Context

The context in which deception occurs is of fundamental importance. Context is typically embedded, an essential aspect of naturalistic (i.e., qualitative) forms of research. For example, D. L. Wieder's ethnomethdological study examines how former convicts in a halfway house negotiate their communicative acts to abide by the situated rules of the rehabilitative center, the explicit and implicit rules of the staff and the implicit rules of fellow former convicts. A thorough understanding of this particular context allowed the researcher to develop a sense-making explanation, which includes examples of when to expect a former convict or staff member to lie or deceive, and how these particular communicative acts may be differently understood by staff and former convicts. Understanding context led to a fuller understanding of the nuances contained within these communicative acts.

More recently, context has also become acknowledged as important in quantitative social science research. The primary example is the research of J. P. Blair and colleagues presenting 10 studies, each including context as an element of the study, in which participants' exhibited a much higher percentage of deception detection than precious research literature not including context, that is, a difference of on average from 54 percent accuracy to 75 percent accuracy when context is included. Context is essential to better understanding and detecting lies and deceptions in social situations.

Yet the ubiquitous nature of context, or all relevant information about a communicative act, makes it very difficult to analyze. The sheer amount of information deemed as context is overwhelming, yet research has exhibited the importance of understanding context to better understand and detect lies and deception. Sissela Bok, in her two books Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life (1978) and Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation (1984), demonstrates the importance of context in the very structure by which she analyzes these concepts as exhibited in her table of contents; after first defining and explaining the overall concepts, she analyzes them via the different contexts in which they are exhibited, such as lies for the public good, lies to the sick and dying, and secrets of state.