New studies show that e-mail tends to foster lying in the workplace.
“There is a growing concern in the workplace over e-mail communications, and it comes down to trust,” says Liuba Belkin, co-author of the studies and an assistant professor of management at Lehigh University, in a statement. “You’re not afforded the luxury of seeing non-verbal and behavioral cues over e-mail. And in an organizational context, that leaves a lot of room for misinterpretation and, as we saw in our study, intentional deception.”
One study involved MBA students telling another party about an amount of money to be shared between them, and the result was lying about the amount was roughly 50% greater for those using email rather than pen and paper to communicate. A second study did find that the more two people were familiar with each other, the less likely they would lie via email.
A paper titled “Being Honest Online: The Finer Points of Lying in Online Ultimatum Bargaining” details the studies’ findings. Belkin co-authored the paper with Terri Kurtzberg of Rutgers University and Charles Naquin of DePaul University.
