engage in dialogic (high participation, two-way) or monologic (low participation, one-way) communication. According to the principle of interactivity, dialogue should advantage deceivers relative to monologue due to increased mutuality between sender and receiver and greater opportunities for deceivers to improve their performance over time. An experiment in which friends or strangers alternated between deceiving and telling the truth to a partner under dialogue or monologue conditions tested this principle. All hypotheses received some support. Relative to monologue, dialogue created snore mutuality among strangers. Dialogue also enabled deceivers to better manage their informational content, speech fluency, nonverbal demeanor, and image, resulting in less accurate deception detection by partners. These results support the interactivity principle and interpersonal deception theory, from which the principle emanated.

Does Participation Affect Deception Success?.

Communication episodes may range from highly interactive to noninteractive. The principle of interactivity refers to the constellation of structural and experiential features associated with interactivity that systematically affect communication processes and outcomes. One such feature is degree of participation. In deceptive interchanges, senders may engage in dialogic (high participation, two-way) or monologic (low participation, one-way) communication. According to the principle of interactivity, dialogue should advantage deceivers relative to monologue due to increased mutuality between sender and receiver and greater opportunities for deceivers to improve their performance over time. An experiment in which friends or strangers alternated between deceiving and telling the truth to a partner under dialogue or monologue conditions tested this principle. All hypotheses received some support. Relative to monologue, dialogue created more mutuality among strangers. Dialogue also enabled deceivers to better manage their informational content, speech fluency, nonverbal demeanor, and image, resulting in less accurate deception detection by partners. These results support the interactivity principle and interpersonal deception theory, from which the principle emanated.

Adaptation and communicative design. Patterns of interaction in truthful and deceptive conversations

Two theoretical frameworks that examine the nature of adaptability and mutual influence in interaction, interpersonal deception theory and interaction adaptation theory, were used to derive hypotheses concerning patterns of interaction that occur across time in truthful and deceptive conversations. Two studies were conducted in which senders were either truthful or deceptive in their interactions with a partner who increased or decreased involvement during the latter half of the conversation. Results revealed that deceivers felt more anxious and were more concerned about self-presentation than truthtellers prior to the interaction and displayed less initial involvement than truthtellers. Patterns of interaction were also moderated by deception. Deceivers increased involvement over time but also reciprocated increases or decreases in receiver involvement. However, deceivers were less responsive than truthtellers to changes in receiver behavior. Finally, partner involvement served as feedback to senders regarding their own performance.

Testing for the motivation impairment effect during deceptive and truthful interaction

According to the motivation impairment effect (MIE) hypothesis, deceivers who are highly motivated to succeed should suffer detrimental effects on nonverbal performance but facilitative effects on verbal performance relative to deceivers who are less motivated. This should make highly motivated deceivers’ lies more detectable when receivers have access to nonverbal channels. Burgoon (1998) articulated a number of problems with the reasoning underlying the motivation impairment hypothesis and with the data used to support it. Drawing on a more recent theory of interpersonal deception, the current investigation challenges the MIE hypothesis by advancing the alternative predictions that (a) motivation often enhances both verbal and nonverbal performance and (b) does so irrespective of whether deception or truthtelling is occurring. Results from multiple operationalizations of motivation and performance support these predictions.

The Role of Conversational Involvement in Deceptive Interpersonal Interactions

Interpersonal Deception Theory (IDT) postulates that interactive deception differs from noninteractive deception due to combined influences of deceiver goals and social skills, mutual influence processes between sender and receiver, feedback, and interaction dynamics. An experiment tested hypotheses that (a) interactive deception displays differ from truthful ones only at the outset of interaction and approximate truthful displays over time, (b) displays are moderated by deceiver social skills, (c) deceivers adapt to receiver communication with reciprocal or compensatory displays, (d) low involvement by receivers conveys negative feedback that instigates more behavioral adjustments by deceivers than does high involvement, and (e) receivers’ postinteraction judgments of deceivers are directly related to deceiver behavioral displays. An experiment in which senders alternated between telling the truth and deceiving, and partners varied their own level of involvement, produced supportive results that have implications for the stability of, and causal mechanisms underlying, deception displays and interpersonal communication generally.

Information manipulation theory and perceptions of deception in Hong Kong

This study tests McCornack's (1992) Information Manipulation Theory (IMT) in Hong Kong. IMT views deception as arising from covert violations of one or more of Grice's four maxims (quality, quantity, relevance, and manner). Previous studies conducted in the United States have found that messages violating one or more of the four maxims are rated as less honest than messages that do not violate the maxims. Based upon cultural differences in expectations and social roles, we predicted that only violations of quality (i.e., outright falsification) would be seen as universally deceptive. To test this prediction, McCornack, Levine, Solowczuk, Torres and Campbell's (1992) original study was replicated in Hong Kong (N = 310). The results indicated that violations of quality (falsification) and relevance (evasion) were rated as deceptive in Hong Kong. However, message ratings along all four dimensions were significantly correlated with deception ratings, suggesting that perhaps the results stem from differences in what counts as a covert violation rather than more fundamental differences in the appropriateness of the maxims.

Deceptive Realities

Deceptive interpersonal interactions are an ideal venue in which to examine the issue of reality. Interpersonal deception theory offers a framework for considering why deceivers (by convention called senders), coparticipants (i.e., targeted receivers), and observers arrive at discordant views of reality. Deceivers' ulterior motives lead them to construct through communication a version of reality contrary to what they hold to be true. Due to adherence to Gricean principles of cooperative discourse, conversational demands, and the nature of the relationship between participants, interlocutors as well as nonparticipative observers may be inclined to accept the alter reality created by senders rather than apprehend the “true” state of affairs. Recent research findings are reviewed, and original data from a pilot investigation of deception strategies are presented to illustrate ways in which senders may perpetrate deception and the extent to which receivers and observers recognize such machinations.

Interpersonal Deception Theory

Interpersonal deception theory (IDT) represents a merger of interpersonal communication and deception principles designed to better account for deception in interactive contexts. At the same time, it bas the potential to enlighten theories related to (a) credibility and truthful communication and (b) interpersonal communication. Presented here are key definitions, assumptions related to the critical attributes and key features of interpersonal communication and deception, and 18 general propositions from which specific testable hypotheses can be derived. Research findings relevant to the propositions are also summarized.

Testing Interpersonal Deception Theory: Effects of Suspicion on Communication Behaviors and Perceptions

One major thrust of interpersonal deception theory (IDT) is elevating receivers of deception to a central role and acknowledging the important influence that their suspicion has on their own and senders' behaviors. The current investigation considers: (a) what sender behaviors are associated with receiver suspicion, (b) bow suspicion is displayed overtly by receivers, (c) whether senders recognize suspicion when present, and (d) how suspicion influences sender behavior. Results are reported from an experiment in which interviewees gave varying forms of deceptive answers to interviewers who were or were not induced to be suspicious. Results confirmed that several sender behaviors were associated with receiver suspicion, that receiver suspicion was manifested nonverbally, that deceivers interacting with novice receivers sensed the suspicion, and suspicion altered sender nonverbal displays. However, suspicion often interacted with other communicator factors and deception type to produce complex behavioral patterns. Sender and receiver communication style also were highly correlated, regardless of suspicion level, indicating likely mutual influence. Results underscore the importance of taking communicative features into account and the unlikely prospects of uncovering a generic receiver suspicion display or a suspicion-induced deceiver display that is invariant across relationships and communication contexts.

Theoretical Approaches to the Study of Deceptive Communication: Comments on Interpersonal Deception Theory

Journal Article Theoretical Approaches to the Study of Deceptive Communication: Comments on Interpersonal Deception Theory Get access James B. Stiff James B. Stiff 1James B. Stiff is an Associate Professor in the Communication Studies Department at the University of Kansas Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Communication Theory, Volume 6, Issue 3, August 1996, Pages 289–296, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.1996.tb00130.x Published: 17 March 2006

Testing Interpersonal Deception Theory: The Language of Interpersonal Deception

An analysis of verbal behavior was undertaken to test principles of interpersonal deception theory (IDT). It was predicted that language choice in deceptive messages would reflect strategic attempts to manage information through nonimmediate language. This linguistic profile, though, was expected to be altered in response to preinteractional factors - relational and behavioral familiarity - and interactional factors - form of deception and receiver suspicion. Results from two investigations are reported: a secondary analysis on interactions in an earlier study (Burgoon, Buller, Dillman, & Walther, 1995) and analysis of a primary experiment employing a 2 (relationship) × 2 (receiver expertise) × 2 (receiver suspicion) × 2 (truth/deception) within-subjects factorial design. As expected, senders displayed greater verbal nonimmediacy when deceiving. Expertise had a greater effect on linguistic behavior than a prior relationship with the receiver, with senders using more verbal nonimmediacy with novice receivers. Senders were more verbally nonimmediate when equivocating. Suspicion produced a mixed pattern of linguistic cues. The possibility that changes produced by preinteraction and interactional factors were strategic attempts to bolster credibility is discussed.

Interpersonal Deception Theory.

Journal Article Interpersonal Deception Theory: Reflections on the Nature of Theory Building and the Theoretical Status of Interpersonal Deception Theory Get access Judee K. Burgoon, Judee K. Burgoon 1Judee Burgoon and David Buller are associate professors of communication at the University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 8572 I Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar David B. Buller David B. Buller 1Judee Burgoon and David Buller are associate professors of communication at the University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 8572 I Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Communication Theory, Volume 6, Issue 3, August 1996, Pages 311–328, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.1996.tb00132.x Published: 17 March 2006

Interpersonal deception: XII. Information management dimensions underlying deceptive and truthful messages

Interpersonal Deception Theory (IDT) proposes that among the strategies deceivers use to create credible messages is information management. Delineated here are five fundamental dimensions along which verbal content and style can be altered to manage information: (1) completeness (informational and conversational), (2) veridicality (actual and apparent), (3) directness/relevance (semantic and syntactic/pragmatic), (4) clarity (semantic and syntactic/pragmatic), and (5) personalization. Two studies employing encoding and decoding methodologies are presented that assess the degree to which (1) senders can vary discourse on demand along these dimensions and (2) receivers (observers) can recognize such variations. Participants in the first experiment engaged in separate truthful and deceptive interviews; during the latter, they enacted one of three different forms of deception (falsification, equivocation, concealment) representing different combinations of the five dimensions. Participants in the second experiment gave truthful and deceptive answers during a single interview and again enacted different deception forms. Participants and observers then rated interviewee responses on the five dimensions. Results from both studies confirmed that deceptive communication is less complete, honest (veridical), direct/relevant, clear, and personalized (attributable to the speaker) than truthful communication. Falsifications were the least truthful but seen as most complete. Equivocations were the least clear and direct/relevant and seen as such. They were also seen as the most personalized. Findings are discussed in light of IDT, McCornack's Information Manipulation Theory, and Jacobs, Dawson, and Brashers' replication of McCornack's work.

Interpersonal Deception

Interpersonal deception theory (IDT) frames deception as a communication activity and examines deception within interactive contexts. One key element of the theory is the role of suspicion in prompting behavior changes. An experiment testing several suspicion-related hypotheses paired participants (half friends, half strangers) for interviews during which interviewees (EEs) lied or told the truth and interviewers (ERs) were induced to be (moderately or highly) suspicious (or not). Results confirmed that suspicion and deceit were perceived when present, suspicion was manifested through nonverbal behaviors but with different behavioral patterns for moderately versus highly suspicious ERs, and suspicion affected sender behavior. Relational familiarity moderated some behaviors. Results are discussed in terms of mutual influence processes and the dynamic nature of communication in interpersonal deception.

Interpersonal Deception

Interpersonal Deception Theory (IDT) posits that socially skilled individuals are better able to project truthful demeanors and evade detection than are unskilled individuals. IDT also predicts that social skills benefit receivers, making them better able to detect deception. Past research by Riggio, Thcker, Throckmorton, and Widaman in 1987 (in two separate studies) has shown that socially skilled individuals emit nonverbal behaviors that enhance believability. The present study extends Riggio's findings by investigating how social skills and nonverbal communication work in concert to predict three forms of deception/detection success: believability, accuracy, and bias. Acquainted and unacquainted dyads participated in interviews in which interviewees (senders) answered two questions truthfully and then used falsification, equivocation, or concealment to deceive on the remaining 13 questions. Results confirmed that as sender social skills increased, believability increased and receiver detection accuracy decreased, especially during equivocation. Skilled senders were more fluent and less hesitant. Senders were more believable, and truth biases were higher, if senders displayed greater involvement, positive affect, fluency, and composure and used a concealment strategy. Hesitancy was also implicated in a complex way. Only one dimension of receiver skill improved accuracy. Receivers were also more accurate if senders were less fluent.

Interpersonal Deception VIII

This article reports on a secondary analysis offive studies performed originally by Bavelas and colleagues in 1990 to further describe the behavioral profile associated with one common type of deception, equivocation. This analysis was grounded in Interpersonal Deception Theory (IDT) posited by Burgoon and Buller in 1994. Ratings of information dimensions revealed that equivocal statements were found to be less clear and conversationally complete than truthful statements. Nonverbal involvement, fluency, dominance, formality cues, time spent talking, response latency, smiling, nodding, and linguistic immediacy cues were compared in responses under conflict (equivocal statements) and no conflict (truthful statements). Consistent with IDT, senders enacted information management (appearing more withdrawn) and behavior management (being more kinesically expressive). Senders also showed arousal (more tension cues), negative affect (less pleasantness), and performance decrements (more filled pauses) when equivocating. This suggested that behavior management was achieved through interchannel compensation; however, equivocation consequently contained channel discrepancies. The behavioral profile of equivocation did not depart substantially from that associated with falsification. Rather, equivocation and falsification showed a general deception profile of greater kinesic expressiveness, shorter response latencies, and more linguistic immediacy in the experiment comparing truthful, falsified, and equivocal replies.