Lying at Work: A Deceiver’s View of Media Characteristics

Abstract

We examine the perspective held by individuals concerning available media characteristics when presented with a directive to lie. A total of 532 management professionals were placed into one of four survey-based scenarios in which they were asked to select a medium for use in a well-defined deceptive task. The scenarios manipulated the familiarity the subject had with the deception target (i.e., colleague or stranger) and the importance of the problem (i.e., minor cost variance versus serious mistake). Results indicate a clear preference for face-to-face communication for deception across all four scenarios. Ten factors were identified that motivated these media selection decisions.