A researcher who studies deception believes most communication is honest, although he acknowledges some is not.
“This has always been the case. But now with so much access to mass media, the few outliers of the world have a platform like never before,” said Tim Levine, a professor of communication at the University of Alabama – Birmingham.
Levine came by the TSPR studios this week for a conversation before he delivered the 34th Annual Wayne N. Thompson Lecture, which is hosted by the Department of Communication at Western Illinois University.
His lecture was titled, “The Social Science of Lying and Deception.”
Levine told TSPR that we learn through social interaction. Most of that communication is good and most people are trustworthy, which he said makes us vulnerable to the occasional deceit.
“The trade-off is more than worth it. If you think of all the good we get out of trusting other people and all the good we get out of functional, efficient communication, it totally outweighs the consequences of being deceived once in a while,” he said, adding that most people learn over time when to turn on our “deception radars” and be careful.
But he cautioned that as AI and deep fakes improve, it will become more difficult to detect them and we will become more vulnerable to the algorithms.
Levine said most deception does not get detected until after the fact.
“It’s fact checking, whether you do that beforehand or after the fact, is the best way to figure out what the truth is,” he said.
Levine hoped his lecture’s audience learned to rely less on the impressions people give off. He said people who come off as being friendly extroverts tend to be believed, whether or not they’re being honest.
And on the other hand, those who might be more introverted or have some social anxiety tend to be doubted, even though they’re being perfectly honest.
“Let’s pay a little less attention to how people come off and a little more attention to the substance of what they say,” Levine said.
“Listen carefully, think about whether it makes sense.”
Levine said he planned to study persuasion when he was in graduate school. But he got assigned to work with a professor who studied deception.
“Earlier in his life, he had been burned by a girlfriend who took off with his parents’ credit cards. He was wondering how he could have been so gullible. So we designed an experiment to test how gullible people were who were in college dating relationships,” said Levine.
He said they discovered college students were incredibly gullible in such situations -- but also found that just about everybody is gullible in dating relationships, no matter their age.
And that’s what led to Levine’s career of studying deception.
Tri States Public Radio produced this story. TSPR relies on financial support from our readers and listeners in order to provide coverage of the issues that matter to west central Illinois, southeast Iowa, and northeast Missouri. As someone who values the content created by TSPR's news department please consider making a financial contribution.
