This blog will be looking at the paper "Online Deception: Prevalence, Motivation and Emotion" by Avner Caspi and Paul Gorsky (2006). The paper outlines a questionnaire-based study performed by Caspi and Gorsky that focusses on online deception.
Caspi and Gorsky (2006) looked at online deception from three perspectives: prevalence, motivation and emotion. Prevalence was examined both as perceived and actual prevalence. That is, they asked in their questionnaire 'how often do you deceive online?', 'how often do you think others deceive online?' and 'how often do you think are you deceived online?'. Motivation was also investigated using the questionnaire and focused on positive causes for deception from identity play to privacy concerns. Emotion was identified as feelings experienced while deceiving rather than when aware of deception.
Caspi and Gorsky (2006) located this research within the tradition of psychology, they bring to the study terms and methods used traditionally in this field, much of their background research is based in psychology theory. More specifically their interests seem to lie in communication theory, social psychology and human behaviour. The paper was published in the journal 'CyberPsychlogy & Behaviour' which further locates this particular research.
Caspi and Gorsky relate online deception to the textual qualities of CMC (computer mediated communication) applications. They link visual anonymity to ease of deception, specifically simple textual lies, but then cite studies that show a correlation between visual anonymity and honesty. They do not explicitly state why they privilege deception over honesty in online communication in this study.
Caspi and Gorsky (2006) go on to look at a number of case studies that have been used in previous analyses of online deception. These vary from Alex the American psychiatrist who created an online identity, Joan, to Turkle’s study of people who partook in identity play. They use the term “Munchausen on the Internet” (Caspi and Gorsky, 2006:54) for those who create alternate identities who have illnesses or disabilities, this again locates this study in the tradition of psychology using terms from this field in new ways, perhaps to validate their research.
They go on to look at the actual prevalence of online deception. They cite studies such as Curtis (in Caspi and Gorsky, 2006:55) that claim that online deception common than believed in the wider sphere. Their study reinforced the levels found in a number of cited studies to a varying degree. Caspi and Gorsky found 29% of respondents deceive online, this ranged from deceiving 'all the time' to 'sometimes' (2006:56). This was compared to the 73% of respondents who believed that deception was widespread, but, surprisingly, the minority did not believe that they were being deceived while online. I felt that this discrepancy in belief was a key issue raised by the study but that it was not analysed further than offering up two unsatisfactory explanations. The responses regarding deception should probably be taken with caution.
The next set of questions was directed at motivation to deceive. This issue is a key one in social psychology. Caspi and Gorsky (2006) restrict their study to positive motivations. They found that only a small group selected "other reasons" (57) which they assumed included all negative motives. I thought that this is problematic and threatened to bias the results towards the positive options. However, the main motivations for deceiving were found to be identity play and safety concerns. These both seem to be linked to a desire for anonymity and freedom from real world identity.
The third group of findings centered on emotions felt while deceiving. This section received the least analysis but Caspi and Gorsky (2006) did conclude that "enjoyment" (57) was most commonly felt (84% of responders). This however may be linked again to the options given and to the previous questions about motivation which may have biased the respondents towards positive experiences of deceiving.
Finally Caspi and Gorsky (2006) compare real life to online deception. They claim that the main difference between these two situations is that online deception is an enjoyable experience whereas face-to-face provokes negative feelings of guilt and fear. They further link this to the anonymity of online interactions; they fail however to differentiate between different kinds of online interaction that can vary dramatically in level of anonymity. The ease of deception online is further linked to reduced moral standards and the online disinhibition effect.
Despite a few problems this study seems to guide research in interesting directions and raises some interesting theoretical questions related to ethical practices online and the causes and effects of online activities.
Reference List:
Caspi, A. and P. Gorsky (2006) 'Online Deception: Prevalence, Motivation, and Emotion' in CyberPsychology & Behaviour 9(1)
This paper can be found at: http://www.liebertonline.com.ezproxy2.library.usyd.edu.au/doi/pdf/10.1089/cpb.2006.9.54
3 comments:
Amy, thank you for providing a different aspect about online deception as I have never really thought about the psychological side of it.
In my opinion, I found it quite clever that Caspi and Gorksy coined the phrase ‘Munchausen on the internet’ – I mean there are people out there who, for unknown reasons, lie about having a particular illness or disability. I suppose because the internet in a sense provides some sort of anonymity to everyone and also everyone has the ability to create an online identity whether it be identical to their ‘real life’ or forge a fake identity and alias because really, other people that they meet online wouldn’t even know the difference between what is real or fake. I guess because of that, there are a few people out there likes to play on that factor, and think that it is fun to play a different role or persona as if they were acting. But I think also, there are some people who like to create an online identity which combines both real and fake facts about themselves, in order to protect themselves from net predators and other forms of cyber deception.
However, I have heard of certain cases on online blogging communities through other people, of people creating fake identities and then proceed to effectively lie to everyone on their friendslist because they liked seeking attention. Obviously, those people being lied to were beyond furious after discovering that they had been faking everything that they have been written about - I mean I would to, wouldn’t you?
Post a Comment