This study examined truthfulness in online relationships. Participants included fifteen females and eleven males between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, who were surveyed on the subject of their honesty in relationships that originated online. Several types of questions were presented to these respondents in the surveys; the three principal categories of questions included broad demographic questions and inquiries about their current habits of Internet usage, questions regarding the dynamics of their online relationships, and an examination of their habits of honesty both through computer-mediated communication and in real life. Results were generally inconsistent with the researcher's expectations.

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Abstract

Online Relationships and Truthfulness: Trends of Deception in Computer-Mediated Communication

In today's "connected" world, technological innovations are changing the face of human interactions on a daily basis. The fairly recent addition of computer-mediated communication (CMC) to theand scheme of interpersonal relations opens up uncharted territory, leaving society with many unanswered questions. When the lack of non-verbal cues intrinsic in CMC gives its users the ability to take on new personas and hide personal imperfections and characteristics, how can people form close, faithful relationships? Will the differences inherent in CMC affect the way relationships form in that environment? Are people as honest in this cue-deprived environment as they would be face to face? Such questions were addressed by the researcher's previous study in a more general fashion (Rogers, 2001). Through her cross-section of ten interviews, the experimenter was able to examine peoples' thoughts, feelings and actions through the lens of online communication. A downfall of this initial research, however, was its generality; although the study provided a great deal of important base knowledge, the interview setup and the type of questions that were asked caused a lack of detail in the results. Accordingly, the researcher felt that a more focused follow-up study was essential.        The present study was an attempt to uncover vital information about trends of honesty in the formation of online relationships. The researcher focused on this topic above other aspects of relationship development through CMC simply because of her curiosity about the area and her interest in actively seeking out trends of truthfulness in her age group and community. The narrow scope of this study was intended to allow the maximum amount of depth on a specific aspect of CMC. A few areas of focus included rates of dishonesty in real life and online, types of lies typically told in each environment, and the degree of significance of these lies. Questions were asked in these areas to give insight into the dissimilarities between honesty in real life and honesty in computer-mediated communication.