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Charles Naquin and Mason Ameri are students at Rutgers University Newark.
The Research Brief is a summary of interesting academic work.
The big idea
Our peer-reviewed research shows that people are more willing to lie for personal gain when they use a laptop instead of a phone. The psychological impact of technology is highlighted by the fact that the two devices have nearly identical technical capabilities.
The ultimatum game was the first study in a planned series. In the take-it-or- leave-it exercise, one player is told that they will receive a certain amount of money, some of which they must split with a partner. They can tell their partner whatever they want about the total sum and how much of it they are willing to give, but they can keep more of it for themselves. The partner needs to agree to the sum offered for them to get money.
137 graduate students were told to imagine they would share US$125 with a fellow student if they were randomly assigned a partner. Half of them used a laptop, the other half used a phone.
laptop users are more likely to lie than the majority of participants. Eighty-two percent of laptop participants were deceptive, compared with 62 percent of phone users and on average claimed the pot was $20 less.
Although this was hypothetical and didn’t involve real money, previous research by us and other scholars shows that these scenarios are good at predicting actual behavior.
To see if our finding held up in a more real-world scenario, we created a negotiation experiment in which two people were told to barter over the purchase price of an imaginary Semiconductor factory one of them owned. The 222 students were divided into buyers and sellers. The market value of the property was estimated by buyers.
The buyers were asked to tell the sellers what the fair market value of the property was and then make an initial offer. In the first experiment, half of the students used their phones and the other half used laptops.
laptop users were more deceptive. They told sellers the fair value was $16.7 million, lowballing it by over $4 million compared with the phone participants. Their actual offers were slightly higher than what they said.
We asked people in a separate study about their associations with each device and found a consistent pattern. Previous research has shown that phones, laptops and associations of friends and family can lead to unethical behavior.
Why it matters
Technology can subtly shift the way our brains work.
People lie more frequently, cooperate less and evaluate others less negatively when they use physical tools like pens and paper than they do in person.
These experiments offer more evidence of the subtle ways technology can alter human behavior, even though studies like ours can’t perfectly predict how behavior will play out in real life.
What still isn’t known
We don’t know if our findings will hold for other tasks and relationships. Different screen sizes or locations may affect people’s choice to lie.
Our research shows the need to assess how technological tools are used in real settings, including unconscious changes these devices might have on daily decisions and ethical standards.
There is a Creative Commons license for this article. You can read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/lies-are-more-common-on-laptops-than-on-phones-how-devices-may-shape-our-behavior-when-bargaining-with-strangers-189