The Secret Life of Pronouns_ What Our Words Say About Us - James W. Pennebaker [71]
Although the function words distinguished honest from deceptive online ads, there were also differences in content words. That is, people who were dishonest about their profiles tended to shift the focus of their self-description away from their sensitive topic. For example, women and men who lied about their weight were the least likely to mention anything about food, restaurants, or eating. Similarly, those whose pictures were the most deceptive tended to focus on topics of work and achievement in a way that built up their status and downplayed their physical appearance.
Do you really need a computer to assess how trustworthy a potential online match might be? Can’t we intuitively pick out the honest from the deceptive people by taking in all of the information that is available to us? Hancock’s research team paints a rather bleak picture. He solicited the help of about fifty students to rate each online profile for trustworthiness. The students’ estimates of honesty were no better than if you chose a trustworthy date by flipping a coin. One reason is that we tend to look at precisely the wrong language cues in guessing who is trustworthy. As raters of online ads, most of us assume that an upbeat, positive, simple, selfless, down-to-earth person is the most honest. And that, my friends, is why our “love detectors” are flawed instruments.
DECEIVING FOR WAR: THE LANGUAGE OF LEADERS PRIOR TO THE IRAQ WAR
Any student of history will undoubtedly look back on the relationship between the United States and Iraq after about 1950 and ask, “What were they thinking?” The “they” will refer to both countries. Perhaps the most puzzling turn of events in this relationship was the decision by the United States to invade Iraq in March 2003.
Immediately after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the administration of George W. Bush was convinced that Iraq may have played some role in the attacks. Without detailing the intricate history between the United States and Iraq, it should be noted that there was already some bad blood between the countries. Over the next year and a half, the Bush administration began raising more and more concerns about Iraq—including claims that it was harboring terrorists, building weapons of mass destruction, and planning for attacks on the West. With the benefit of hindsight, most of these concerns were unfounded. There were no terrorist training sites, no weapons of mass destruction, and no plans to attack anyone. Nevertheless, the increasing rhetoric about the danger of Iraq helped to propel the invasion and occupation of Iraq in March 2003.
The social dynamics of a democratic government starting a war are tremendously complex. During periods of high anxiety, rumors spread quickly and people are vulnerable to distorted information. Rumors and speculation, with enough repeating, slowly transform themselves into firmly held beliefs. The distinctions between deception and self-deception can quickly erode.
The Center for Public Integrity (CPI), an independent watchdog agency, is a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization that supports investigative journalism on a wide range of issues (www.publicintegrity.org). In the months and years after the Iraq invasion, CPI began to comb through all of the public statements by key administration officials about Iraq in the time between 9/11 and the war. Indeed, anyone can access the hundreds of statements from speeches, press conferences, op-ed pieces, and television and radio interviews. For the researcher, the task is made even easier in that those portions of text that have been verified to be false are