Blog Post 4

Lying and deception are common things that people do for various reasons. These reasons can be anything from internal to external, for personal and altruistic. Anything from telling someone a complete lie so you can steal money to telling someone a little white lie is considered deception. Lying is a pretty common problem, however with the experience we have with it and how prevalent of a problem it is, you would think we would be fairly successful at determining when a person is lying. Well, were not. We’re actually really bad at telling who is lying to us. I would like to tell myself that if someone was lying to my face, I would be able to tell, but studies show that we can only predict when someone is lying about 54% of the time. That is literally 4% off from random guessing. That’s horrible. We are almost just as likely to tell if someone is lying by flipping a coin than we are by trying to tell. A big problem is that when people become suspicious that they are going to get caught in a lie, they are very good at adapting to the situation to avoid detection.

            Another problem arises when it comes to myths about self presentation when lying. People believe that when a person doesn’t want to make eye contact, or is fidgety, they may be lying. Well what if I just so happen to be a fidgety person who is uncomfortable with eye contact to begin with? The same can be said for someone who doesn’t get fidgety or uncomfortable. Some people can look others right in the eye and tell them a complete lie with no sign of lying.  These things that people may, or may not, do are called nonverbal cues. These cues allow others to interpret aspects of communication in face to face conversation, or even in rich CMC, such as a Skype call. Nonverbal cues can be anything from hand motions, clothing, eye movement, or anything that can be seen by the other person that would add depth to a conversation. Nonverbal cues, however, can sometimes be misleading. This is what causes people to misinterpret when someone is lying. Verbal cues are anything that we say during the course of the conversation. Typically, when people lie, these verbal cues are more negativity and a lack of reason and directness. For example, someone who lies on the spot is less likely to be able to think of a reason, and they try to keep things very vague to not raise suspicion.