Deception

            Over this past week we have been discussing the topic of deception online and how it affects others and ourselves.  Deception is the act of trying to cover up the fact that we are lying and there are four factors of deception. More specifically I want to discuss one of them and how it relates to my own experience. One factor for leakage in deception is felt emotion, which means that emotion occupies the lie. During my senior year of high school, I unfortunately got into the car with my friend who was under the influence of alcohol and we got into a car accident. Luckily, no one was seriously hurt, but when I got home late that night I was overwhelmed with emotion when I tried to lie to my mom about where I was. Although it wasn’t online deception, looking back I should have known I could have never gotten away with the lie because emotionally I was too wrapped up in what could have happened to me and not realizing how much emotion goes into getting away with deception of others. It also makes me think critically about my further experiences with people who I believe are lying and how I am going to look for signs of emotion whether it is online or face-to-face.

            Another aspect of deception is the topic of lies in relationships and how they are a different category than other forms of deception. Some individuals believe it is harder to lie in relationships and others believe it is easier based on three factors. People in a relationship have a better baseline, which means that they can tell when their partner is lying. However, what I consider the more important factor is truth bias, which is the belief that your partner would never lie to you. I have experienced lying in a relationship with my old high school girlfriend. We dated for over a year, so I learned when she was lying and I also believed in the truth bias in our relationship. However, when I went to college I found out through a third party that my ex-girlfriend cheated on me and I confronted her. She tried to deny it, but her body language and overall attitude eventually gave it away. The ultimate point I am trying to make is that I definitely bought into the truth bias because I didn’t believe in a million years that she would flat out lie to me and that’s why deception is interesting to study. The motives and intentions of people in their deception seem different for everyone and it begs me to constantly ask the question why. Why do the people who are closest to us think they can lie and get away with it? If there is anything that I learned from that relationship is that deception is present in relationships both online and face-to-face. It is our jobs as partners in relationships to be aware of truth bias and be cognitively aware that deception is existent, but ultimately I believe trust and knowing your partner well can help prevent that.