When fibbing, folks favor email and cell phones
By Heidi Dawley Jan 4, 2007
Lying has been around forever, probably before fire, and white lies have been a social lubricant of civilization since its very earliest days, often as a means of sparing others uncomfortable truths while feeling good about oneself.
And with the rise of the digital society, it seems the art of white lying has taken a major step forward. Among all the other advantages of such advances as mobile phones and email is their superior role as vehicles for graceful lying. They seem to make it so much easier.
Call it technotreachery.
“It makes them feel less guilty to do it over machines than face to face,” says a spokesperson for Friends Provident, an asset management company that recently commissioned a study in which nearly 1,500 people were polled online about their attitudes toward white lies.
The finding: Almost three quarters owned up to using email, cell phones and text messaging to tell porky pies--Cockney rhyming slang for lies--believing it makes the whole fibbing business that much easier.
Overall, the survey found that nearly four out of five, some 81 percent, admitted to telling white lies at least once a day, digitally or otherwise, and a slightly larger share, 84 percent, believe a few white lies here or there won’t do any harm.
The top topic for white lies is fibbing about whether one has bought new clothes and the cost of them. This was followed by fibbing about how good a friend or partner looked in some item of clothing. Rounding out the top five: what foods people say they eat or have eaten, how much they've had to drink and what they weigh.
The most popular vehicles for technotreachery, it turns out, are email and text messaging, followed by the cell phone.
These findings come as no surprise to Bella DePaulo, a visiting professor of psychology at University of California, Santa Barbara, who has studied the subject of deception for two decades.
Simply put, it's that much easier to lie to someone when it's not a face-to-face conversation, or so white liars believe.
“They may feel they are less likely to be caught because they aren’t using all the non-verbal cues, like facial expressions, body movements, tone of voice. All of that is off the table when you use technology,” she says. “People have this belief that people can look them in the eye and tell if they are lying.”
But in fact, as DePaulo’s research has determined, that's not really so.
Forget all the talk about body language and other telltale signs; people simply aren't very adept at figuring out if someone is lying. She's found that on average people only managed a 54 percent detection rate--not much better than the 50 percent rate you’d expect from just guessing whether a person is lying.
Meanwhile, in online ratings for the week ended Dec. 24, the top five parent companies were Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Time Warner and News Corp. The top five brands were Yahoo, Google, MSN/Windows Live, Microsoft and AOL.
Gus Plc was the top advertiser with 8.12 million impressions, followed by NexTag at 3.87 million, Reunion.com at 2.48 million, Blockbuster at 2.00 million and Low Rate Source at 1.61 million.
Sessions per person dropped 6.25 percent to 15, and domains visited per person were down 7.89 percent to 35. PC time per person was down 8.08 percent to 15 hours, 5 minutes and 56 seconds.
Top 25 parent companies Through Dec. 24
#
Parent
Unique Audience (000)
Reach %
Time Spent per Person (hh:mm:ss)
1
Microsoft
84,200
61.5
0:40:01
2
Google
75,744
55.3
0:26:42
3
Yahoo!
74,806
54.6
1:00:39
4
Time Warner
69,542
50.8
1:27:42
5
News Corp. Online
39,221
28.6
0:41:52
6
eBay
33,944
24.8
0:42:02
7
InterActiveCorp
28,049
20.5
0:13:10
8
Amazon
23,937
17.5
0:13:33
9
RealNetworks, Inc.
20,036
14.6
0:19:31
10
Landmark Communications
19,254
14.1
0:25:50
11
Apple Computer
19,219
14.0
0:37:54
12
Walt Disney Internet Group
19,149
14.0
0:17:55
13
New York Times Company
15,501
11.3
0:11:43
14
Wikipedia
14,757
10.8
0:08:53
15
Verizon Communications
13,676
10.0
0:15:10
16
Wal-Mart Stores
12,846
9.4
0:08:42
17
Viacom Digital
12,330
9.0
0:26:45
18
CNET Networks
12,328
9.0
0:07:11
19
United Online
11,951
8.7
0:30:07
20
Bank of America
11,883
8.7
0:25:15
21
AT&T Inc.
11,597
8.5
0:14:07
22
E.W. Scripps Company
11,192
8.2
0:06:36
23
Comcast Corp.
9,941
7.3
0:26:03
24
CBS Corporation
9,724
7.1
0:13:19
25
Gannett
9,713
7.1
0:10:36
Source: Nielsen//NetRatings
Top 25 brands Through Dec. 24
Parent
Unique Audience (000)
Reach %
Time spent per person (hh:mm:ss)
1
Yahoo!
74,036
54.1
1:01:04
2
Google
71,207
52.0
0:22:01
3
MSN/Windows Live
63,952
46.7
0:37:29
4
Microsoft
56,083
40.9
0:17:13
5
AOL
51,816
37.8
1:45:56
6
Fox Interactive Media
34,150
24.9
0:45:17
7
eBay
29,738
21.7
0:42:46
8
Amazon
20,156
14.7
0:13:39
9
Real Network
20,036
14.6
0:19:31
10
Apple
19,219
14.0
0:37:54
11
Ask Search Network
18,313
13.4
0:12:50
12
Weather Channel
18,116
13.2
0:27:15
13
YouTube
16,431
12.0
0:24:18
14
Wikipedia
14,501
10.6
0:08:56
15
MapQuest
12,595
9.2
0:07:23
16
Wal-Mart Stores
11,479
8.4
0:08:33
17
Bank of America
11,362
8.3
0:25:17
18
CNN
11,132
8.1
0:19:24
19
About.com
10,578
7.7
0:02:53
20
Blogger
9,811
7.2
0:05:26
21
Target
9,417
6.9
0:06:55
22
UPS - United Parcel Service
9,154
6.7
0:11:14
23
Comcast
8,696
6.4
0:29:07
24
Disney Online
8,642
6.3
0:23:44
25
Nickelodeon Kids and Family Network
8,634
6.3
0:34:55
Source: Nielsen//NetRatings
Top 25 advertisers (excludes house ads) Through Dec. 24
#
Company
Impressions (000)
1
GUS Plc
8,117,479
2
NexTag, Inc.
3,870,864
3
Reunion.com L.L.C.
2,476,351
4
Blockbuster Inc.
2,003,051
5
Low Rate Source
1,608,391
6
Verizon Communications, Inc.
1,551,668
7
Bank of America Corporation
1,454,554
8
HSBC Holdings plc
1,241,241
9
InterActiveCorp
1,140,913
10
Privacy Matters
1,014,073
11
Netflix, Inc.
975,763
12
American Express Company
913,900
13
Time Warner Inc.
912,883
14
BellSouth Corporation
807,427
15
Sony Corporation
781,955
16
The News Corporation Limited
758,481
17
Vonage Holdings Corp
712,172
18
AskMen.com
686,949
19
Target Corporation
650,001
20
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
630,783
21
Apollo Group, Inc.
628,007
22
Honda Motor Co., Ltd.
614,052
23
SBC Communications, Inc.
588,056
24
True
578,589
25
Monster Worldwide, Inc.
544,846
Source: Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance
Top 25 advertising sites (excludes house ads) Through Dec. 24
