What Words Do We Use to Lie?: Word Choice in Deceptive Messages

TL;DR

This study analyzes linguistic patterns in deceptive text messages, revealing significant differences in word choice based on gender and student status, using a large, diverse dataset to improve reliability over prior small-scale studies.

Contribution

It provides new insights into how demographic factors influence deceptive language in text messaging through analysis of a large, varied dataset.

Findings

Significant gender differences in deceptive word use.

Differences in deception rates between students and non-students.

Large dataset improves reliability of linguistic deception indicators.

Abstract

Text messaging is the most widely used form of computer-mediated communication (CMC). Previous findings have shown that linguistic factors can reliably indicate messages as deceptive. For example, users take longer and use more words to craft deceptive messages than they do truthful messages. Existing research has also examined how factors, such as student status and gender, affect rates of deception and word choice in deceptive messages. However, this research has been limited by small sample sizes and has returned contradicting findings. This paper aims to address these issues by using a dataset of text messages collected from a large and varied set of participants using an Android messaging application. The results of this paper show significant differences in word choice and frequency of deceptive messages between male and female participants, as well as between students and non-students.