Inhibiting deception and its detection

Computer-mediated communication is becoming ubiquitous in our networked society. Yet one aspect of human communication that is rarely explored in the context of computer-mediated communication is deception. Deception is common, yet communication research has shown that people perform little better than chance at successfully detecting it. Two different laboratory studies of deception and its detection in face-to-face groups, communicating either with electronic support or without it, are reported on here. In both studies, subjects were very poor at detecting deception, across media. Yet third parties who had not taken part in the group meetings were able to detect about half or more of the deceptive statements that appeared in the transcripts of the group meetings. A possible explanation explored here is the role of social facilitation and the inhibiting influence it may have on deception and on its detection.