People lie more by email: Study

This is a bummer, at the least! Most of our business communications are already done through e-meow...
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From TODAY, World
Friday October 3, 2008

CYBER DECEPTION

ANAHEIM (California) — People are more likely to lie in an email than in other forms of communication, new research has shown.

Psychological tests conducted by business professors at Rutgers, Lehigh and DePaul universities in the United States found people are significantly more likely to lie in emails than in handwritten documents.

In the tests, 48 students were given US$89 ($99.50) and told to split it with a stranger who had little idea how much money was up for grabs.

A total of 92 per cent of the students lied when dividing the money over email, while 64 per cent lied when asked to write by hand. Emailers ended up handing over an average of US$29 — keeping $60 for themselves — while pen-and-paper negotiators gave up $34 and pocketed $55.

The paper, Being Honest Online, published at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management in California, suggests people feel they have more capacity to mislead when using high-tech communication than with more traditional methods.

“People seem to feel more justified in acting in self-serving ways when typing as opposed to writing,” said co-author Terri Kurtzberg, an associate professor at Rutgers Business School.

Co-author Liuba Belkin, an assistant professor at Lehigh University warned that businesses should be particularly careful when dealing with e-mail.

“You’re not afforded the luxury of seeing non-verbal and behavioural cues over email, and in an organizational context that leaves a lot of room for misinterpretation and — as we saw in our study — intentional deception,” he said.

THE GUARDIA N