The paper “Deception and Design: The Impact of Communication Technology on Lying Behavior”

(Computer-Human Interaction [2009]: 130–136) describes an investigation into whether lying is less common in face-to-face communication than in other forms of communication such as phone conversations or e-mail.

Participants in this study were 30 students in an upperdivision communications course at Cornell University who received course credit for participation. Participants were asked to record all of their social interactions for a week, making note of any lies told. Based on data from these records, the authors of the paper concluded that students lie more often in phone conversations than in face-to-face conversations and more often in face-to-face conversations than in e-mail. Discuss the limitations of this study, commenting on the way the sample was selected and potential sources of bias.