Justifications and Questions in Detecting Deception

Truth-tellers and deceivers use justifications to bolster their credibility, but given their different motivations, truth-tellers and deceivers may use justifications differently. Participants were assigned the role of allocator or recipient in an ultimatum game. Allocators received money based on their performance on a task and made an offer. Recipients did not have information about allocator’s task performance or amount the allocator received, and therefore, allocators could deceive. Liars provided more plausible details to support their offer by stating the structure of their task; this strategy backfired and led to more detection of lies. Truth-tellers were more likely to disclose advantageous information about their endowment of money in their justifications, and this reduced suspicion in their offers. Deceivers used more wrap-up questions to end the interaction; this did not help reduce partner suspicion. Asking questions in general did not improve detection accuracy.     

Sweet Little Lies: Social Context and the Use of Deception in Negotiation

Social context shapes negotiators’ actions, including their willingness to act unethically. We use a simulated negotiation to test how three dimensions of social context—dyadic gender composition, negotiation strategy, and trust—interact to influence one micro-ethical decision, the use of deception. Deception in all-male dyads was relatively unaffected by trust or the other negotiator’s strategy. In mixed-sex dyads, negotiators consistently increased their use of deception when three forms of trust (identity, benevolent, deterrent) were low and opponents used an accommodating strategy. However, in all-female dyads, negotiators appeared to use multiple and shifting reference points in deciding when to deceive the other party. In these dyads, the use of deception increased when a competitive strategy combined with low benevolence-based trust or an accommodating strategy combined with high identity-based trust. Deception in all-female dyads decreased when a competitive strategy was used in the context of low deterrence-based trust.     

Justifications Offered,Questions Asked,and Linguistic Patterns in Deceptive and Truthful Monetary Interactions

In this study, we investigate verbal production in people playing a monetary negotiation game who freely chose to lie or tell the truth. Participants were randomly assigned to the role of allocator or recipient; the allocator divided a small amount of money and was tasked with convincing the recipient to accept their share. Allocators were free to lie, and 30 % did. Our goal is to investigate the use of justifications, questions, and linguistics to assess if these factors differ between those telling the truth, lying by omission, and lying by commission. We find that liars were more likely to use some types of justifications, while truth-tellers were more likely to assert that their offer was fair. Recipient questions were unrelated to successful detection of deception, and linguistic patterns were largely non-significant, with the exception of liars using more negations. We also find no connection between emotions felt by allocators (more guilt for liars) and linguistic patterns, replicating past results. We discuss how these results mesh with past findings, offer discussion about what this means for the field, and consider where research on linguistic differences between liars and truth-tellers should go next.     

Mutually Dependent: Power,Trust, Affect and the Use of Deception in Negotiation

Using a simulated two-party negotiation, we examined how trustworthiness and power balance affected deception. In order to trigger deception, we used an issue that had no value for one of the two parties. We found that high cognitive trust increased deception whereas high affective trust decreased deception. Negotiators who expressed anxiety also used more deception whereas those who expressed optimism also used less deception. The nature of the negotiating relationship (mutuality and level of dependence) interacted with trust and negotiators’ affect to influence levels of deception. Deception was most likely to occur when negotiators reported low trust or expressed negative emotions in the context of nonmutual or low dependence relationships. In these relationships, emotions that signaled certainty were associated with misrepresentation whereas emotions that signaled uncertainty were associated with concealment of information. Negotiators who expressed positive emotions in the context of a nonmutual or high dependence relationship also used less deception. Our results are consistent with a fair trade model in which negotiator increases deception when contextual and interpersonal cues heighten concerns about exploitation and decrease deception when these cues attenuate concerns about exploitation.     

Deception Performance in Online Group Negotiation and Decision Making: The Effects of Deception Experience and Deception Skill

Deception in computer-mediated group Negotiation and decision making presents a variety of risks. Gaining a better understanding of online deception has important implications for both individuals and organizations. Despite the rapidly increasing number of online deception cases reported in recent years, extant deception research has not considered the context beyond individuals or small groups. Additionally, there has been a mismatch between the important role of individual characteristics of the deceiver in theory and the lack of empirical investigation of their impact in research. This study aims to assess deception performance in mid-sized online groups by building a model of individual differences in deception experience and deception skill. We conceptualize deception performance in terms of deception success and two other new constructs, namely survivability and productivity. The model has been tested with a dataset collected from a real-world online community. The results show that deception skill has a positive effect on deception success, but deception experience has a negative effect. Although deception experience and deception skill are found to have opposite effects on the success of deceivers, both contribute positively to the survivability of deceivers. The findings of this study have significant implications for future deception research in online group communication and negotiation.     

Codes, Values and Justifications in the Ethical Decision-Making Process

The resolution of ethical dilemmas often requires individuals to search for reasonable justifications to support their choices. Occasionally, such justifications must be made explicit to stakeholders inside or outside the organization. Other times, the justification for a decision will be known only by the decision-maker. In either case, the organizational code of conduct that governs the individual can play a vital role in providing guidelines about appropriate and inappropriate justifications. The present paper discusses the connections between organizational codes and employee justifications. Richard Coughlan is Associate Dean for Graduate and Executive Programs in the Robins School of Business at the University of Richmond, where he teaches courses on business ethics and negotiations. He earned both an MBA and a Ph.D. at the University of Arizona. His research on ethics and decision-making has been published in leading academic journals including Journal of Behavioral Decision Makingand Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.     

Deception in Advertising: A Proposed Complex of Definitions for Researchers,Lawyers, and Regulators

Researchers, lawyers, and regulators need a single, comprehensive, unambiguous, workable guideline for determining whether an advertisement is, or is not, deceptive. To address this need, the author proposes and discusses new definitions of deceptive advertisement, deceptive advertising campaign, and deceiver.     

Processing Advertising Information: Deception,Salience, and Inferential Belief Formation

Four recent FTC cases on deceptive advertising were used to examine Fishbein's concepts of attribute salience and inferential belief formation. The findings suggest that (1) attributes considered salient by the FTC may not be considered by consumers when making brand choices, (2) a truthful ad may lead subjects to form incorrect inferential beliefs about product attributes (therefore, such an ad may ultimately be deceptive), and (3) information contained in advertising is processed by subjects to discount exaggerated statements, thus reducing the credibility of the ad.     

Justifications and procedures for implementing Institutional Review boards in business organizations

The present paper describes a number of ethical quandaries facing the implementors of motivational interventions in organizational settings. A critical analysis of the traditional solutions to these issues within the organizational literature finds them lacking for want of considering unwitting cognitive biases and self presentational doublespeak, both of which may result in the rights of research participants being underprotected. The establishment of an Institutional Review process, loosely analogized from the biomedical and behavioral science research traditions, is suggested as a means of protecting the rights of research participants as well as humanizing future motivational interventions. Robert A. Giacalone is Assistant Professor of Management at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. He has been given the Outstanding Young Men of America Award, 1985. One of his articles has been published in Group and Organization Studies (1985), another will be published in Basic and Applied Social Psychology. Paul Rosenfeld is a Personnel Research Psychologist at the Navy Personnel Research and Development Center in San Diego. The Outstanding Young Men of America Award has been given to him in 1986. He is the co-author of Introduction to Social Psychology (1985), St. Paul, MN: West.     

Support for the Use of Deception Within the Work Environment: A Comparison of Israeli and United States Employee Attitudes

As businesses become more global, the opportunities for employees to work with individuals from different cultures increase. Research in cross-cultural interactions has increased in response to such changes. This research study considers employee attitudes and perceived organizational support for the use of deception within the work environment. In this study, two types of deception have been considered; deception for personal gain and deception for the organization's benefit. The reported likelihood for committing these two types of deception for United States and Israeli employees was gathered. The results indicate that United States employees are more likely to deceive others for personal gain than the Israeli employees. In addition, the results indicate that United States employees were more likely to perceive organizational support for the use of deception for personal gain than were the Israeli employees. No differences between the two samples were found for personal or organizational support for deception for the organization's benefit. Differences are explained using Hofstede's (1991) theory of international cultures.     

Lying and Smiling: Informational and Emotional Deception in Negotiation

This study investigated attitudes toward the use of deception in negotiation, with particular attention to the distinction between deception regarding the informational elements of the interaction (e.g., lying about or misrepresenting needs or preferences) and deception about emotional elements (e.g., misrepresenting one’s emotional state). We examined how individuals judge the relative ethical appropriateness of these alternative forms of deception, and how these judgments relate to negotiator performance and long-run reputation. Individuals viewed emotionally misleading tactics as more ethically appropriate to use in negotiation than informational deception. Approval of deception predicted negotiator performance in a negotiation simulation and also general reputation as a negotiator, but the nature of these relationships depended on the kind of deception involved.     

Confident and Cunning: Negotiator Self-Efficacy Promotes Deception in Negotiations

Journal of Business Ethics - Self-confidence is associated with many positive outcomes, and training programs routinely seek to build participants’ self-efficacy. In this article, however, we...     

奥运营销在行动:品牌因素很重要,中国企业受赞誉

2008年奥运营销不仅给很多行业带来了新的商机,更为重要的是,奥运提供了影响力巨大的品牌传播舞台,随着2008年奥运会的临近。很多企业都吹响了奥运营销的号角,但是,如何将奥运元素与企业品牌实现良好的结合,如何能够做好奥运营销,这是很多奥运营销企业关心的问题。盛世指标数据管理有限公司最新的调查显示,接近半数的企业营销负责人表示,奥运营销需要将品牌的战略与奥运营销紧密地结合起来,而“追求卓越”、“激情”、“科技”、“全球性”等奥运的价值元素可以作为品牌的核心诉求实现和奥运的对接,截至目前,可口可乐和联想等企业被誉为是表现最好的借助奥运进行营销的企业。     

Developing,Communicating and Promoting Corporate Ethics Statements: A Longitudinal Analysis

This paper reports on the findings of the third in a series of surveys of large U.S.-based and multinational corporations on their ethics statements. Focusing on four types – values statement, corporate credo, code of ethics and Internet privacy policy – we find growth in the use of these statements over the last decade. We discuss the external communication of these statements, including the avenues that are now used for promotion and their intended audiences. The paper concludes with a number of research issues to be addressed.     

Differences in Spending Habits and Credit Use of College Students

In a study of college students, affective credit attitude (feeling about using credit cards) and gender influenced college students' credit purchasing. Affective credit attitude predicted the purchase of clothing, electronics, entertainment, travel, gasoline, and food away from home. Females purchased clothing; males purchased electronics, entertainment, and food away from home. Gender was more influential in predicting financial management practices than was affective credit attitude, with female students employing a greater number of financial practices. A path analysis model showed gender differences in the relationship between financial practices, financial stress, affective credit attitude, and the number of credit cards with a balance.     

银行监管:模式、方法、效率--银行监管理论与实务的国际考察

监管当局怎样提高银行监管的绩效,涉及到整个社会的信用观念、商业银行的企业制度以及监管当局的监管体制、监管模式和监管方法.本文对发达国家及发展中国家的银行监管情况作了分门别类的考察,以期对我国银行监管的改革有所裨益①.     

Gender Differences in Managerial Careers: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

This longitudinal study of mid-career managers compared the career progression of men and women during the 1990's. Unlike the subjects of many earlier studies, these men and women had similar education and experience profiles. Womens income changes were less than men's and reflected the greater financial strides and greater returns from promotions for men prior to 1995. The income gaps between men and women were explained by gender differences in career determinants, such as work hours, career interruptions, and having a nonemployed spouse. There was evidence of subtle forms of workplace discrimination against women in the past but not over the most recent four-year period. Women's family situations, however, continued to present obstacles to progression. In addition, a recent decline in women's priorities for promotion, a predictor of actual promotions, signalled an impending decrease in their rate of promotion relative to men's.     

Lies,damned lies,and project plans: Recurring human errors that can ruin the project planning process

Project-based work has become a critical component of global industrial activity. Among other functions, projects are used to develop new products and services, improve operations flows, implement innovative information technologies, and conduct primary R&D. At the same time, project management is a core skill requirement for numerous corporations worldwide hoping to harness a means of improving both the efficiency and effectiveness of their operations. Unfortunately, the track record for project development has not been strong. Data suggest that within various industrial components, such as IT, failure rates for projects are high; even ‘successful’ examples typically run well over budget and behind schedule. This article addresses some of the reasons why projects and project management have failed to live up to lofty expectations, arguing that the seeds of failure are often sown from the outset through flawed project planning. Citing the more common errors in human judgment and drawing on numerous examples, we offer guidelines by which project planning can begin to work as it was intended: on behalf of the project rather than at cross-purposes with the project's goals.     

Focus group interviewing in China: Language, culture, and sensemaking

This paper explores the use of foreign languages in qualitative focus group research in China. I focus on language, culture, and sensemaking from a point of view, which presents language as being context and time specific. While this has been examined recently in the field of International Business, it has not been discussed within International Entrepreneurship and with regard to focus groups. My findings show that shared meaning can be constructed in focus groups across different languages and locations but depends on the use of cultural insiders and resources. This leads us to new levels of understanding within International Entrepreneurship. The author uses the definition of International Entrepreneurship (IE) as provided by Oviatt and McDougall (2005) who qualified IE research as falling into categories: research that provides comparisons of entrepreneurial behavior in multiple countries and cultures or research that examines organization behavior that extends across national borders and is entrepreneurial (Oviatt and McDougall 2005: 540).