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As the world “gets smaller” and more people engage in cross-cultural communications, their ability to successfully separate truth from deception can be critically important. Yet it is challenging. While deceptive communication has been studied for decades, some areas are not well understood. In particular, two areas that could benefit from further research concern the effects of cultural differences and communication media on deception and its detection. Building on developments in theories of deception and its detection, we examine the question: How do differences in culture between senders and receivers affect deception detection, especially where the deceptive communication occurs across different media? To address this question, stimulus materials from recorded interviews were created featuring participants from the United States, Spain, and India. Three stimulus sets were created, one each in American English, Spanish, and Indian English, and each consisting of 32 interview snippets. Half of the snippets were honest and half were dishonest. Each snippet represented one of four media: full audio-visual, video only, audio only, and text only. Veracity judges were also recruited from the same three countries as the interview participants, to independently observe and evaluate the communication both within their culture and across other cultures. Evidence was found that different combinations of cultural and media effects affected the accuracy of deception detection.

Computer-mediated deception threatens the security of online users' private and personal information. Previous research confirms that humans are bad lie detectors, while demonstrating that certain observable linguistic features can provide crucial cues to detect deception. We designed and conducted an experiment that creates spontaneous deception scenarios in an interactive online game environment. Logistic regression, and certain classification methodologies were applied to analyzing data collected during fall 2014 through spring 2015. Our findings suggest that certain language-action cues (e.g., cognitive load, affective process, latency, and wordiness) reveal patterns of information behavior manifested by deceivers in spontaneous online communication. Moreover, computational approaches to analyzing these language-action cues can provide significant accuracy in detecting computer-mediated deception.

Why do people select the media they choose for a particular type of communication? The media choice literature has considered myriad contextual factors that influence media choice, from proximity of the communication partners, to the urgency of the situation, to time pressure, and so on. From this body of work, a contingency-based theory of media choice has emerged. An alternative approach is to investigate how communication strategies and media characteristics affect choice. We identified two approaches for investigating these issues: Te'eni's (2001) model of organizational communication and Dennis et al.'s (2008) media synchronicity theory. Using a scenario-based methodology, we asked respondents which medium they would use for a deceptive communication task and why they made that choice. We analyzed the data from the perspective of both the Te'eni and MST frameworks, enabling us to compare the extent to which each was able to explain our respondents' media choices. Both frameworks, at differing levels of communication granularity, suggest that the intent of the communication drives a strategy that ultimately informs media choice. The results suggest that the prior contingency-based explanations of media choice could be improved by not only understanding the intent of the communication, but also the strategy used by an individual to execute this communication. Additionally, we found that the more finely grained view of communication contained in MST explained more of the outcomes and was more parsimonious as well.

This study investigates whether brand betrayal, caused primarily by deceptive brand communication, incites brand hate among consumers. We performed PLS-based structural equation modeling, using SmartPLS on a dataset comprising 450 respondents selected through Mall Intercept sampling to corroborate the hypothesized relationships between the subject constructs. A significant mediating effect of perceived deception in the swelling of brand hate attributable to brand betrayal has been empirically substantiated. A moderation analysis reveals that the relationship between brand betrayal and perceived deception and the association between perceived deception and brand hate become more robust due to the crossover of negativity accumulated through past experiences. The paper offers rich contributions in enhancing our understanding of betrayal Ç deception, Ç hate serial links in the brand, and in the general context. This study's findings expand the exiguous theoretical and empirical evidence on brand hate and offer helpful advice to marketers on how to truncate brand hate to avoid its negative implications. It is a pioneering study investigating the antecedents and contextual contingencies of brand hate in a South Asian geographical context.

In this paper we examine definitions of ‘greenwashing’ and its different forms, developing a tool for assessing diverse ‘green’ claims made by various actors. Research shows that significant deception and misleading claims exist both in the regulated commercial sphere, as well as in the unregulated non-commercial sphere (e.g., governments, NGO partnerships, international pledges, etc.). Recently, serious concerns have been raised over rampant greenwashing, in particular with regard to rapidly emerging net zero commitments. The proposed framework we developed is the first actionable tool for analysing the quality and truthfulness of such claims. The framework has widespread and unique potential for highlighting efforts that seek to delay or distract real solutions that are urgently needed today to tackle multiple climate and environmental crises. In addition, we note how the framework may also assist in the development of practices and communication strategies that ultimately avoid greenwashing.

Deception scholarship is becoming increasingly interested in knowing how findings located predominantly in the North American context travel over diverse cultural contexts. Feeding into this line of inquiry, the study predicted that people’s perception of deceptive communication is always commensurate with their cultural understanding of deception as moral evil or a social necessity. Furthermore, the study also proposed that the perceived deceptiveness of a deceitful statement is the function of the deception goal it sets out to achieve. To test this assumption for Pakistani culture, the study used the theoretical guidelines and experimental design proposed in Information Manipulation Theory (IMT). Using Buller and Burgoon’s typology of deception motives, three deception motives (i.e., instrumental, interpersonal and identity) were identified and situational prompts were created in each category. The participants (N = 753) read the situational prompts and rated five different types of information manipulations on four 7-point semantic differential scales. The results indicated that the motive type had a significant effect on the perception of deceptive communication. The information manipulation carried out for instrumental purposes was rated more deceptive than the interpersonal and identity-based manipulations. Nevertheless, completely disclosive messages and falsifications were consistently rated the most honest and the most deceptive respectively. The results indicate that Pakistani culture places a high premium on the value of truth and treats indirect messages as less honest than completely truthful messages. The findings bring insights about an understudied collectivist culture and help to make empirical profiling of deceptive communication more robust.

Access-based service usage, or simply “sharing”, is an emerging consumption trend many companies pursue. As various firms seek to exploit this trend, however, consumers might not perceive these companies’ services to be adequate, especially if they misleadingly present traditional marketplace exchanges (e.g., car renting) as sharing. This paper explores potential consequences of such forms of deceptive communication. Drawing on the concept of greenwashing and on consumer skepticism research, we introduce the concept of sharewashing, which we define as misleading communication that erroneously asserts a firm’s offer as part of the sharing economy. To identify the underlying mechanism as well as the consequences of these deceptive practices, this research refers to three experimental studies. The results reveal negative effects of sharewashing on subsequent usage intentions, compared to both sharing and renting offers. Consumer skepticism mediates the effect between the type of offering and usage intention when a sharing offer is compared to a sharewashing offer, and it leads to lower perceived attractiveness and decreasing recipients’ information seeking tendencies regarding the sharewashing offer. However, this mechanism does not hold true if a rental offer is compared to a sharewashing offer, which indicates a different underlying mechanism. From the findings we derive several implications for companies and propose future research directions.

A Deceptive Belief Inventory scale is developed and validated using 10 first-order factors to represent 3 second-order constructs (deception confidence, duping delight, and guiltless deception). A new theoretical model describing how deception confidence, duping delight, and guiltless deception may influence a person’s intent to deceive others is also tested. Traditional deceptive communication research has focused on situation-specific factors surrounding deception. This study focuses on understanding and assessing a person’s propensity to deceive others. The findings of this study can be used to better understand the factors that may influence a person’s reported propensity to deceive and ultimately be used to improve security procedures designed to protect critical information systems.

We examine the perspective held by individuals concerning available media characteristics when presented with a directive to lie. A total of 532 management professionals were placed into one of four survey-based scenarios in which they were asked to select a medium for use in a well-defined deceptive task. The scenarios manipulated the familiarity the subject had with the deception target (i.e., colleague or stranger) and the importance of the problem (i.e., minor cost variance versus serious mistake). Results indicate a clear preference for face-to-face communication for deception across all four scenarios. Ten factors were identified that motivated these media selection decisions.