Deception is the act of convincing one or many recipients of untrue information. The person creating the deception knows it to be false while the receiver of the information does not. It is often done for personal gain or advantage.

Deceit and dishonesty can also form grounds for civil litigation in tort, or contract law (where it is known as misrepresentation or fraudulent misrepresentation if deliberate), or give rise to criminal prosecution for fraud.

Types

Communication

thumb|Deception of woman, with self-portrait by [[Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, 1927 (National Museum, Warsaw)]]

The Interpersonal Deception Theory explores the interrelation between communicative context and sender and receiver cognitions and behaviors in deceptive exchanges.

Some forms of deception include:

  • Lies: making up information or giving information that is the opposite or very different from the truth.
  • Equivocations: making an indirect, ambiguous, or contradictory statement.
  • Concealments: omitting information that is important or relevant to the given context, or engaging in behavior that helps hide relevant information.
  • Exaggerations: overstatement or stretching the truth to a degree.
  • Understatements: minimization or downplaying aspects of the truth.

Appearance

Mimicry

In the biological world, mimicry involves deception by similarity to another organism, or to a natural object. Animals for example may deceive predators or prey by visual, auditory or other means.

Camouflage

thumb|upright|This [[wallaby has adaptive colouration which allows it to blend with its environment.]]

The camouflage of a physical object often works by breaking up the visual boundary of that object. This usually involves colouring the camouflaged object with the same colours as the background against which the object will be hidden.

Military camouflage as a form of visual deception is a part of many campaigns.

Disguise

Disguises are used to create the impression of a false appearance. A seventeenth-century story collection, Zhang Yingyu's The Book of Swindles (ca. 1617), offers multiple examples of the bait-and-switch and fraud techniques involving the stimulation of greed in Ming-dynasty China.

In romantic relationships

thumb|[[The Beguiling of Merlin, by Edward Burne-Jones, 1874]]

Deception has also been observed and studied in romantic relationships.

There are three primary motivations for deception in relationships.

{| class="wikitable"

|-

!Reasons for deceiving

!Description

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| Partner-focused motives

| Using deception to avoid hurting the partner, to help the partner to enhance or maintain their self-esteem, to avoid worrying the partner, and to protect the partner's relationship with a third party. Partner-focused motivated deception can sometimes be viewed as socially polite and relationally beneficial, such as telling white lies to avoid hurting your partner. Although other, less common, partner-focused motives such as using deception to evoke jealous reactions from their partner may have damaging effects on a relationship.

|-

| Self-focused motives

| Using deception to enhance or protect one's own self-image, maintain or establish their autonomy, avoid constrictions, unwanted activities, or impositions, shield themselves from anger, embarrassment, or criticism, or resolve an argument. The act of deception can also result in feelings of distress for the deceiver, which become worse the longer the deceiver has known the deceived, as well as in longer-term relationships. Once discovered, deception creates feelings of detachment and uneasiness surrounding the relationship for both partners; this can eventually lead to both partners becoming more removed from the relationship or deterioration of the relationship.

Deception and infidelity

Unique to exclusive romantic relationships is the use of deception in the form of infidelity. When it comes to the occurrence of infidelity, many individual difference factors can impact this behavior. Infidelity is impacted by attachment style, relationship satisfaction, executive function, sociosexual orientation, personality traits, and gender. Attachment style impacts the probability of infidelity and research indicates that people with an insecure attachment style (anxious or avoidant) are more likely to cheat compared to individuals with a secure attachment style, especially for avoidant men and anxious women. Insecure attachment styles are characterized by a lack of comfort within a romantic relationship resulting in a desire to be overly independent (avoidant attachment style) or a desire to be overly dependent on their partner in an unhealthy way (anxious attachment style). Those with an insecure attachment style are characterized by not believing that their romantic partner can/will support and comfort them in an effective way, either stemming from a negative belief regarding themselves (anxious attachment style) or a negative belief regarding romantic others (avoidant attachment style). Women are more likely to commit infidelity when they are emotionally unsatisfied with their relationship whereas men are more likely to commit infidelity if they are sexually unsatisfied with their current relationship. Women are more likely to commit emotional infidelity than men while men are more likely to commit sexual infidelity than women; however, these are not mutually exclusive categories as both men and women can and do engage in emotional or sexual infidelity. Those individuals who show a higher level of executive control can more easily influence/control their thoughts and behaviors in relation to potential threats to an ongoing relationship which can result in paying less attention to threats to the current relationship (other potential romantic mates). Sociosexual orientation is concerned with how freely individuals partake in casual sex outside of a committed relationship and their beliefs regarding how necessary it is to be in love to engage in sex with someone. Individuals with a less restrictive sociosexual orientation (more likely to partake in casual sex) are more likely to engage in infidelity. Research conducted by Conley and colleagues (2011) suggests that the reasoning behind these gender differences stems from the negative stigma associated with women who engage in casual sex and inferences about the sexual capability of the potential sexual partner. In their study, men and women were equally likely to accept a sexual proposal from an individual who was speculated to have a high level of sexual prowess. Additionally, women were just as likely as men to accept a casual sexual proposal when they did not anticipate being subjected to the negative stigma of sexually permissible women as slutty. According to the Scientific American, "nine out of ten online daters will fib about their height, weight, or age" such that men were more likely to lie about height while women were more likely to lie about weight. In a study conducted by Toma and Hancock, "less attractive people were found to be more likely to have chosen a profile picture in which they were significantly more attractive than they were in everyday life". Both genders used this strategy in online dating profiles, but women more so than men.

  • Price reservation: Not stating the real budget or price that one has in mind.
  • Misrepresentation of interests: Getting interests if the buyer seems desperate.
  • Fabrication of facts: This is the most immoral part, where the person lies about materials and misleading information to get a sale.
  • Omitting relevance: Not stating something helpful to know: for example, a car can be like new but it does not help if the seller omits the fact that there is a problem with the transmission. Paul Braun says that the journalist does not stand apart from the rest of the populace in the use of deception.

In war

In religion

Deception is a common topic in religious discussions. Some sources focus on how religious texts deal with deception. But other sources focus on the deceptions created by the religions themselves. For example, Ryan McKnight is the founder of an organization called FaithLeaks. He stated that the organization's "goal is to reduce the amount of deception and untruths and unethical behaviors that exist in some facets of religion".

Christianity

Islam

In general, Islam never allows deception and lies. Prophet Muhammad said, "He who deceives is not of me (is not my follower)". However, there are some exceptions, especially in case of war or peace making or in case of safeguarding one's faith. For an example,

Taqiya is an Islamic juridical term for the cases in which a Muslim is allowed to lie under the circumstances when needed to deny their faith due to force or when faced with persecution. The concept mainly followed by Shi'ite sect, but it varies "significantly among Islamic sects, scholars, countries, and political regimes", and has been evoked by critics of Islam to portray the faith allowing dishonesty.

In psychological research

Though commonly used and allowed by the ethical guidelines of the American Psychological Association, there has been debate about whether or not the use of deception should be permitted in psychological research experiments. Those against deception object to the ethical and methodological issues involved in its use. Rebecca Dresser noted that, ethically, researchers are only to use subjects in an experiment after the subject has given informed consent. However, because of its very nature, a researcher conducting a deception experiment cannot reveal its true purpose to the subject, thereby making any consent given by a subject misinformed. Diana Baumrind, criticizing the use of deception in the 1963 Milgram obedience experiment, argued that deception experiments inappropriately take advantage of the implicit trust and obedience given by the subject when the subject volunteers to participate.

From a practical perspective, there are also methodological objections to deception. Andreas Ortmann and Ralph Hertwig noted that "deception can strongly affect the reputation of individual labs and the profession, thus contaminating the participant pool". If the subjects in the experiment are suspicious of the researcher, they are unlikely to behave as they normally would, and the researcher's control of the experiment is then compromised. Those who do not object to the use of deception note that there is always a constant struggle in balancing "the need for conducting research that may solve social problems and the necessity for preserving the dignity and rights of the research participant". They also note that, in some cases, using deception is the only way to obtain certain kinds of information, and that prohibiting all deception in research would "have the egregious consequence of preventing researchers from carrying out a wide range of important studies".

Some findings suggest that deception is not harmful to subjects. Larry Christensen's review of the literature found "that research participants do not perceive that they are harmed and do not seem to mind being misled". Furthermore, those participating in experiments involving deception "reported having enjoyed the experience more and perceived more educational benefit" than those who participated in non-deceptive experiments. Lastly, it has also been suggested that an unpleasant treatment used in a deception study or the unpleasant implications of the outcome of a deception study may be the underlying reason that a study using deception is perceived as unethical in nature, rather than the actual deception itself.

In social research

Some methodologies in social research, especially in psychology, involve deception. The researchers purposely mislead or misinform the participants about the true nature of the experiment. In an experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram in 1963 the researchers told participants that they would be participating in a scientific study of memory and learning. In reality the study looked at the participants' willingness to obey commands, even when that involved inflicting pain upon another person. After the study, the subjects were informed of the true nature of the study, and steps were taken in order to ensure that the subjects left in a state of well-being.

Online disinhibition

Through the internet, individuals can portray themselves however they please because of the lack of face-to-face communication. In poker, the term double bluff refers to a situation in which the deceiving player is trying to bluff with bad cards, then gets re-raised by the opponent, and then re-raises again in the hopes that the enemy player folds. This strategy works best on opponents who easily fold under pressure.

Deception detection

Deception detection is extremely difficult unless it is a blatant or obvious lie or contradicts something the other knows to be true. While it is difficult to deceive a person over a long period of time, deception often occurs in day-to-day conversations between relational partners. A deceiver's actions are interrelated to the message receiver's actions. It is during this exchange that the deceiver will reveal verbal and nonverbal information about deceit. Some research has found that there are some cues that may be correlated with deceptive communication, but scholars frequently disagree about the effectiveness of many of these cues to serve as reliable indicators. A cross-cultural study conducted to analyze human behavior and deception concluded that detecting deception often has to do with the judgements of a person and how they interpret non-verbal cues. One's personality can influence these judgements also as some people are more confident in deceiving compared to others. Noted deception scholar Aldert Vrij even states that there is no nonverbal behavior that is uniquely associated with deception. As previously stated, a specific behavioral indicator of deception does not exist. There are, however, some nonverbal behaviors that have been found to be correlated with deception. Vrij found that examining a "cluster" of these cues was a significantly more reliable indicator of deception than examining a single cue. Deception detection can decrease with increased empathy.

Mark Frank proposes that deception is detected at the cognitive level. Lying requires deliberate conscious behavior, so listening to speech and watching body language are important factors in detecting lies. If a response to a question has a lot of disturbances, less talking time, repeated words, and poor logical structure, then the person may be lying. Vocal cues such as frequency height and variation may also provide meaningful clues to deceit.

Fear specifically causes heightened arousal in liars, which manifests in more frequent blinking, pupil dilation, speech disturbances, and a higher-pitched voice. The liars who experience guilt have been shown to make attempts at putting distance between themselves and the deceptive communication, producing "nonimmediacy cues". These can be verbal or physical, including speaking in more indirect ways and showing an inability to maintain eye contact with their conversation partners. Another cue for detecting deceptive speech is the tone of the speech itself. Streeter, Krauss, Geller, Olson, and Apple (1977) have assessed that fear and anger, two emotions widely associated with deception, cause greater arousal than grief or indifference, and note that the amount of stress one feels is directly related to the frequency of the voice.

See also

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  • Academic dishonesty
  • Big lie
  • Communications deception
  • Deception in animals
  • Electronic deception
  • Evasion (ethics)
  • Forgery
  • Hoax
  • Manipulation

References

Citations

General and cited sources

  • American Psychological Association – Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct . (2010). Retrieved February 7, 2013.
  • Bassett, Rodney L.; Basinger, David; & Livermore, Paul. (1992, December). Lying in the Laboratory: Deception in Human Research from a Psychological, Philosophical, and Theological Perspectives. ASA3.org
  • Baumrind, D. (1964). Some thoughts on ethics of research: After reading Milgram's "Behavioral Study of Obedience." American Psychologist, 19(6), 421–423. Retrieved February 21, 2008, from the PsycINFO database.
  • Behrens, Roy R. (2009). Camoupedia: A Compendium of Research on Art, Architecture and Camouflage. Bobolink Books. .
  • Bröder, A. (1998). Deception can be acceptable. American Psychologist, 53(7), 805–806. Retrieved February 22, 2008, from the PsycINFO database.
  • Dresser, R. S. (1981). Deception research and the HHS final regulations. IRB: Ethics and Human Research, 3(4), 3–4. Retrieved February 21, 2008, from the JSTOR database.
  • Edelman, Murray Constructing the political spectacle 1988
  • .
  • Kimmel, A. J. (1998). "In defense of deception". American Psychologist, 53(7), 803–805. Retrieved February 22, 2008, from the PsycINFO database.
  • Milgram, S. (1963). "Behavioral study of obedience". The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67(4), 371–378. Retrieved February 25, 2008 from the PsycARTICLES database.
  • Ortmann, A. & Hertwig, R. (1998). "The question remains: Is deception acceptable?" American Psychologist, 53(7), 806–807. Retrieved February 22, 2008, from the PsycINFO database.
  • Shaughnessy, J. J., Zechmeister, E. B., & Zechmeister, J. S. (2006). Research Methods in Psychology (Seventh Edition). Boston: McGraw Hill.
  • Bruce Schneier, Secrets and Lies
  • Robert Wright, The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology. Vintage, 1995. .

Further reading

  • Robert, W.; Thompson, Nicholas S., eds., Deception. Perspectives on Human and Nonhuman Deceit. New York: State University of New York Press.
  • Kopp, Carlo, Deception in Biology: Nature's Exploitation of Information to Win Survival Contests. Monash University, October 2011.
  • "Scientists Pick Out Human Lie Detectors", NBC News/Associated Press