Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Deception scholarship is becoming increasingly interested in knowing how findings located predominantly in the North American context travel over diverse cultural contexts. Feeding into this line of inquiry, the study predicted that people’s perception of deceptive communication is always commensurate with their cultural understanding of deception as moral evil or a social necessity. Furthermore, the study also proposed that the perceived deceptiveness of a deceitful statement is the function of the deception goal it sets out to achieve. To test this assumption for Pakistani culture, the study used the theoretical guidelines and experimental design proposed in Information Manipulation Theory (IMT). Using Buller and Burgoon’s typology of deception motives, three deception motives (i.e., instrumental, interpersonal and identity) were identified and situational prompts were created in each category. The participants (N = 753) read the situational prompts and rated five different types of information manipulations on four 7-point semantic differential scales. The results indicated that the motive type had a significant effect on the perception of deceptive communication. The information manipulation carried out for instrumental purposes was rated more deceptive than the interpersonal and identity-based manipulations. Nevertheless, completely disclosive messages and falsifications were consistently rated the most honest and the most deceptive respectively. The results indicate that Pakistani culture places a high premium on the value of truth and treats indirect messages as less honest than completely truthful messages. The findings bring insights about an understudied collectivist culture and help to make empirical profiling of deceptive communication more robust.

Keywords

deceptive communication Information Manipulation Theory (IMT)deception motives information manipulation

Introduction

Deception is a ubiquitous phenomenon that has become an indispensable part of human communication. People engage in deceptive communication because it enables them to achieve certain social goals (Meibauer, 2017), deal with situational complexity, navigate between competing demands and choose a contextually appropriate response (S. A. McCornack et al., 2014). Nevertheless, despite performing an operative function in human interactions, the prolific literature in deception scholarship suggests that deception is deemed socially unacceptable behavior which should be subject to strict social sanctioning (K. Kim, 2008). The traditional cue-based deception detection paradigm is erected on this popular assumption that since people have the idea of deception being morally bad, wrong or evil, they experience cognitive dissonance and have moral qualms while deceiving (Picornell, 2001). The guilt associated with the act of lying results in characteristic behavioral and linguistic cues which betray deception (DePaulo et al., 2003; Ekman, 1992; Vrij, 2000).

The current study contests this assumption which is popular in cue-based studies of deception on cultural and contextual grounds. Current deception scholarship acknowledges that the meta-communicative knowledge encompassing the implicit understanding of what it means to be deceptive and how bad it is to be deceptive is always culture and context-specific. Despite being a universal signifier (Meibauer, 2014), deception is embedded in social and cultural contexts (Meibauer, 2017). Different cultural experiences entail different cultural attitudes toward deception (Cantarero et al., 2018). The existing research has proven that different cultural dimensions (Yeung et al., 1999), ways of self-construal (Lapinski & Levine, 2000), language ideologies (Blum, 2005) and moral systems affect the way deception is perceived in society. The interaction of these factors complicates the situation even further and lends a characteristic uniqueness to each culture.

The way deception is defined in turn gets unmitigated expression in the way deception is perceived and evaluated in a society. Perception of deception in any given culture is commensurate with the understanding of deception as a social necessity or moral transgression (K. Kim, 2008). The degree of acceptance or condemnation that the act of lying receives is greatly reliant on the moral system followed in society. Some cultures use the stricter criterion to judge the phenomena of deception, while others find it less abominable (Abel, 2008 ).

As most of the findings of traditional deception scholarship are located in North-American settings, they are congruent with the Anglo-American understanding of deceptive communication (Enos, 2012; M.-S. Kim, 1994; Leal et al., 2018; Taylor et al., 2014). Keeping in view the specificity of each cultural context, the profiling of deceptive communication cannot be complete until the insights are available from the majority of cultures across the globe. Such profiling has decided advantage in explicating the differences or similarities in people’s perception of honest communication which in turn improves cross-cultural awareness. Furthermore, social actors’ way of perceiving a deceptive strategy can inform how deceptive discourses are produced in real-life contexts. Put simply, the exploration of cultural attitudes not only unearths the attitude toward deception but also brings insights into the production of deceptive communication.

When seen cross-culturally, the relationship of truth with positive moral evaluation and lying with negative judgment is not always unidirectional and neat. Apart from the overall judgment about deception as a monolithic phenomenon, there is a universal acknowledgment that there are certain types of lies that are socially sanctioned and some others that are abhorred. All cultures seem to differentiate between ethically wrong and adaptive forms of deception, which determine the degree of approval and condemnation a deceptive act would meet in a given context (Lewis & Saarni, 1993). All societies also appear to recognize the danger associated with promiscuous lying and pose certain expectations about the degree to which such loose use of language should be checked or made permissible (Blum, 2005).

The studies have shown that acceptance or disapproval of lies is mediated by a number of factors. People find lies aiming to benefit others more acceptable than self-serving lies (Cantarero & Szarota, 2017). However, dominant cue-based deception paradigms ignore this cultural and contextual variance in the perception of deceptive communication (Taylor et al., 2017) and build their theorization on the invariably problematic nature of deception.

Set against this backdrop, the study aims to examine the perception of deception in Pakistani culture and explore the cultural and contextual relativity of the findings. In order to test people’s perception of honesty about various forms of deceptive strategies, the study uses the theoretical insights and experimental design proposed by S. A. McCornack (1992); S. A. McCornack et al. (1992); S. McCornack (1997) in his influential theory of deceptive message design called Information Manipulation Theory (IMT henceforth).

Information Manipulation Theory

Couched in the Gricean approach, IMT views deception as a non-cooperative counterpart of Grice’s cooperative principle (CP henceforth) (Oswald et al., 2016). Challenging the monolithic understanding of deception as “false statements,” IMT propounds a multi-dimensional view of deception. Bringing together several loose taxonomies of deception identified in prior studies, IMT groups various types of information manipulations based on covert violations of four conversational maxims defined by Grice. Deceptive discourses do not exist in these isolated or pure forms; instead, they are discovered as distinct components nestled within otherwise honest utterances (S. A. McCornack, 1992; S. McCornack, 1997; Morrison et al., 2020). IMT challenges the prevalent fixation of deception research with bald-faced lies (BFL) and bald-faced truth (BFT) dichotomy.

Instead of adopting a dichotomous or a categorical approach to message types as entirely harmonious with reality or explicitly contradictory to factual information, IMT emphasizes the continuous nature of deceptive message types. People do not produce bounded, discrete unitary message types (Morrison et al., 2020) but subtle and complex messages that vary on multiple dimensions (S. A. McCornack, 1992; S. A. McCornack et al., 2014; S. McCornack, 1997). Breaking away from BFL and BFT dichotomy, IMT recognizes that deception is embedded in our daily exchanges not only in the form of lies but also in the form of exaggerations, omissions and clever use of ostensibly truthful statements. Deception is not restricted to falsification only and comprises other verbal acts that are functionally deceptive (S. A. McCornack, 1992; S. McCornack, 1997; Yeung et al., 1999).

The study employs IMT’s integrated taxonomy of information manipulation types. Following is a quick rundown of several sorts of deceits and their ranking based on the perceived honesty of various message types.

Falsification, often known as BFL as a prototype of the deceptive message, occurs when the Quality maxim is violated. Falsification happens when a speaker asserts information that is contrary to the truth, fabricates false information or twists the honest information.

Quantity breaches result in lies by omissions. Deception by omission induces a false belief in the hearer, which lacks correspondence with the whole relevant reality (S. A. McCornack et al., 1996). Omissions occur in situations where small chunks of overall activated information are problematic to disclose. In situations like this, “people will simply edit out the ‘bad bits’ as they construct their turns-at-talk” ( S. A. McCornack et al., 2014, p. 366).

The covert breach of the Manner maxim results in deception by equivocation. Truthfulness is not the only coordinate on which information can be manipulated. Deception not only arises out of what is said but also from how it is said. S. A. McCornack (1992) notes that Manner violation rarely occurs in contexts when questions are asked and frequently occurs in non-constraining, open-ended situations.

Deception by evasion involves the covert violation of the Relevance maxim. Evasions are the most infrequent form of information manipulation. The violation must work covertly in order to deceive successfully. In case of an abrupt change of topic, the violation is likely to transpire and cannot remain covert. Violations of Relation are opted only in exceptional cases where salient information is too problematic to disclose and no alternate information is readily accessible.

S. A. McCornack (1992) offers a rank-order of message honesty based on violation type. According to IMT, messages involving any covert violation would be perceived as less honest than the baseline message. The quality violations are perceived as the most deceptive of all types of manipulations. However, Quantity, Manner and Relevance violations are perceived as more deceptive than a completely disclosive message (S. A. McCornack, 1992).

The deceptive power of deceitful messages can also be elucidated by using CP apparatus. Deceptive messages are successful in deceiving the target because of the expectations about quality, quantity, relation and manner that hold in daily conversations. The target assumes that CP is being adhered to during the conversation. People unobtrusively violate these expectations to deceive others and if these manipulations go unscrutinized, the speaker’s deceptive goal succeeds. Even when the covert violation becomes manifest for some reason, the listeners assume adherence to CP at some level and rarely see it as deceptive (S. A. McCornack, 1992). To put it briefly, deceptive discourse functions by violating the very belief in which our honest communication is grounded (K. Kim, 2008).

S. A. McCornack et al. (1992) were the first to test IMT, who tested IMT with North American subjects and confirmed that empirical evidence was consistent with most of the predictions made in IMT. The second test of IMT was performed by Jacobs et al. (1996), who replicated McCornack’s study again with North American participants but with entirely contrasting results: They found IMT inconsistent with Grice’s cooperative principle. So far, various tests of IMT (K. Kim, 2008; Lapinski & Levine, 2000; Yeung et al., 1999) have been performed in a variety of cultures with mixed findings. Though the overall validity of IMT’s claims has been unanimously endorsed, the subtle variances in honesty perception are observed consistently across cultures.

Deception Motives

The underlying motive of a deceptive verbal act has been empirically proven to modify the perception of a specific misleading method. The deceiver’s intention plays a deterministic role in driving people’s perception of a deceptive act (Cheung et al., 2016). Any approximation of misleading methods used in relational circumstances cannot be confidently transferred to instrumental contexts (Buller & Burgoon, 1994). People lie for a variety of reasons, and their deception method is tailored to the communication objective they wish to achieve. As a result, the impact of deceptive goals on misleading speech communication patterns is not consistent (Markowitz & Hancock, 2018).

Working within IMT, the research predicts that within-culture differences in perception of verbal deceit produced for various deception reasons may exist. There can be distinct cultural subscripts dependent on the purposes of verbal deceit, in addition to a master script that is consistent with the moral framework prevalent in culture. The absence of cognitive dissonance over a specific sort of lying in a given culture can also be explained by taking into account the fact that different deception motives are interpreted differently and meet with different psychological responses. The proposition is motivated by a host of observations made in various studies of deceptive communication.

So far, all tests of IMT have been conducted in the relational context in which lies are told to safeguard the interpersonal relationship. Participants are asked to produce or rate information in a problematic relational situation. S. A. McCornack et al. (1992) acknowledge that some of their findings about message honesty and message competence are partly reliant on the relational context of the scenarios which require a romantic partner to dump all sensitive information. They concede that different contextual factors would have created different outcomes (S. A. McCornack et al., 1992). The interpersonal domain is recognized as the trickiest site where the questions about truth-telling are constantly assessed in the light of relationship-maintaining factors (Levine & McCornack, 2014). In individualist societies, the society is believed to be functioning only if sufficient trust is reposed in the honesty of interpersonal communication (Homolka, 2017). Individuals having individualistic cultural orientation deem any form of information manipulation deceptive, negative or contradictory to the principle of interpersonal honesty. Conversely, for a collectivist culture, deception can be a means to attain certain interpersonal goals, leading to a greater tolerance for maxim violation (K. Kim, 2008; Lapinski & Levine, 2000). Nevertheless, given the variety of settings in which deception occurs, it is impossible to conclude that collectivist cultures would always regard information manipulation as less deceitful or socially more functional. The distinctive nature of interpersonal motives of deception makes it difficult to conclude if the findings based on interpersonal deception motives can be transposed to other situations in which deception is motivated by some other social needs.

To categorize various motivations to deceive, the study adopts Buller and Burgoon’s (1994), Buller and Burgoon’s (1996) typology of deception motives. They propound that just like honest communication, deceitful discourses are also driven by some overarching motivation to influence the recipient’s belief. According to their classificatory scheme, deception can be motivated by instrumental motives, interpersonal motives and identity motives.

Instrumental lies are told to avoid punishment or gain or protect self-interest, resources, power, services or needs. Interpersonal lies are told to maintain, optimize or terminate relationships, avoid tension and conflict in a relationship or protect the target from the hurt. Identity lies are told to protect Face or to save the liar or the target from shame and embarrassment (Buller & Burgoon, 1994). We found their typology consistent with Levine et al.’s (2016) deception motives. Their 10 deception motives can be safely grouped into three broader categories proposed by Buller and Burgoon with the exception of pathological lies, which are told without any apparent purpose and exist in negligible proportion. Table 1 summarizes the relationship between the two typologies.

Table 1.

Typology of Deception Motives.

Buller and Burgoon’s Deception Motives	Levine et al.′s Taxonomy of Deception Motives
Instrumental Motives	Personal TransgressionsEconomic advantageNon-monetary personal advantagePractical jokesMalicious liesAltruistic lies
Interpersonal Motives	AvoidanceSocial Polites
Identity Motives	Self-impression management

Cultural identity is a potent determinant of our perception and motivation to deceive (K. Kim, 2008). The concept of face upheld in culture would determine if identity lies are admired, despised or tolerated. If deception is in consonance with the cultural expectations about Face needs, deception would be judged less harshly, rather approvingly (Buller & Burgoon, 1994; Lapinski & Levine, 2000). Similarly, if group identity is perceived to be preferred over individual identity, people would have greater motivation to use deception as a face maintenance tool (K. Kim, 2008; Lapinski & Levine, 2000).

Deception driven by instrumental needs is the quintessential type of deception which is expected to garner an altogether different response than lies motivated by relational or identity concerns. Extant experimental studies which encourage participants to deceive for acquiring or maintaining resources yield sufficient evidence to hypothesize that the motivation for lying may alter the perception or the selection of deceptive messages (Buller & Burgoon, 1994).

Set within this backdrop, this study aims to examine how far the findings of S. A. McCornack et al.’s (1992) study about the perception of deceptive message design hold for a geographically diverse context. So far, no test of IMT has been conducted in Pakistan or any other South Asian culture. Furthermore, the contextual variance in terms of the motive of the deceptive act has never been taken as a variable in any of the existing tests of IMT. The study also aims to study people’s perception about deception carried out for different deception motives. The findings can be used to indicate the situations in which deception is most likely to occur in the Pakistani context.

Method

The current study has a dual focus. First, it tests the major premise of IMT for the Pakistani context that is, the violation type has a significant main effect on the perceived honesty of different types of the message. Second, it ventures to test the variability in the perception of honesty introduced by various deception motives. The study predicts that the motive type will have a significant main effect on the perceived honesty of various types of information manipulation. It is also hypothesized that instrumental motives would bring a stricter judgment of honesty than other domains.

In order to explicate the cultural perception attached to various forms of information manipulation, the study adopts the experimental design proposed by S. A. McCornack (1992). The following section outlines the details of the participants, procedure and measurement of the study.

Scenario Generation

Given the fact that dating scenarios used in the original IMT’s preliminary test and its other replications may not be appropriate for the specific context of Pakistani culture, we conducted a survey to create our own scenarios that are not only suitable and familiar for the Pakistani cultural context but also reflect social actors’ sense of what counts as deception. The respondents (N = 147) for this part of the research were randomly selected from the students, colleagues and chance contacts of the researchers. They identified themselves as belonging to three gender groups (male, female and unspecified), three age groups (18–25, 26–40, 40 and above) and three educational levels (Intermediate, Graduate and Post Graduate). The participants were contacted through an online survey, similar to Levine et al. (2016) and S. A. McCornack’s (1992) surveys, to elicit instances in which deception occurs. The participants were given the freedom to report a recent situation in which they deceived someone or a situation in which someone else deceived them. The questionnaire was administered in the English language, however the participants were given the freedom to respond in English or Urdu (Roman script) language. They were requested to write all situational details and report the exact words the speaker used to deceive in that particular situation. They were also asked to report the motive behind that particular instance of deception they had reported. The responses recorded in the Urdu language were translated in English using the back-translation method.

Out of reported deception accounts that were sufficiently detailed (N = 89), four situational prompts were selected for the next round. The selection of the scenarios was made on three sets of criteria: The frequency of occurrence in the reported data, the familiarity of the situation to the everyday cultural experience of the cultural insiders and the freedom from any other moral confound. The scenarios were then reworded to remove any unique identifier of the respondent’s identity. Keeping in view that people’s perception of dishonesty may be divided between economic and not-monetary instrumental motives, two scenarios (Replica Seller, Plagiarized Project) were selected in the instrumental domain. The initial evidence for the divided judgment can be found in Levine et al.’s (2016) study about Pakistani culture that depicts that deception judgment and deception strategy may vary across monetary and non-monetary contexts. The scenarios Wedding Invitation and Fired belonged to interpersonal and identity motives, respectively.

The following measures were taken to ensure that the participants’ responses were chiefly motivated by the stated motive and not by any other confounding factor:

A coding scheme that integrated Levine et al.’s (2016) and Buller and Burgoon’s deception motive typology was developed to code scenarios for three motives. Three trained coders categorized different scenarios according to the given scheme. The reliability of the coding scheme was measured by Kohen’s Kappa. The intercoder agreement was sufficiently high and kappa was found 0.78.

As a previous test of IMT has shown a positive correlation between benefit type (self and other-oriented) and perceived honesty of the different messages (Lapinski & Levine, 2000), it was necessary to keep any potential confound introduced by this variable at bay. Consequently, all recruited scenarios selected for this study reported self-serving lies. This selection posed the challenge for interpersonal lies which are always considered other-oriented. To resolve this issue, apart from the macro benefit of protecting the relationship from potential damage, we picked scenarios that explicitly offered a micro benefit of serving the needs of the speaker.

To avoid any moral confound in people’s sense of judgment, any scenario that would cause negative evaluation for some reasons other than lying was not included. For example, scenarios that reported flirtatious relationships were not included because they could invite moral outrage in Pakistani culture and interfere with people’s perception of deception.

Selected scenarios were carefully rewritten in a fashion that the specific motive was distinctly enunciated in the scenario description. The participants were requested to formulate their opinions based on the reason stated in bold in each scenario.

Finally, for each situational prompt, one message from each of the five categories; Fully disclosive, falsification, omission, equivocation and evasion was randomly selected (The messages were generated and coded in the discourse production task that preceded this study. The coding scheme for the five types of information manipulations was adopted from S. A. McCornack et al.’s (1992) original study. To ensure the reliability of our coding scheme, the messages were coded by three trained coders who were the colleagues of the researcher. Inter-coder reliability was measured using Kohen’s Kappa. The agreement between coders was substantial, with a kappa value of 0.86. The resolution of conflicts was sought through discussions. The study results are based on the outcome of the post-resolution data.

The detailed situational prompts and corresponding messages are provided in Appendix A. Though the study endorses the continuous approach for message categorization, for the sake of message evaluation, only pure message types were selected and messages involving a combination of violations were not retained. Following S. A. McCornack et al. (1992, 2014) and K. Kim (2008), the message types were taken only as exemplars of various forms of deceptive messages and not as descriptors of how people actually deceive.

In this way, we were able to have four scenarios, each accompanied by five possible responses that the main character would have produced in such a situation; one fully disclosive message, and one instance of falsification, omission, equivocation and evasion.

Participants

The respondents (N = 753) who participated in the deception perception task were contacted online. Considering that Pakistani culture is a heterogeneous mixture of various ethnicities and sub-cultures, participants were recruited from a diverse pool. In order to keep the sample representative, the participants were randomly accessed through a national-level Listserve subscription and personal contacts of the researchers. This way, the link of the online survey was shared with more than 5,000 Pakistanis, out of which 753 responded positively. They identified themselves as belonging to three gender groups (male N = 240, female N = 511 and unspecified N = 2), three age groups (18–25 N = 316, 26–40 N= 84, 40 and above N = 28) and three educational levels (Intermediate N = 111, Graduate N = 190 and Post Graduate N = 127).

Following S. A. McCornack et al. (1992), the study used a simple randomization technique and the respondents were given a choice to opt for any one of the four versions of the survey. Consequently, the final pool assigned to each group had an unequal sample size. However, the loss of power associated with an unequal sample size with a large number of participants is negligible (Vanhove, 2015). Replica Seller was assigned to 196 respondents, Plagiarized Project was assigned to 198, Wedding Invitation was allocated to 182 respondents and finally, Fired was given to 177 respondents. The survey was administered in English language.

Measurements

The honesty/deceptiveness ratings for each message type were measured using S. A. McCornack et al.’s (1992) honesty scale. The scale is comprised of four 7-point semantic differential scales: Dishonest/Honest, Deceitful/Truthful, Deceptive/Not Deceptive, Misleading/Not Misleading. The evidence for the reliability and validity of the scale is provided in S. A. McCornack et al. (1992). Scales are illustrated below in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Honesty scales.

Participants were asked to read the situational prompt assigned to them and then rate each of the five responses on the given scale.

Procedure

The honesty ratings for five message types (fully disclosive, falsification, omission, evasion, equivocation and silence) were first computed collectively for all four scenarios and then separately for each deception motive. Finally, motive-wise honesty ratings of the specific messages were separately calculated.

Findings

Honesty ratings were assessed by combining scores on the four honesty scales and dividing through by the number of items to create an overall “honesty index” ranging from 1 to 7. The honesty ratings were calculated for the five types of messages: baseline (fully disclosive messages), falsifications (quality violations), omissions (quantity violations), equivocations (manner violations) and evasions (relevance violations). Honesty ratings for each response type for each of the four scenarios were calculated separately. The honesty ratings for the five message types for four scenarios were then computed as a single variable to find the cumulative honesty index for each message type. Cell means (See Table 2) are based on the average value of this cumulative score.

Table 2.

Cell Means for the Honesty Ratings of Each Violation Type.

	Violation Type
	Baseline	Quality	Quantity	Manner	Relevance
Mean	5.90	2.22	3.37	3.45	3.58
Standard Deviation	1.18	1.32	1.78	1.76	1.85

Note. All scores are averaged on a scale of 1 to 7, where a higher score reflects higher message honesty ratings.

In order to determine the effect of the violation on the perceived honesty of five different types of messages, an analysis of variance was performed. The result of Welch’s ANOVA indicated a significant and large main effect of the violation type on the respondents’ perception of message honesty (p < .001). A Games-Howell Post-hoc test showed that baseline (Fully disclosive) messages were rated more honest than the violations of quantity (p < .001), manner (p < .001) and relevance, (p < .001). The violations of quality were rated more deceptive than the baseline messages, (p < .001) or the message violating the quantity and manner expectations, (p < .001 for each). Quantity violations were rated more deceptive than baseline messages; however, less deceptive than manner (p = .04) and quality violations, (p < .001) for each. Cell means for baseline messages (fully disclosive messages) and quality violations (Falsifications) differed significantly from each other and from the means of violations of quantity(omissions), manner (equivocations), relevance (evasions) and silence; however, no significant difference was observed between the means for quantity and manner violation (p = .89) and quantity and relevance violations (p = .66). Means are presented in Table 2.

The Effect of Deception Motives on Overall Honesty Ratings

To test the main effect of motive type, one-way ANOVA was performed with respondents’ perception of message honesty as the dependent variable. The main effect of motive type yielded an F ratio F (2,753) = 100. 34, p < .001, indicating a significant difference between honesty ratings of the messages motivated by instrumental, interpersonal and identity motives.

A Tukey post-hoc test indicated that there is a statistically significant difference in honesty ratings of instrumental deception and honesty ratings of the message motivated by interpersonal (p < .001) and identity motives (p < .001). However, there were no differences between the perceived honesty of the information manipulations performed for interpersonal and identity motives (p = .11). Manipulations of information for instrumental purposes were rated significantly more deceptive, therefore, less honest (M = 3.26, SD = 1.04) than the deceptions carried out for interpersonal (M = 4.43, SD = 0.95) and identity (M = 4.21, SD = 1.09) needs. Identity lies were rated the least deceptive of all other motive types.

The Effect of Deception Motives on Honesty Ratings of Specific Message Types

To test the robustness of the results, one-way ANOVA was conducted separately for each message type with the respondent’s perception of honesty as a dependent measure.

The main effect of motive type on honesty ratings of baseline messages yielded an F ratio, F (2,704) = 0.56, p = .54, indicating a non-significant main effect on the honesty ratings of the baseline messages motivated by instrumental, interpersonal and identity needs.

There was a statistically significant difference between the honesty ratings of Quality violations (Falsifications) in instrumental, interpersonal and identity contexts as determined by one-way ANOVA (F (2,670) = 47.70, p < .001). The results of the Tukey post-hoc test revealed that falsifications made to gain or protect resources were rated less honest than falsifications made to maintain the relationship or protect face (p < .001 each). There were no differences between the honesty perception of Quality violations in the interpersonal or identity domain (p = .77).

The motive type had a significant effect on the honesty ratings of Quantity violations or omissions, as indicated by the results of Welch’s ANOVA, F (2,362) = 70.25, p < .001. A Games-Howell Post-hoc test showed that Instrumental omissions were rated less honest than the interpersonal (p < .001) and identity-based omissions, (p < .001). Omitting a critical piece of information for any instrumental gain was rated the least honest (M = 2.7, SD = 1.53) with identity-based omissions (M = 3.37, SD = 1.69) and interpersonal omissions ( M = 4.55, SD = 1.72) falling at second and third place respectively.

The main effect of motive type on the honesty perception of Manner violations yielded an F ratio F (2,341) = 82.91, p < .001, which indicated at least two groups differed from each other significantly. Post-hoc analysis indicated that Manner violations carried out in an instrumental context (M = 2.75, SD = 1.6) were perceived more deceptive than interpersonal (M = 4.43, SD = 1.70) and identity-based equivocations (M = 4.15, SD = 1.47). Identity motivated Manner violations and Manner violations enacted in the interpersonal context were not significantly different (p = .229).

The effect of motive type on the honesty perception of Relevance violations was significant, F (2,745) = 84.77, p < .001. A Tukey Post-hoc analysis indicated that Relevance violation carried out in an instrumental context (M = 2.88, SD = 1.66) was perceived as more deceptive than interpersonal (M = 4.28, SD = 1.64) and identity-based evasions (M = 4.38, SD = 1.86). Identity motivated ambiguous messages did not differ significantly from manner violations enacted in the interpersonal context (p = .84).

Comparison of Motive-Wise Honesty Ratings

As can be seen from Table 3, the deception that occurred for instrumental reasons consistently received stricter judgment than the deception motivated by any other concern. It’s interesting to note that the honesty perception of Quantity, Manner and Relevance violations in the instrumental domain almost equaled lying-proper (Falsifications) in interpersonal and identity contexts. This trend could not be observed in the case of relational and identity-based Quantity, Manner and Relevance violations where omissions, equivocations and evasion weighed less heavily on the deception index than bald-faced lying.

Table 3.

Cell Means for Motive Wise Honesty Ratings.

Motive type	Violation type
Motive type	Baseline	Quality	Quantity	Manner	Relevance
Instrumental	5.86	1.77	2.78	2.75	2.89
Interpersonal	5.96	2.67	4.55	4.43	4.29
Identity	5.95	2.76	3.37	4.15	4.39

Note. All scores are averaged on a scale of 1 to 7, where a higher score reflects higher message honesty ratings.

The results prove the prediction made in the study that the motive types have a significant effect not only on overall honesty ratings but also on the perceived honesty of each specific message type. Simply put, people’s perception of message honesty is the function of the deception motive.

Discussion

The findings of the current study are not only based on the perceived differences in the cultural context but also on at least some features of the immediate interactional context. It makes this study a robust test of the perceived honesty of various information management strategies. The study is based on a demographically diverse research sample. Such methodological rigor not only offers a decided advantage to overcome some of the limitation mentioned in the previous research but also offer a relatively more trustworthy method to draw reliable conclusions about Pakistani culture. For instance, S. A. McCornack et al. (1992) recognize that their results about deception are partially contingent on the relational context and different contextual settings would have evoked different findings. Similarly, Yeung et al. (1999) acknowledge that some of their theory-inconsistent findings stemmed from the specific situation prompt they used in their study. Findings located in interpersonal contexts inadvertently relate to prosocial lying and cannot be generalized to instrumental contexts in which the lyingproper occurs (Buller & Burgoon, 1994). Since the current study has used diverse situational prompts involving different deception motives, the risk of facile generalizations is more negligible as compared with the original IMT and its subsequent replication across different cultures. Moreover, despite being based on diverse situational contexts, overall results are similar to the previous empirical replications of IMT, which lends additional support to the applicability of the purports of the theory across diverse cultures.

The overall pattern of message honesty confirms the rank-ordering of message honesty based on violation type. Like other tests of IMT (Jacobs et al., 1996; K. Kim, 2008; Lapinski & Levine, 2000; S. A. McCornack et al., 1992; Yeung et al., 1999), there was a significant main effect of violation type on the perceived honesty of the messages. The Pakistani data indicates that messages involving any violation are perceived as more deceptive than the maxim-adhering baseline messages. Furthermore, Quality violations are perceived as the most deceitful of all manipulation types. The results tie well with previous studies wherein quality violations are always regarded as the prototype of deception (K. Kim, 2008; S. A. McCornack et al., 1992). It can be concluded that at least for Pakistani, Korean and American cultures, any contradiction to reality is unequivocally judged as an instance of lying. Once again, the result of honesty perception analysis validates Yeung et al.’s (1999) findings, which indicate that violations of quality as an out-and-out intentional manipulation of information are most likely to be seen as universally most deceptive. The results are also similar to those demonstrated by Danziger’s (2010) experimental design in which the US and Maya respondents judged falsifications as prototypical lies. Even for the collectivist cultures that adhere to the politeness principle and maintain Face, there is little point in considering lying-proper as socially appropriate or acceptable. To wit, the findings confirm that the perceived deceptiveness of Quality violations generalizes across cultural orientations (Lapinski & Levine, 2000). Lastly, Quantity, Manner and Relevance violations are rated more deceptive than completely disclosive messages but less mendacious than falsifications. These findings enforce credence in the applicability of this theory at least for one South-Asian country.

As predicted, a significant main effect of motive type on the perceived honesty of the messages was found. Deception in interpersonal and identity domains was perceived as less deceptive than the manipulations performed in the instrumental context. The results are in accordance with the pragmatic explanation of the divided lie-judgment based on the nature of the lie being told. Prosocial lying, which falls into the category of benevolent lying (Meibauer, 2014), is judged less harshly than lies told for instrumental gains (Meibauer, 2017). Lying to defend one’s emotions and self-esteem seems to be much more socially desirable than lying to rob someone of financial gain (Pierce, 2011).

Though no parallel data from empirical investigations of IMT is available for the interaction of honesty ratings and deception motives for other cultures, culture is believed to be inadvertently linked with the perceived acceptability of deception in a particular context (Seiter et al., 2002). The results indicate that identity-based deceptions are rated more honest than interpersonal and instrumental lies. Given the fact that the motivation to deceive varies across cultures, this trend can be explained in cross-cultural terms. People with individualistic cultures are more likely to deceive for individual needs to protect privacy or face (K. Kim, 2008), while individuals from collectivist cultures would be willing to deceive more if deception involves some group or family concern (Lapinski & Levine, 2000). Lies commensurate with socially tolerable deception motives are judged less harshly than lies that contradict societal norms and expectations (Seiter et al., 2002). From this, it can be argued that the concept of face holds some vitality for Pakistani culture. Face-protecting lies appear to be the most acceptable type of lies in the current data as they are perceived as the least deceptive even when the violation of maxims occurs.

The results were broadly in line with the previous research, which suggests that impression management and conflict-avoiding lies that aim at removing harm are the most acceptable forms of lying (Beata et al., 2015). Cheung et al. (2015 and 2016) made similar findings with Chinese participants. The respondents’ evaluation of lying was sensitive to the consideration of whether the lie was selfish, polite or altruistic. However, some patterns reflect characteristic cultural patterns. The perception of fully disclosive or completely honest messages remained unaltered by the motive condition. The trend indicates the high premium placed on the value of truthfulness under all circumstances. One possible explanation for this can be traced back to religious moral philosophy. Although not all people practice Islam on a regular basis, the widely recognized and respected moral beliefs and tenets in Pakistani society are derived from the religion Islam (Evason et al., 2016). Inglehart (2020) affirms that Pakistan (as one of those 18 Muslim countries included in the World Value Survey) is a strongly religious country preserving traditional norms and religious values (Inglehart, 2020). The moral attitude toward lying is mainly influenced by Islamic teachings and principles which sanction the spiritual elevation of truth.

The results also provide some hints about the use of deceptive strategies in framing deceptive discourse. Our data shows that the cultural norm to strictly avoid lying appears to be loosening up a bit in the case of prosocial lying. People become increasingly willing to lie if the goal of deception is to maintain smooth social relations (Peeters, 2018). With a slightly lenient view of deception in the interpersonal and identity domain, the tendency to use completely truthful messages may tend to decline and the use of falsifications may upsurge. The observations are similar to the findings of previous research located in the US culture, which suggest that when the deception is motivated by the deceiver’s desire to protect the recipient from hurt or relational trauma or to protect the deceiver’s image, the negative feelings associated with the bald-faced lying are considerably reduced and falsification strategies abound (Buller & Burgoon, 1994; S. A. McCornack et al., 1996)

Nevertheless, it is important to note that all functional forms of deception, though rated less deceptive than BFLs, are invariably rated more deceptive than completely honest messages. The findings are similar to Fu et al. (2007) who discovered that there was no significant difference between Chinese and Canadian respondents regarding the evaluation of lying in different contexts. A lie was considered a lie regardless of whom it benefited; however, the moral evaluation was less stringent for prosocial, other-oriented lies. The findings are somewhat different from Yeung et al.’s (1999) and Lapinski and Levine’s (2000) results who recorded that collectivist cultures do not equate indirectness with manipulation or deception.

Conclusion

The study ventured to test the validity of S. A. McCornack’s (1992) theoretical predictions regarding the perception of deceptive message design for a geographically distant context. Furthermore, it studied the contextual variance in terms of the motive of the deceptive communication. Replicating S. A. McCornack’s (1992) experimental design, the study explored the perception of various types of deceptive messages in Pakistani culture. The results are in line with the previous tests of IMT. There was a significant main effect of violation type on the perceived honesty of the messages. However, the findings of the study reveal two interesting patterns that are worth discussing here. The results buck the trend of considering collectivist cultures completely tolerant of indirect communication. For Pakistani culture, despite having a very strong collectivist cultural orientation (What about Pakistan?, 2020), indirectness (a combined measure of Quantity, Manner and Relevance violations) is rated less honest than completely truthful messages. Secondly, the results also confirmed the prediction that there is a strong correlation between the perceived deceptiveness of various information manipulations and the motive of deceptive communication. The motive condition was found to be significantly correlated with the honesty ratings of various deceptive messages. Deception in interpersonal and identity domains was perceived as less deceptive than the manipulations performed in the instrumental context. Though Pakistani respondents judged deception less harshly if the goal of deception was to maintain smooth social relations or protect social image, the honesty perception of fully disclosive or baseline messages remained unaffected by the motive type. Simply put, truth remained the most valued strategy in all domains, however some lies are evaluated less stringently than others. The findings suggest that adopting a monolithic or uniform view of deception based on the individualistic-collectivistic cultural divide is problematic. The evaluation of deceptive communication is always grounded in the immediate context.

Though the study offers a robust test of IMT, there are a few limitations that merit discussion. One potential limitation of the accuracy of the results might arise from the way data was collected. The questionnaires were circulated and collected online which presupposes basic literacy and digital skills, meaning that a large chunk of the Pakistani population was left out during the study. Nevertheless, the choice was indispensable for a study of deceptive discourse production and perception. It would have been very difficult for illiterate respondents to comprehend and respond to situational prompts and semantic scales. Furthermore, the online mode offered better opportunities to make the sample more diverse and inclusive. Moreover, while this study was carried out from the perspective of information manipulation theory, other studies with a more nuanced culture-specific approach may cover a wider spectrum of emotional, motivational and situational factors vis-à-vis a complex cultural issue. Future research may also focus on specific ethnic groups/sub-cultures found within heterogeneously diverse Pakistani culture.

Footnotes

Appendix A

Samina is an online seller. She sells replicas of branded dresses. She wants to increase her sales. She posts pictures of the dresses without mentioning that they are copies, not original. When a customer approaches her and asks if the dresses are original, she says:

Baseline (Disclosive): These dresses are replicas of Brand X but the quality is good.

Quality violation: Yes! the dresses on our website are 100% original.

Quantity Violation: The quality of these dresses is excellent. We have been in the market for quite some time. We have satisfied customers across the globe.

Manner Violation: We provide the best quality fabric.

Relation Violation: Thank you for contacting us. The retail price for this article is Rs.3,500/- but you will get this beautiful article only for Rs.2,000/-

Dina is facing difficulty in a class assignment. She approaches one of her friends and requests her to show her assignment. Her friend gives Dina her assignment and explains how to prepare the assignment but she hardly understands anything. Dina cannot afford to lose good grades. She copies her work and submits it as her own. When the teacher returns the assignments, she is furious about two students submitting the same project. She deducts the marks for submitting the plagiarized work. She asks both of them how it happened. Dina says:

Baseline (Disclosive): I am extremely sorry. It’s totally my fault. It’s me who copied from her assignment without her permission.

Quality violation: I don’t know. Perhaps she copied from my assignment.

Quantity Violation: Both of us worked together and shared ideas.

Manner Violation: Probably we researched from the same source.

Relation Violation: What is plagiarism? I am hearing the word for the first time. I simply don’t know what it is.

Amal’s friend invites him to his brother’s wedding. He doesn’t feel comfortable mingling with his family. He doesn’t attend the wedding to save himself from the annoying experience. When his friend asks him why he didn’t show up, he says:

Baseline (Disclosive): I am sorry. I don’t feel comfortable mingling with your family. They make me feel awkward.

Quality violation: I was about to come but I suddenly fell sick. I had to rush to the doctor. Otherwise, I would have been the first person to show up.

Quantity Violation: Sorry I couldn’t.

Manner Violation: I couldn’t attend the ceremony because of some personal issue.

Relation Violation: You tell how it went. I hope you enjoyed it a lot.

Haider has recently lost his job due to poor performance. He wants to protect his self-image in the family. His family members ask why he got fired. He says:

Baseline (Disclosive): I was not doing well. My performance was not satisfactory therefore, they fired me.

Quality violation: The company had a huge loss, so they were forced to downsize. They would call us again after a few months.

Quantity Violation: My supervisor didn’t like me much.

Manner Violation: There were a few things that went wrong.

Relation Violation: I am looking for a new job. I hope I would get one very soon.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Ethics Statement

Ethical approval is not applicable to this study. However, a written informed consent was obtained from all participants prior to data collection.

ORCID iDs

Saima Mubashra

Ghazala Kausar

References

Abel

(2008). Cultural components of deception (Vol. 3368120) [Doctoral dissertation, Alliant International University]. Alliant International University. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. https://search.proquest.com/docview/304827844?accountid=135034

Beata

Cantarero

Soroko

(2015). Motivation and consequences of lying. A qualitative analysis of everyday lying. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung, 16, 31.

Blum

S. D.

(2005). Five approaches to explaining “Truth” and “Deception” in Human Communication. Journal of Anthropological Research, 61(3), 289–315.

Buller

D. B.

Burgoon

J. K.

(1994). Deception: Strategic and nonstrategic communication. In Daly

Wieman

J. M.

(Eds.), Strategic interpersonal communication (pp. 191–223). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Cantarero

Szarota

(2017). When is a lie more of a lie? Moral judgment mediates the relationship between perceived benefits of others and lie-labeling. Polish Psychological Bulletin, 48(2), 315–325. https://doi.org/10.1515/ppb-2017-0036

Cantarero

Szarota

Stamkou

Navas

Dominguez Espinosa

A. D. C.

del

(2018). When is a lie acceptable? Work and private life lying acceptance depends on its beneficiary. The Journal of Social Psychology, 158(2), 220–235. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2017.1327404

Cheung

Chan

Tsui

W. C.

(2016). Effect of lie labelling on children’s evaluation of selfish, polite, and altruistic lies. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 34(3), 325–339. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjdp.12132

Cheung

Siu

T. S.

Chen

(2015). The roles of liar intention, lie content, and theory of mind in children’s evaluation of lies. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 132, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2014.12.002

Danziger

(2010). On trying and lying: Cultural configurations of Grice's maxim of quality. Intercultural Pragmatics, 7, 199–219. https://doi.org/10.1515/iprg.2010.010

10.

DePaulo

B. M.

Lindsay

J. J.

Malone

B. E.

Muhlenbruck

Charlton

Cooper

(2003). Cues to deception. Psychological Bulletin, 129(1), 74–118. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.129.1.74

11.

Ekman

(1992). An argument for basic emotions. Cognition & Emotion, 6(3-4), 169–200. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699939208411068

12.

Enos

(2012). Detecting deception in Speech. Columbia University.

13.

Evason

Memmon

Gul

H. S.

(2016). Pakistani Culture. Cultural Atlas. https://culturalatlas.sbs.com.au/pakistani-culture/pakistani-culture-core-concepts

14.

Cameron

C. A.

Leyman

Lee

(2007). Cross-cultural differences in children’s choices, categorizations, and evaluations of truths and lies. Developmental Psychology, 43(2), 278–293. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.43.2.278

15.

Homolka

(2017). Truthfulness and the permissibility of falsehood in the Jewish tradition. Journal of Beliefs and Values, 38(2), 180–187. https://doi.org/10.1080/13617672.2017.1291253

16.

Inglehart

R. F.

(2020). Giving up on God: The global decline of religion. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2020-08-11/religion-giving-god

17.

Jacobs

Dawson

E. J.

Brashers

(1996). Information manipulation theory: A replication and assessment. Communication Monographs, 63(1), 70–82. https://doi.org/10.1080/03637759609376375

18.

Kim

(2008). Nunch’i and deception: The cultural difference in deception between Korea and America.

19.

Kim

M.-S.

(1994). Cross-cultural comparisons of the perceived importance of conversational constraints. Human Communication Research, 21(1), 128–151. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1994.tb00343.x

20.

Lapinski

M. K.

Levine

T. R.

(2000). Culture and information manipulation theory: The effects of self-construal and locus of benefit on information manipulation. Communication Studies, 51(1), 55–73. https://doi.org/10.1080/10510970009388509

21.

Leal

Vrij

Vernham

Dalton

Jupe

Harvey

Nahari

(2018). Cross-cultural verbal deception. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 23(2), 192–213. https://doi.org/10.1111/lcrp.12131

22.

Levine

T. R.

Ali

M. V.

Dean

Abdulla

R. A.

Garcia-Ruano

(2016). Toward a pan-cultural typology of Deception Motives. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, 45(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/17475759.2015.1137079

23.

Levine

T. R.

McCornack

S. A.

(2014). Theorizing about deception. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 33(4), 431–440. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927x14536397

24.

Lewis

Saarni

(1993). Lying and deception in everyday life. In Lewis

Saarni

(Eds.), Lying and deception in everyday life (pp.90–105). The Guilford Press.

25.

Markowitz

D. M.

Hancock

J. T.

(2018). Deception in mobile dating conversations. The Journal of Communication, 68, 547–569. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqy019

26.

McCornack

(1997). Thegeneration of deceptive messages: Laying the groundwork for a viable theory of interpersonal deception.

27.

McCornack

S. A.

(1992). Information manipulation theory. Communication Monographs, 59, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/03637759209376245

28.

McCornack

S. A.

Levine

T. R.

Morrison

Lapinski

(1996). Speaking of information manipulation: A critical rejoinder. Communication Monographs, 63(1), 83–92. https://doi.org/10.1080/03637759609376376

29.

McCornack

S. A.

Levine

T. R.

Solowczuk

K. A.

Torres

H. I.

Campbell

D. M.

(1992). When the alteration of information is viewed as deception: An empirical test of information manipulation theory. Communication Monographs, 59(1), 17–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/03637759209376246

30.

McCornack

S. A.

Morrison

Paik

J. E.

Wisner

A. M.

Zhu

(2014). Information manipulation theory 2. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 33(4), 348–377. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927x14534656

31.

Meibauer

(2014). A truth that’s told with bad intent: Lying and implicit content. Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 28(1), 97–118. https://doi.org/10.1075/bjl.28.05mei

32.

Meibauer

(2017). Chapter 2. “Wester”, Grice?: Lying in a cross-cultural dimension (pp. 33–52). https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.274.03mei

33.

Morrison

McCornack

Deverell

W. T.

Zhu

Temple

(2020). Where have all the liars gone? Examining situational complexity and the inclusion of false information within discourse. In Press.

34.

Oswald

Maillat

Saussure

L. D.

(2016). 25. Deceptive and uncooperative verbal communication (pp. 509–534). De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110255478-026

35.

Peeters

(2018). (White) lies and (pieux) mensonges: Ethnolinguistic elaborations on not telling the truth. Etnolingwistyka. Problemy Języka i Kultury, 30, 169. https://doi.org/10.17951/et.2018.30.169

36.

Picornell. (2001). The Flexible Liar: A Strategy For Deception Detection In Written Witness Statements [Conference session]. 2013 ACFE European Fraud Conference. https://www.acfe.com/uploadedFiles/ACFE_Website/Content/european/Course_Materials/2013/cpp/7C_IsabelPicornell.pdf

37.

Pierce

J. R.

(2011). Cultural predictors of deception in a negotiation context (vol.3456663) [Indiana University]. https://search.proquest.com/docview/873969590?accountid=135034

38.

Seiter

J. S.

Bruschke

Bai

(2002). The acceptability of deception as a function of perceivers’ culture, deceiver’s intention, and deceiver-deceived relationship. Western Journal of Communication, 66(2), 158–180. https://doi.org/10.1080/10570310209374731

39.

Taylor

P. J.

Larner

Conchie

S. M.

Menacere

(2017). Culture moderates changes in linguistic self-presentation and detail provision when deceiving others. Royal Society Open Science, 4(6), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.170128

40.

Taylor

P. J.

Larner

Conchie

S. M.

van der Zee

(2014). Cross-cultural deception detection. In Granhag

P. A

Vrij

Verschuere

(Eds.), Detecting deception (pp. 175–201). https://doi.org/doi:10.1002/9781118510001.ch8

41.

Vanhove

(2015). Causes and consequences of unequal sample sizes. https://janhove.github.io/design/2015/11/02/unequal-sample-sized

42.

Vrij

(2000). Detecting lies and deceit : The psychology of lying and the implications for professional practice / Aldert Vrij. John Wiley.

43.

What about Pakistan? . (2020). Hofstede Insights. https://www.hofstede-insights.com/country/pakistan/

44.

Yeung

L. N. T.

Levine

T. R.

Nishiyama

(1999). Information manipulation theory and perceptions of deception in Hong Kong. Communication Reports, 12(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1080/08934219909367703

The Truth About Mendacity: The Role of Deception Motives in Perception of Deceptive Communication in Pakistan

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Information Manipulation Theory

Deception Motives

Method

Scenario Generation

Participants

Measurements

Procedure

Findings

The Effect of Deception Motives on Overall Honesty Ratings

The Effect of Deception Motives on Honesty Ratings of Specific Message Types

Comparison of Motive-Wise Honesty Ratings

Discussion

Conclusion

Footnotes

Appendix A

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

Ethics Statement

ORCID iDs

References