Deception, Cultural Differences and Computer-Mediated Communication

Research indicates ‘‘that as much as one-third of daily conversations include some form of deception, broadly construed to include concealed, evasive, ambiguous, or exaggerated information as well as outright lies’’ (Burgoon Stoner Bonito and Dunbar 2003). As Klein, Tellefsen, and Herskovitz (2006) have noted, there is a growing body of research comparing deception in face-to-face communication to various types of computer-mediated communication (Hayne Pollard and Rice 2003; Zhou Burgoon Twitchell Qin and Nunamaker 2004); however, very few studies have investigated the role culture plays in this relationship. Therefore, this study proposes a framework for understanding the role culture plays in deceptive behavior for both face-to-face (FTF) and computer-mediated communication (CMC). The goal of this paper is to test theoretical explanations about the role of culture in deception by the development of a set of hypotheses predicting the conditions under which deception is likely to emerge. A research strategy and construct measures to test the hypotheses are also presented.