Distributed Deception: An Investigation of the Effectiveness of Deceptive Communication in a Computer-Mediated Environment

Abstract

This research examines the impact of computermediated communication, distributed communication, and knowledge of prior baseline behavior on an individual’s propensity to make veracity judgments. This study found that more detection confidence can come from knowledge of a person’s prior baseline behavior, being proximally located, the type of communication media used, and perceived relational closeness. These factors indirectly lead to less deception detection through more detection confidence and reliance on the truth bias, a fundamental belief in the truthfulness of others, even in a compute- mediated environment.