An empirical investigation of deception behavior in instant messaging

Various disciplines have extensively studied deception in human communication. With the increasing use of instant messaging (IM) for both informal communication and task performance in the work place, deception in IM is emerging as an important issue. In this study, we explored the behavioral indicators of deception in a group IM setting. The empirical results showed that three types of nonverbal behaviors and three types of verbal behaviors that were investigated could significantly differentiate deceivers from truth tellers. The findings potentially can broaden our knowledge of deception behavior in human communication and improve deception awareness and deception detection in the cyberspace.