The Effects of Computer-Mediation, Training, and Warning on False Alarms in an Interview Setting

Abstract

Deception in applicant résumés is a major business problem. With the rapid growth of Internet job websites and computer-mediated communication, organizations are more at risk than ever before. Researchers have tried to improve individuals' deception detection accuracy to minimize the impact of deception, including warning individuals about deception and training individuals to detect deception. However, evidence was found that trained and warned individuals might make more incorrect judgments about true information, which are known as false alarms. Further, few previous studies focused on the computer-mediated settings that are now a central part of business communication. After conducting an experiment to understand these and other causes of false alarms in computer-mediated interview settings, we found that individuals performing interviews over an audio-based communication channel incorrectly judged interviewees as being deceptive more often than did individuals performing interviews via e-mail. We found that while the number of lies detected was low for both types of communication, individuals communicating over an audio-based channel had more false alarms. We also found that the combination of in-advance training and a just-in-time warning did not affect receivers' judgments about deception in our computer-mediated interview setting.