in an interesting study of lying behavior conducted by (probably underpaid) cornell university researchers, volunteers tracked all instant messages, telephone calls, emails and face-to-face contact over a period of circa one month within a group of student volunteers, average age of 21, 28 total participants (hey, these students received credit for this - those are big private college dollars at work!…oh, and remember stats? N should really have been greater than 30)..for those of you with the attention span of a shrimp, you can read a little-bitty summary article at new scientist (but you should really read the full summary up above, ’cause it’s good)

to preface this, you must understand that there are degrees of lying involved in a study like this - from little white lies like, “the customer is always right!” - to creative-memory-driven lies like, “i have never had sexual relations with ms. lewinski” - to big whoppers like, “google cares most about your privacy” …summary data points: these researchers relied upon self-reporting by students, and discovered these astounding data points (they will surprise you!):

–14% of emails contained lies;
–21% of instant messages contained lies;
–27% of face-to-face meetings contained lies; and
–37% of phone calls contained lies

(hey, that bit about phone calls is why i’m bringing this up - most folks involved in serious business research rely upon the telephone as a research/source interview tool, it’s called ’shoe-leather’ research, which is a term i’ve borrowed from journalism i believe)…researchers said there are two main contributing factors: immediacy of the communication and knowledge of whether or not it’s being recorded. pursuant explanations for the results include these possibilities:

telephone: immediate, not recorded
face-to-face: immediate, but ‘recorded’ by the other person’s ability to observe (and so detect a lie or guess at a lie)
instant messaging: immediate and potentially recorded
email: not immediate, but recorded completely (contradicts popular theory that the detached nature of email invites a lie or misrepresentation)

implications for business research? telephone is the best medium for people who like to stretch the truth (think sales people)- and so has the potential to hurt both sides the most, or drive a greater need for source reliability and credibility checks ..e.g. padding info, requiring more sources for corroboration of findings, practicing disinformation, etc…those are just my opinions, folks, take ‘em for what they’re worth.

“where honesty is a priority” (per cornell prof jeff hancock) “work appraisals might be best done using email”…damn! somebody shoulda told larry ellison that way before he sent those emails…

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