Progress 10/01/07 to 09/30/10
Outputs
OUTPUTS: The outputs of the project are primarily the broad dissemination of the results via many different lectures and panels that involved non-academic communities, including the general public, alumni, media and corporations: Hancock, J.T. (2010, November). Being human in the bio-digital age. Faculty Panel, Cornell on the Charles, Boston, MA; Hancock, J.T. (2010, September). The Brand New World of Lying. Presented to Weiss Visit, Cornell Univeristy; Lying in the Networked Age. Presented at IBM, Cambridge, MA; Hancock, J.T. (2010, February). Lying in the Networked Age. Presented at Microsoft Research, Cambridge, MA.; Hancock, J.T. (2010, January). The Brand New World of Lying. Presented at The One Day University, New York City, NY.; Fox News TV. Telling Lies Online, Feb, 2010. The most significant outputs and dissemination of this project is the extensive dissemination of the results to the public, from alumni, general audiences, news media, and corporations. PARTICIPANTS: Faculty collaborators: Jeremy Birnholtz, Natalie Bazarova, Michael Woodworth. Graduate students involved: Catalina Toma, Jamie Guillory. Undergraduate students involved: Melissa Wollis, David Chase, David Markowitz, Melissa Sackler, Stephanie Friedman, Crystal Calabrese, Mark Thomas, Danielle Kirschenblatt. TARGET AUDIENCES: The target audience is general and is intended to be as wide as possible. One sub group is children, teenagers and their families PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Not relevant to this project.
Impacts
The outcomes of the project include our deeper analysis of a kind of deception using technology called "butler lies" that refer to deception used to manage one's availability for social interaction. This work advances our understanding of how deception is used by people to manage their everyday use of technology and social interaction. The project also resulted in a deeper understanding of how language changes when people lie online compared to offline. The project has advanced our knowledge of how lying takes place in interpersonal and intimate relationships, including online dating, such as learning that physical attractiveness predicts deceptive behavior in online dating profiles. Lastly, we made some theoretical advances in understanding how the online environment can constrain deception with features called warrants, which are connections between the user's online identity and their offline identity.
Publications
- Toma, C.L. & Hancock, J.T. (2010). Looks and Lies: The Role of Physical Attractiveness in Online Dating Self-Presentation and Deception. Communication Research, 37, 335-351.
- Hancock, J. T., Woodworth, M., & Goorha, S. (2010). See no evil: The effect of communication medium and motivation on deception detection. Group Decision and Negotiation.
- Birnholtz, J., Guillory, J., Hancock, J.T., & Bazarova, N.N. (2010) on my way: Deceptive Texting and Interpersonal Awareness Narratives. Proceedings of the ACM conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2010), 1-4.
- Toma, C.L. & Hancock, J.T. (2010). Reading between the Lines: Linguistic Cues to Deception in Online Dating Profiles. Proceedings of the ACM conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2010), 5-8
- Woodworth, M., Hancock, J.T., Agar, A., Cormier, N, & Carpenter, T. (2010). Suspicion in Synchronous Computer-Mediated Communication: Preliminary Results.
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Progress 10/01/08 to 09/30/09
Outputs
OUTPUTS: The project's outputs include numerous invited talks to both academic and non-academic audiences, as well as several descriptions in the media. Talks given: Hancock, J.T. (2009, December). Profiles as Promise. Presented at the symposium on online dating at the Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford, UK. Hancock, J.T. (2009, November). Web of Deceit - When, Where, and Why People Lie Online. Presented at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC. Media Resource: McCarthy, E. Small lies about height or weight are frequently on online dating sites. The Washington Post (December, 2009) Bielski, Z. Sex, lies and online profiles: Can you spot the fake Globe and Mail (December, 2009) NSF Media Advisory (Dec, 2009). Hancock discusses deception on Internet dating and social networking science. http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_videos.jspcntn_id=116021&media_id=65969 Lindner, M. How to sniff out a liar. Forbes.com (May, 2009) PARTICIPANTS: Faculty collaborators: Jeremy Birnholtz Graduate students involved: Catalina Toma Jorge Pena Jamie Guillory Natalie Bazarova Undergraduate students involved: Barrett Amos Josh Perlin TARGET AUDIENCES: The target audience is general and is intended to be as wide as possible. One sub group is children, teenages and their families. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Not relevant to this project.
Impacts
The findings and results from the project this year include our identification of deception using technology called "butler lies" that refer to deception used to manage one's availability for social interaction. This work advances our understanding of how deception is used by people to manage their everyday use of technology and social interaction. The project also resulted in a deeper understanding of how videogames can prime individuals to take on psychological qualities related to primes in the videogame. In one study we were able to prime more helping and cohesive behaviors in people playing with white avatars compared to avatars dressed in black. The project also advanced our understanding of deception takes place in the photographs of online dating profiles.
Publications
- Pena, J., & Hancock, J. T., & Merola, N. A. (2009). The priming effects of avatars in virtual settings. Communication Research, 36, 838-856.
- Hancock, J.T. & Toma, C. (2009). Putting Your Best Face Forward: The Accuracy of Online Dating Photographs. Journal of Communication, 59, 367-386.
- Wang, Z., Walther, J. B., & Hancock, J. T. (2009). Social identification and interpersonal communication in computer-mediated communication: What you do versus who you are in virtual groups. Human Communication Research, 35, 59-85.
- Hancock, J.T., Birnholtz, J., Bazarova, N., Guillory, J., Amos, B., & Perlin, J. (2009). Butler Lies: Awareness, Deception and Design. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2009). (Acceptance Rate: 24.5%)
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Progress 10/01/07 to 09/30/08
Outputs
OUTPUTS: There were three main activities for this project over the last year. The first was a literature review to gather the state of the art in understanding how youths and families are using the Internet and what research has been done to date to understand how deception and fraud plays a role in online life for youth and families. This literature review uncovered modest research articles in the scholarly literature and a relatively large set of online web resources, including sites produced and maintained by the federal government. The second activity was to conduct two studies to examine how young people use deception in their daily online communication. The first study used software developed for our NSF Digital Deception project (Apate) to get participants to record each message they send via instant messaging and to identify whether each message involved deception or not. Participants used this system for four days, and at the end they completed several questionnaires about their experience. The second study involved examining how people use information about others found online in their conversations. In this study, participants either had access to an unknown partner's Facebook profile or did not, and were instructed to get their partners to like them in a short instant messaging conversation. We then coded how often participants used the facebook information and in what way, and ultimately, whether this 'asymmetric personal information' was effective in getting their partner to like them. The third activity involved giving public presentations regarding youths and technology use. The talks were developed by myself, Sahara Byrne and Tarleton Gillespie, and focused on psychological, legal and practical aspects of using the Internet, and was directed at helping families develop their own strategies for safe and responsible use of the Internet. We gave 4 presentations 2008, June. YouTech Presentation on Values and Dangers of BEING online. Presentation to Ithaca High School (grade 9), Montreal, Canada 2008, May. YouTech Presentation on Values and Dangers of BEING online. Presentation to Selwyn House High School (grades 10-11), Montreal, Canada 2008, May YouTech Presentation to the ACT for Youth Center of Excellence, Albany, NY (with Byrne and Gillespie) PARTICIPANTS: Senior Personnel Jeff Hancock (PI) conducted literature review, developed the experiments conducted, analyzed data and wrote up results. Hancock also gave presentations regarding the research. Graduate Students Catalina Toma helped conduct the facebook study, including running participants, analyzing and coding data, and writing up results. Undergraduates Natalie Bazarova helped analyze the data from the instant messaging study and assisted with writing up the results. Kate Fenner helped conduct the facebook study, including running participants, analyzing and coding data. Josh Perlin helped write the software of Apate (software that supported the IM study), helped run the IM study, analyze the results, and write up the findings. Collaborators: Sahara Byrne and Tarleton Gillespie. Together we developed the YouTech Presentations that we delivered to high school, parent and student organizations about youth and technology. TARGET AUDIENCES: With collaborators Sahara Byrne and Tarleton Gillespie the project reached several key audiences with the YouTech Presentations, including teachers (at the ACT 2008 conference), parents (at the IHS parent meeting) and students (at the Selwyn House prsentation). PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period.
Impacts
For activity one, literature review, there is no outcome yet, though I am working on a book aimed at a public audience that will incorporate this research. For activity two, we found the following results from the two studies: For the field study of 50 instant messaging (IM) users, in which participants rated each of their messages at the time of sending to indicate whether or not it contained deceptive content, we found that about one tenth of all IM messages were lies and, of these, about one fifth were deceptions related to opening or closing conversations, which we refer to as butler lies. These results suggest that butler lies are an important social practice in IM, and that existing approaches to interpersonal awareness, which focus on accurate assessment of availability, may need to take deception and other social practices into account. For the facebook information study, recall that participants either had access to an unknown partner's Facebook profile or did not, and were instructed to get their partners to like them in a short instant messaging conversation. Participants used social network and profile information in two ways: probes, asking questions whose answer they already knew, and implicit mentions, referencing information that made them seem more similar to their partner. These strategies successfully increased interpersonal attraction. Participants, however, frequently rated these strategies as deceptive, raising important concerns about the use of asymmetrical personal information for interpersonal gain.
Publications
- Hancock, J.T., Toma, C., & Fenner, K. (2008). I know something you dont: Use of asymmetric personal information for interpersonal advantage. Proceedings of the ACM conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2008). (Acceptance Rate: 16%; Best Note Nominee)
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