Deception
Deception is the act of convincing of one or many recipients of untrue information. The person creating the deception knows it to be false while the receiver of the information does not. It is often done for personal gain or advantage.
Deceit and dishonesty can also form grounds for civil litigation in tort, or contract law, or give rise to criminal prosecution for fraud.
Types
Communication
The Interpersonal Deception Theory explores the interrelation between communicative context and sender and receiver cognitions and behaviors in deceptive exchanges.Some forms of deception include:
- Lies: making up information or giving information that is the opposite or very different from the truth.
- Equivocations: making an indirect, ambiguous, or contradictory statement.
- Concealments: omitting information that is important or relevant to the given context, or engaging in behavior that helps hide relevant information.
- Exaggerations: overstatement or stretching the truth to a degree.
- Understatements: minimization or downplaying aspects of the truth.
- Untruths: misinterpreting the truth.
- Instrumental: to avoid punishment or to protect resources
- Relational: to maintain relationships or bonds
- Identity: to preserve "face" or the self-image
Appearance
Mimicry
In the biological world, mimicry involves deception by similarity to another organism, or to a natural object. Animals for example may deceive predators or prey by visual, auditory or other means.Camouflage
The camouflage of a physical object often works by breaking up the visual boundary of that object. This usually involves colouring the camouflaged object with the same colours as the background against which the object will be hidden.Military camouflage as a form of visual deception is a part of many campaigns.
Disguise
Disguises are used to create the impression of a false appearance. A seventeenth-century story collection, Zhang Yingyu's The Book of Swindles, offers multiple examples of the bait-and-switch and fraud techniques involving the stimulation of greed in Ming-dynasty China.In romantic relationships
Deception has also been observed and studied in romantic relationships.There are three primary motivations for deception in relationships.
| Reasons for deceiving | Description |
| Partner-focused motives | Using deception to avoid hurting the partner, to help the partner to enhance or maintain their self-esteem, to avoid worrying the partner, and to protect the partner's relationship with a third party. Partner-focused motivated deception can sometimes be viewed as socially polite and relationally beneficial, such as telling white lies to avoid hurting your partner. Although other, less common, partner-focused motives such as using to deception to evoke jealous reactions from their partner may have damaging effects on a relationship. |
| Self-focused motives | Using deception to enhance or protect one's own self-image, maintain or establish their autonomy, avoid constrictions, unwanted activities, or impositions, shield themselves from anger, embarrassment, or criticism, or resolve an argument. Another common self-focused motive for deception, is a continuation of deception in order to avoid being caught in a previous deception. Self-focused deception is generally perceived as a more serious transgression than partner-focused deception, because the deceiver is acting for selfish reasons rather than for the good of the partner or relationship. |
| Relationship-focused motives | Using deception to limit relationship harm by avoiding conflict or relational trauma. Relationally motivated deception can be beneficial to a relationship, and other times it can be harmful by further complicating matters. Deception may also be used to facilitate the dissolution of an unwanted relationship. |
Deception impacts the perception of a relationship in a variety of ways, for both the deceiver and the deceived. The deceiver typically perceives less understanding and intimacy from the relationship, in that they see their partner as less empathetic and more distant. The act of deception can also result in feelings of distress for the deceiver, which become worse the longer the deceiver has known the deceived, as well as in longer-term relationships. Once discovered, deception creates feelings of detachment and uneasiness surrounding the relationship for both partners; this can eventually lead to both partners becoming more removed from the relationship or deterioration of the relationship. In general, discovery of deception can result in a decrease in relationship satisfaction and commitment level, however, in instances where a person is successfully deceived, relationship satisfaction can actually be positively impacted for the person deceived, since lies are typically used to make the other partner feel more positive about the relationship.
In general, deception tends to occur less often in relationships with higher satisfaction and commitment levels and in relationships where partners have known each other longer, such as long-term relationships and marriage. In comparison, deception is more likely to occur in casual relationships and in dating where commitment level and length of acquaintanceship is often much lower.
Deception and infidelity
Unique to exclusive romantic relationships is the use of deception in the form of infidelity. When it comes to the occurrence of infidelity, there are many individual difference factors that can impact this behavior. Infidelity is impacted by attachment style, relationship satisfaction, executive function, sociosexual orientation, personality traits, and gender. Attachment style impacts the probability of infidelity and research indicates that people with an insecure attachment style are more likely to cheat compared to individuals with a secure attachment style, especially for avoidant men and anxious women. Insecure attachment styles are characterized by a lack of comfort within a romantic relationship resulting in a desire to be overly independent or a desire to be overly dependent on their partner in an unhealthy way. Those with an insecure attachment style are characterized by not believing that their romantic partner can/will support and comfort them in an effective way, either stemming from a negative belief regarding themselves or a negative belief regarding romantic others. Women are more likely to commit infidelity when they are emotionally unsatisfied with their relationship whereas men are more likely to commit infidelity if they are sexually unsatisfied with their current relationship. Women are more likely to commit emotional infidelity than men while men are more likely to commit sexual infidelity than women; however, these are not mutually exclusive categories as both men and women can and do engage in emotional or sexual infidelity.Executive control is a part of executive functions that allows for individuals to monitor and control their behavior through thinking about and managing their actions. The level of executive control that an individual possesses is impacted by development and experience and can be improved through training and practice. Those individuals that show a higher level of executive control can more easily influence/control their thoughts and behaviors in relation to potential threats to an ongoing relationship which can result in paying less attention to threats to the current relationship. Sociosexual orientation is concerned with how freely individuals partake in casual sex outside of a committed relationship and their beliefs regarding how necessary it is to be in love in order to engage in sex with someone. Individuals with a less restrictive sociosexual orientation are more likely to engage in infidelity. Individuals that have personality traits including neuroticism, agreeableness, and conscientiousness are more likely to commit infidelity. Men are generally speculated to cheat more than women, but it is unclear if this is a result of socialization processes where it is more acceptable for men to cheat compared to women or due to an actual increase in this behavior for men. Research conducted by Conley and colleagues suggests that the reasoning behind these gender differences stems from the negative stigma associated with women who engage in casual sex and inferences about the sexual capability of the potential sexual partner. In their study, men and women were equally likely to accept a sexual proposal from an individual who was speculated to have a high level of sexual prowess. Additionally, women were just as likely as men to accept a casual sexual proposal when they did not anticipate being subjected to the negative stigma of sexually permissible women as slutty.