What lies hidden within all that e-mail

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(The Guardian)
Updated: 2008-10-03 14:19

It could pay to be skeptical next time you check your inbox, according to a recent research that suggests people are more likely to lie in an e-mail than in other forms of communication.

Experts have long known that it is easier to lie in writing than in real life, where deception is made more difficult by physical prompts such as eye contact.

But psychological tests conducted by business professors at Rutgers, Lehigh and DePaul universities in the United States showed people are significantly more likely to lie in e-mails than in handwritten documents.

In the tests, 48 students were given $89 and told to split it with somebody they did not know and who had little idea how much money was up for grabs.

A total of 92 percent of the students lied when dividing the money over e-mail, while 64 percent lied when asked to write by hand.

In most cases, the subjects claimed the pot of money was smaller than $89, but said they would share it evenly with their correspondent and pocketed the difference.

E-mailers ended up handing over an average of $29 - keeping $60 for themselves - while pen-and-paper negotiators gave up $34 and kept $55 for their own pocket.

In a second test of 69 students, subjects were asked to split the money with somebody they knew. In this case the incidence of lying was reduced - although not entirely eliminated.

"People seem to feel more justified in acting in self-serving ways when typing as opposed to writing," said Terri Kurtzberg, an associate professor at Rutgers Business School in New Jersey who co-authored the report on the research.

The paper, Being Honest Online, published at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management in California, suggests people feel they have more capacity to mislead when using hi-tech communication than with more traditional methods, said the researchers behind the study.

Another co-author warned that businesses should be particularly careful when dealing with e-mails.

"There is a growing concern in the workplace over e-mail communications, and it comes down to trust," said Liuba Belkin, an assistant professor at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.

"You're not afforded the luxury of seeing non-verbal and behavioral cues over e-mails, and in an organizational context that leaves a lot of room for misinterpretation and - as we saw in our study - intentional deception."