E-lie

Many of those who read this blog know me personally. And if you’ve had much interaction with me you know that I find many social situations tedious, especially when they involve meeting new people. I also avoid talking on the phone. I don’t know why I dislike it–perhaps because I find the lack of visual cues disturbing. Or maybe it’s just that I don’t like being lied to.

A researcher in the communication department at Cornell has determined that students lie less in email than they do do in person, and that they lie most on the phone. I knew there was a rational reason I don’t like the phone, and now I have something to tell people other than “because it creeps me out.”

Perhaps more interesting is the posited reasons that email is a less likely venue: namely that there is a record that can then be checked later on. Does that mean that blogs are likely to elicit even more honesty than any of the other approaches? I somehow doubt it. Oh, and I’m not writing this in the nude.

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4 Comments

  1. Barbara
    Posted 5/7/2004 at 8:38 am | Permalink

    Now *that* creeps me out.

  2. Alex
    Posted 5/7/2004 at 10:54 am | Permalink

    I would think the opposite case would creep most people out. It’s not like my fashion sense is *that* scary.

  3. Posted 5/7/2004 at 8:49 pm | Permalink

    I presented this research to a class of 9th graders today, and they anticipated correctly not only the data, but the reasoning for WHY each is true. Not sure whether to be relived or frustrated — if this was so obvious to THEM, what does it say about us? (note: rhetorical question.)

  4. Posted 5/8/2004 at 12:54 am | Permalink

    In my mental image of Alex, he’s always wearing that Hawaiian shirt.

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