COMMUNICATIONS technologies are far from equal when it comes to conveying the truth. The first study to compare honesty across a range of communications media has found that people are twice as likely to tell lies in phone conversations as they are in emails. The fact that emails are automatically recorded – and can come back to haunt you – appears to be the key to the finding.
Jeff Hancock of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, asked 30 students to keep a communications diary for a week. In it they noted the number of conversations or email exchanges they had lasting…
