What is deception?
According to Caspi and Gorsky (2006), deception is defined as knowingly transmitting messages to the receiver with the intent to foster a false belief or conclusion. There are many reasons why people deceive others online and they can do it in many different ways. It has been shown that misrepresenting oneself is relatively uncommon. People often lie about their physical attractiveness, age, education, gender, and occupation. People do this to better themselves or to become someone else other than who they are. They also often misrepresent themselves in more than one area, whether it be both age and physical attractiveness or education and occupation. In the Caspi and Gorsky (2006) article, Mabry (2001) proposed that online communication allows for the strategic manipulation of social status. On sites such as dating websites or social networking sites, people may misrepresent themselves when they discuss their interests, so that they attract certain kinds of people. Obviously lies like this would come to the light when meeting in person. Text-based virtual realities allow people to be anyone, which is a very attractive aspect to all kinds of people whether it be young teens going through puberty or older people going through some sort of mid-life crisis.
Deception vs. Online Deception
Caspi and Gorsky (2006) suggest that distinctions exist between between everyday and online realities. In everyday life, you can't hide who you are. You can lie about what you do or where you went to school but it is much easier to do so online. While you are communicating online you are visually anonymous, which offers the possibility of experiencing a non-stigmatized identity (Bowker and Tuffin, 2003).
Bowker and Tuffin (2003) discuss in their article an incident reported by Van Gelder (1991). This incident occurred on a computer conferencing system in the 1980's where a male psychologist posed as a female psychologist (Julie) with deafness, blindness, and serious facial disfigurement (Bowker and Tuffin, 2003). Julie went into the conferencing community to find emotional and psychological support. The male psychologist used Julie's disfigurements as a reason to not meet face-to-face. Also because of the disfigurement, Julie's husband would not allow others to come visit her. The lack of visual cues allowed her transformation to continue. This incident example "highlights the ease with which identity may be constructed, transformed, and sustained by the textual nature of online interaction and the visual anonymity it affords" (Bowker and Tuffin, 2003).
Bowker and Tuffin (2003) discuss in their article an incident reported by Van Gelder (1991). This incident occurred on a computer conferencing system in the 1980's where a male psychologist posed as a female psychologist (Julie) with deafness, blindness, and serious facial disfigurement (Bowker and Tuffin, 2003). Julie went into the conferencing community to find emotional and psychological support. The male psychologist used Julie's disfigurements as a reason to not meet face-to-face. Also because of the disfigurement, Julie's husband would not allow others to come visit her. The lack of visual cues allowed her transformation to continue. This incident example "highlights the ease with which identity may be constructed, transformed, and sustained by the textual nature of online interaction and the visual anonymity it affords" (Bowker and Tuffin, 2003).
Aspects of online deception
There are many different aspects to online deception. These different aspects include the motivation, consequences, online dating, and social networking sites. We further discuss these topics on the following pages. One of the reasons why people have motivations for online deception (sensation-seeking) is because the internet allows others to become anonymous. The anonymity factor is one of the reasons why people deceive others online. If no one knows who you are, you can be anyone you want to be. This is a very attractive aspect. People can also let their true selves shine through because they aren't afraid of being judged by others. They can speak freely and interact with others who share similar interests, hobbies, etc. However, there are also consequences to online deception. Some examples of these consequences include psychological and emotional harm either to who is deceiving or the person on the receiving end. What some people may not realize is that more than the person doing the deceitful action are involved. There are also people who have to deal with this person that are affected by this. An example of this aspect of deception is people who do this in online dating and on social networking sites. On these sites, people have the ability to misrepresent themselves due to the absence of direct physical contact. People can write whatever they want about themselves to make themselves seem better than they actually are. This would affect others in the long run if they ever found out that the whole time they were communicating with this person, they were being lied to. Online deception doesn't only have to be about meeting other people, but it could also be about politics or campaigning, trying to get information out of people, and so on.