Lying Final Report Version 1.0

This topic submitted by J. A. Vankat, M.P. Loeffelman, E.P. Johnson at 8:03 pm on 5/2/01. Additions were last made on Saturday, March 2, 2002. Section: Cummins.

"Oh what a tangled web we weave, when we practice to deceive"
--Wild Bill Shakespeare

Abstract

The research project embarked upon by our group, dealing with the intricacies of roommate relationships and lyingÕs effect there upon, was an attempt to scientifically establish a correlation between human nature theory and practice. Recognizing or assuming that lying frequently occurs in American contemporary society, a research project within the field of deception is presumed to be a valid project. More specifically, the research project dealt with 120 respondents from Miami University's student population (those living with a roommate). Respondents picked from Peabody Hall, Western Campus as a generality, Clawson Hall, Havinghurst Hall, and from a random sampling done at Shriver Center.

Our survey, with considering time constraints, was an attempt to gather information based upon the reasons for deception amongst roommates. Our questions dealt with specifics such as, religion and it's affects on patterns of deception, class standing/age, gender, and the frequency of lying. A variety of questions were designed to help correlate the data between our hypothesis and previous research projects in the area of deception. Our hypothesis was that the situations involving lying between roommates on Miami University's campus, despite differences, is wide spread.

During data tabulation, many preliminary facts came to light. Among these seems to be that the predisposition of the majority of Miami University students surveyed to directly go against our hypothesis. One piece of information that went against our hypothesis was that the majority of respondents (57.5%) stated that they had never lied to their roommate. Our research had previously revealed that lying amongst people was greater than 42.5% (percentage of students who said that they had recently lied). Although we are only able to draw conclusions based on our surveyed data, we wonder if respondents lied on the survey itself.

Introduction

We believe that situations involving lying between roommates on Miami University's campus are widespread. We intend to explore this topic of lying, causes and results thereof by using Miami students as subjects. It is our goal to uncover the prevalence and severity of lying on this campus. Our inquiry pertains specifically to dormitory roommates, since sharing such a small space creates a very intimate relationship in most cases. Being around another person as much as one is around their roommate, complex situations are inevitable. This is why we believe that by focusing on roommate relationships, the most intricate, yet common, lying situations will surface. Additionally, we feel that MiamiÕs campus is an adequate representation of society and real-world situations. Thus, we feel that the conclusions made through this research project may be projected towards larger scale applications.

In part because of the perceived degradation of todayÕs society in terms of human character (popularity of violence, etc), we believe that our research will show that the vast majority of Miami students lie to others. We also hypothesize that the majority of Miami students in residence halls have lied to their roommates. Although we are unsure whether or not lying is directly related to human nature, we feel that the project will shed light on the subject. Subsequently, our conclusion should give weight to answering the question either in the affirmative or negative. Wright states, "organisms may present themselves as whatever it is in their genetic interests to seem like. People appear to no exception."(Pg. 263) He also asserts that "the conventional view that natural selection favors nervous systems which produce ever more accurate images of the world must be a very na•ve view of mental evolution."(Pg. 264) We believe this to be proof enough that Wright believes in a human nature in which lying is an integral part. The organism, which lies to their colleagues, is usually empowered, at the least temporarily, and stands a better chance of getting their genetic material furthered.

In an attempt to understand what causes lying or truthfulness, another aspect of our data collection is the categorization of students by sex and age. We hypothesize that there is no correlation between sex or age and increased or decreased lying.

From our project, we hope to uncover some of the facts about college students, and Miami students in particular. While we acknowledge that most people would agree with our hypotheses that the majority of Miami students lie to others and their roommates, it is scientifically beneficial to do our part in proving this belief. This research is also interesting because we assume that there will be wide degree of variance among students, and it will be exciting to see this reflected in our study. Because of the broad range of lies that people tell, we are looking forward to deciphering this. Our motto and rallying cry throughout the project comes from J.A. Barnes' book A Pack of Lies, wherein he states, "The only institution which has the pursuit of truth as its principle value is science."(Pg. 54) This, and hard work, will guide us to reliable evidence supporting or negating our hypotheses.

Relevance to Research Question

As a group, we hope that our statistical data will represent society as a whole. The lying that takes place in residence halls on Miami UniversityÕs campus is similar to the lying that is done on a national or international level. Lying is a common phenomenon in our society. We see this in education, law enforcement, business, the press, and many other areas. Society is full of incidents when people lie to get ahead in their jobs, organizations, socio-economic classes or even family issues. Government officials are constantly in the midst of "not telling the entire story" so that their own jobs are kept intact. For example, when the scandal involving former White House intern Monica Lewinsky and former President Bill Clinton first came to the American public, the former President lied. He was on the television being broadcast to millions of viewers across the country and he lied. Later, 'Slick Willy' "clarified" his remarks, but the damage had already been done. As a whole, the American public began to view Clinton is disrespectful, unfit to be a leader, and a father with highly immoral values. We feel that ClintonÕs actions only reflect us as a whole. Granted, there are truthful people, but they appear to be few and far between. Most people in todayÕs society are looking out for their own benefit and will do anything that it takes to achieve those interests. It is interesting that MiamiÕs students are the future government officials, business leaders, law enforcement officials, and journalists.

In an article from USA Today in August of 1999, the authors determined that "the idea that our memories hold a literal record of our past like a video recorder is wrong... Rather, remembering is a constructive process and illusions of memory are the result of our struggle to weave the remembered pieces of our past into a coherent narrative"(www.findarticles.com). We are interested to see if we can come across any correlation between lying and memory. While our survey will not focus on this issue, we hope to gain insight through scholarly articles. We may be able to make indirect conclusions relating to memory.

In order to better understand our project we plan on incorporating several previous works on lying into our project. The Battle for Human Nature is an excellent study on sociobiology and its effects on morality. This book should more effectively help us flesh out WrightÕs view of lying and its moral consequences in an evolutionary context. Our second book of interest is The Book of Lies, it is important mainly because it shows how lies have shaped human history throughout the ages. Also, the chapter of most importance is that of lies between the sexes, which should help us with our questions of gender and lying. Another book that deals with differences between the sexes and lying is The Dance of Deception, which covers the topics of how women lie to each other and the opposite sex. Both of these books should be useful in determining whether or not female roommates lie more often than male roommates. By the Grace of Guile is another book that discusses the socio-biological reasons for deception and self-deception. It discusses not only the evolutionary reasons for deception, but also why it is necessary for social cohesion. How Honesty Testing Works is a book that will be very useful in our actual test taking as it describes methods for seeing if someone is lying or not. And by understanding the give away signals for lies we can further understand this phenomenon. A Pack of Lies is an important work that focuses on lies and their effect on relationships, including roommates! We feel that this book will provide us with a great insight into our project, and its outcome. The book Lies, Lies LIES!! takes a little from all of our other books and covers everything from the biology of lying to lie detection to deceptions role in society. Our final book is Subjects of Deceit, a Phenomenology of Lying, and it is concerned primarily with the psychology of lies along with how this effects philosophyÕs view of lies. While it may not seem to have much to do with our project we feel that it will add a really interdisciplinary edge to our project by incorporating this text.

Materials and Methods

Our experimental design consists primarily of a survey sheet, which is included later in the proposal. The survey questions allow for us to make connections between the different sets of data. For example, informational questions such as gender, major, age, and spirituality will allow us to make strong conclusions about specific groups. Our design is statistically sound because the majority of questions on the survey sheet ask for a yes or no, or number-based response. This dramatically reduces the possibility of flimsy for unreliable answers, which would cloud our data. Although we recognize that this may be a sensitive issue for some people, our main goal is to be scientific: we are specifically collecting data, and finding comparisons in the data through unbiased means, and are not judging the individuals who are responding to our survey.

To analyze our survey data, we will be using the computer program StatView. This will allow us to categorize and sort our data into sections, focusing on specific parts of the survey. And after all of our data is analyzed in StatView, we can pick apart certain aspects and balance them with our hypotheses and lit reviews. One source we found which relates directly to our survey is an article by Jeffrey Csatari ÒRead Between the Lies.Ó In it, an interview is documented between the author and a prominent psychologist, which discusses why people lie, how to tell if someone is lying, and how the sexes differ in the way they lie. Paul Ekman, the psychologist and author of ÒTelling LiesÓ, reasons that people lie ÒTo avoid punishment. They also gain an advantageÉ. This comes from the pure thrill of getting away with something. The greatest control you can have over anyone in this age is to have the information ageÓ. EkmanÕs reasoning for lying is both a focal point for our research and some of our survey questions. Additionally, Ekman believed that sometime it is ÒokayÓ to lie and that when you Òput yourself in the place of the target of your lieÓ and you ÒwouldnÕt mindÓ it is okay. It will be an interesting project to put EkmanÕs words into data tabulation to give evidence for or against his beliefs.

Besides the survey, we will be using journal articles and books on the topic of lying, and using their data and hypotheses to relate to our project. We will distribute surveys to members of our class, and will engage them in discussion pertaining to our topic. Their opinions are valuable to assisting us in carrying out our project, handling the surveys, and forming our hypotheses.

Our survey audience includes students living in the three Western College Program dormitories, plus three other main campus dorms. We would like to survey Clawson Hall, the international dorm, as we believe the broad range of backgrounds there will be interesting. The remaining two dorms will chosen one from first-year buildings, and the other from an upper-class building. We plan to distribute 120 surveys, divided evenly as 20 per dorm. This will total 60 surveys on Western campus, and 60 surveys on main campusÑan even split between the Òtwo campuses.Ó

Another interesting source we came across was written by Aldert Virj and Mark Baxter. Their article, ÒAccuracy and Confidence in Detecting Truths and Lies in Elaborations and Denials: Truth, Bias, Lie Bias and Individual DifferencesÓ, represents a study done with college students detecting truth and deception via video recordings. Virj and Baxter then attempted to draw conclusions from the study noting that lying and detecting lies is an extremely useful skill in business world where in some jobs such as legal it is an absolute necessity. The study also found that the students, based on personal experience and character traits, had an extremely difficult time in figuring out who was lying and who was telling the truth. ÒPeopleÕs accuracy at detecting truths is usually better than their accuracy at detecting liesÓ. In our conclusion and relevance section of our final report, this study will be most useful in discussing how accurate our survey participants were in understanding situations with their roommates that involved lying.

Results

This graph shows the rating of the respondentÕs own honesty in comparison to those who have and have not lied to their roommate ever. The results are not significantly different, but it did not surprise us that higher honesty is reported among those who havenÕt lied to their roommate.

Here we see the results of questions asking people about 5 reasons for lying and have they ever done that. Results are shown in percentages. We figured that #4 would be the most chosen, but were surprised that the others were almost exactly opposite.

The results portrayed in this graph go against our hypothesis (that week would be the most chosen answer). It seems to show a higher level of honesty than we had expected.

This really surprised us. We had expected the vast majority of students to have lied to their roommate once in the past. Results from an informal survey in class showed a result consistent with our expectations.

Here we see that roommates who havenÕt lied to the other roommate have a better relationship with that roommate than do those who have lied to their roommate. the results are significantly different, going along with our hypothesis.

Peabody seems to have the least honest roommates, or at least possibly those who are most honest on the survey! All of the dorms/campuses were close, though. We werenÕt really sure whether to expect a difference or not.

There are slightly more believers in our respondent pool. Three people didnÕt answer this question, so we only have 117.

This is another very surprising graph. Here, believers say their religious beliefs influence their lying much more than skeptics. The results are significantly different. We had perhaps expected an opposite result. Or that both groups would say that their beliefs influence their lying. Apparently not.

This graph shows how believers and skeptics rate their own honesty, as well as miamiÕs honesty. It is interesting that believers rate both higher. This is interesting because it correlates well with some articles we read concerning our topic.

Our time-line of research:

Week 10: Final survey version completed. First dorms visited to hand out surveys. Proposal re-submitted. Start tabulating data. Progress report.
Week 11: Finish with surveys. More data tabulation. Progress report. Mid-term.
Week 12: Data tabulation continued. Nature autobiography due. Progress report.
Week 13: Data tabulation continued. Progress report.
Week 14: Data tabulation completed. Begin final report.
Week 15: Write final report.
Week 16: Due.

Conclusion

Although we recognize that 120 surveys do not represent the entirety of MiamiÕs student population with one roommate, we feel that it does represent an accurate statistical cross-section of Miami University. Additionally, we feel that our research may be used as a springboard for further studies rather than a completion of inquiry. In our attempts to synthesize the data we uncovered several points that should be addressed. Of these points, the most pressing is the issue of whether or not the student respondents had in fact lied on in the answers to the survey. This issue is of great concern to us simply due to our research project being based on the idea that one is more likely to lie to strangers than to those they are close to. Also, the issue presents a problem in deciphering between the data that valid conclusions can be applied to, and the data that some scientists would deem faulty. After careful deliberation amongst the group, we decided to simply present the data Òas isÓ and draw conclusions accordingly.

The grand synthesis of part of all our data is that while students at Miami University may lie to us on a survey, they feel that as a whole the individual is more honest than the institution as a whole. The mean value at rating individual honesty on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being most honest) was 7.71, while the mean value at rating the honesty of Miami University was 6.02. Although the values are fairly close to each other, it still shows that participants on the whole viewed themselves as more honest. Secondly, our survey showed that students who were willing to label themselves as a believer were less likely to lie to their roommate, however their religious views did not influence their patterns of deception. The exact opposite is true for those who labeled themselves as skeptics. Their responses indicated that they were more likely to lie to their roommates, and that they were influenced by their belief systems, or lack thereof. A third example of how the data presented synthesis problems was when we recognized that respondents had difficulty in filling out the survey without making obvious glaring errors. A prime example of this sort would be exemplified by the fact that oftentimes people would mark that they had never lied to their roommates, and then go on to respond the last time that they had lied to their roommate was a week or month ago. Therefore, one can easily see that the data seems to be highly contradictory and multi-leveled.

The strengths of our project lie strictly on the shoulders of previous research. Without our initial discoveries of previous experiments, our data would loose much credibility and our analysis would lose much of its depth. Also, our survey was rock solid as a tool to prove our hypothesis. We revised it several times while also incorporating the input from our peers, instructors and fellow students. This has created a survey far superior to our original vision of the survey, one with clarity of vision and easily tabulated data. The depth of our questioning in the survey was another strength of the project as a whole. The questions were logical progressions of theory, method, and realistic expectations. The data itself was also one of our major strengths, in that without it we could not have made such a clearly cut analysis of it.

Our major weaknesses included our multiple attempts at surveying main campus dorms, only to discover that they had a closed solicitation policy and thus forcing us to lump much of our main campus data into one single category. This difficulty in surveying residence halls has lead us to believe that simply handing surveys out to random people on the street would be a more effective approach, and that adding a space to write in ones dorm name would be the best way to go about surveying. Another statistical weakness was that we lacked equal numbers of gender and by residence halls as well as sheer numbers of respondents. The total number of respondents was 120 and if done differently without time constraints, the total number would be much higher to project a more accurate portrayal. Our final weakness was that although we recognize that people are important to our project, the human element was the weakest link in the project.

Due to our belief that respondents were untruthful on our survey, we are lead to believe that our project will be considered a failure in our eyes at least. We also recognize the importance of knowing that scientific research is a process of inquiry and that the process does not conclude with our project. Future projects have the ability to build off of ours while learning from our mistakes, creating new research questions, and establishing different hypothesis based on human deception. We strongly recommend that future research groups take into account the possibility of respondents being untruthful towards survey questions and act accordingly.

Bibliography

Barnes, J.A. A Pack of Lies: Towards a Sociology of Lying. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom: 1994.
Brown, Alison Leigh. Subjects of Deceit: A Phenomenology of Lying. State University of New York Press, New York: 1998.
Csatari, Jeffrey. Read Between the Lies. MenÕs Health. May 1996: pg. 52-55.
DePaulo, Bella M., Kashy, Deborah A. Everyday Lies in Close and Casual Relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1998, 74, 1, Jan, pp63-79.
Ford, Charles V. Lies! Lies! Lies!: The Psychology of Deceit. American Psychiatric Press, Washington, D.C.: 1996.
Goldberg, M. Hirsh. The Book of Lies. William Morrow and Company, Inc., New York: 1990.
Middleton, Russell and Putney, Snell. Religion, Normative Standards, and Behavior. Sociometry. Volume 25, Issue 2, (June 1962), pg. 141-152.
Rodriguez, Noelie, Ryave, Alan. Telling Lies in Everyday Life: Motivational and Organizational Consequences of Sequential Preferences. Qualitative Sociology. 1990, 13, 3, fall, pp195-210.
Schwartz, Barry. The Battle for Human Nature: Science, Morality and Modern Life. W.W. Norton and Company, New York: 1986.
Slaght, W.E & Edwin D. Starbuck, Ed. University of Iowa Studies in Character: Untruthfulness in Children, Its Conditioning Factors and its Setting in Child Nature. State University of Iowa, Iowa City: 1928.
Virj, Aldert and Baxter, Mark. Accuracy and Confidence in Detecting Truths and Lies in Elaborations and Denials: Truth, Bias, Lie Bias and Individual Differences. Expert Evidence. Vol. 7, 1999: pg. 25-36.
www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1272/2651_128/55500437/print.jhtml