Types of deception and underlying motivation - What people think

In computer-mediated communication, there are various types of possible deception such as category deception (gender switching), attractiveness deception, or identity concealment. The present article argues that it is meaningful to differentiate among these types of deception. More specifically, it is assumed that people attribute the various types of deception to different motivations and that these assumed motivations determine the evaluation of the deception. To examine whether individuals indeed attribute different types of deception to different underlying motivations, a scenario study was conducted. The results were in line with the expectations. For example, identity concealment was mainly attributed to privacy concerns, whereas gender switching was mainly perceived as playing with new roles and unknown aspects of the self. The assumed malicious intention predicted the evaluation of the deception.