McCornack, Steven

Information Manipulation Theory

As McCornack began work on his Ph.D., he began collecting data from college students whom he asked to report on a lie told to a romantic partner. From this data he created scenarios with gender-neutral names like “Chris,” and then asked research participants to write down what they thought they would say in response to the scenarios. He discovered violations of Paul Grice's maxims, or the cooperative principle, in the messages participants created. Thus, information manipulation theory (IMT) was born.

McCornack created IMT to better understand the deceptive messages that individuals create, and he posited that messages can be manipulated along dimensions of each of Grice's maxims. Thus, a message may vary in ambiguity (manner violation), how much relevant information it contains (relevance violation), in its veracity (how much false information it includes or quality violation), and in the amount of relevant information it contains (quantity violation). McCornack is clear, however, that the violations on which IMT is based are not to be used to create a typology, as any deceptive messages can vary along each of the four dimensions, and not just along one of the dimensions.

Much of the research on IMT has used the violations to understand perceptions of deception and how these perceptions influence perceived competence of deceptive messages. For example, messages that tend to contain more quality violations, or more complete dishonesty, have in some situations been found to be less competent than messages that do not contain as much distorted information. IMT, although disputed even by McCornack if it meets all the criteria necessary to be considered a theory, has proved to have strong heuristic power. It has stimulated much research, including comparing individualistic and collectivistic perceptions of messages, self-construal and locus of control and perceptions of deceptive messages, and the organizational situations and perceptions of deceptive messages in response to these situations.

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