Deception, Definitions of

Verbal and Nonverbal Deception

The following examples are all verbal deception. Consider an example of propagating a falsehood, in which a mean-spirited student seeks, during a test, to mislead his classmate who he dislikes. The student knows that his classmate needs to know what the capital of Turkey is. Knowing that it is not Istanbul, in order to cause his classmate to believe something false, he says: “Istanbul is the capital of Turkey.”

An example of concealment would be a man who returns home very late because he had a long meeting in the afternoon, left work later than usual, and then went to see his girlfriend. When he gets home, his wife asks him, “Why are you so late?” In order to conceal the truth from her, he tells a half-truth, “We had a long meeting this afternoon that went on into the evening.” If this scenario is slightly modified, and the wife, falsely assuming that her husband must have been working late, says, “Oh, you worked till so late today” (instead of asking him why he was late, as in the previous example), it would be an example of allowing the hearer to continue believing something false.

Now consider an example that causes the hearer to cease to believe something true: Knowing it was her 6-year-old son who emptied the cookie jar of all the cookies, she says to him, “You took the cookies, and I told you not to.” The boy, wanting his mother to stop believing that he took the cookies, denies it: “I didn't take them. It wasn't me.”

Deception can also be nonverbal. Nonverbal deception is prevalent in domains such as sports and the military, in which one misleads the opponent with respect to plans, strategies, and moves. A nonverbal deception in an everyday situation is of a person pretending to talk on the phone to make another person believe that he is busy.

Deception and Self-Deception

The prevalence of deception in everyday life is much higher than is usually assumed. People regularly deceive one another for a variety of motives, which may be socially sensitive, tactful, and diplomatic, or self-serving, manipulative, and deceitful.

Deception primarily occurs because, by default, people have a truth bias. They assume that they [Page 251]are being told the truth, unless there is a reason to believe otherwise. Deceivers exploit this truth bias. The satirical movie The Invention of Lying highlights how frequently people use deceptions in their lives. Mark, the protagonist, lives in a full-disclosure world in which the concept of lying does not exist and in which everybody always expresses their thoughts to others. Mark discovers a radically new concept that is alien to the culture in which he lives; he discovers the concept of lying.

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