Deception: From Ancient Empires to Internet Dating

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Authors: Brooke Harrington, Ed., & Guido Möllering (Max Planck Institute), Paul Thompson & Hany Farid (Dartmouth College), Jeffrey T. Hancock (Cornell University), Tom Lutz (University of California, Riverside), Maureen O’Sullivan (University of San Francisco), Carl T. Bergstrom (University of Washington), Gary Urton, Frederick Schauer & Richard Zeckhauser (Harvard University), Mark G. Frank (State University of New York),  Gary Alan Fine (Northwestern University), Ford Rowan (George Washington University), William Glenney IV (Naval Operations’ Strategic Studies Group), & Kenneth Fields (Stanford University)

Publication: Stanford University Press
Year: 2009
Focus Area: Deception

Relevance: By synthesizing the fragmented world of deception research across the humanities and sciences, this text serves as a “status report on deception” (p. 2).

Summary: The interwoven contributions to this work are organized around four themes of deception:

  1. defining & detecting deception
  2. technology & deception
  3. the relationship between deception & trust
  4. social institutions through which deception is perpetrated & regulated

Each theme is addressed from three or four different perspectives, all of which account for and refer to the other works.  This creates a cohesive and broad view of the state of deception research, while allowing for the varying definitions, foci, and opinions within the field.  Of particular relevance to financial fraud are the sections on:

  • cognitive hacking (Paul Thompson, Dartmouth College)
  • digital deception (Jeffrey T. Hancock, Cornell University)
  • digital doctoring (Hany Farid, Dartmouth College)
  • method acting in daily life (Tom Lutz, University of California, Riverside)
  • fraud in financial markets (Brooke Harrington, Max Planck Institute)
  • why most people are poor lie detectors (Maureen O’Sullivan, University of San Francisco)

Opening Paragraph: Deception and especially lying are typically ascribed to human beings and often distinguished from other forms of conveying incorrect or misleading information by intentionality.  If a person is merely ignorant of the truth, then telling something other than the truth would not usually be considered lying, except that pretending to know the truth is itself a kind of deception.  (Different ideas about intentionality are presented elsewhere in this volume, along with proposals to distinguish lying from deception.) –excerpted from Foreword by Murray Gell-Mann, Santa Fe Institute (Nobel Prize in physics, 1969)

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