Deceivers and Emotion: The Relationships Among Deceptive Message Type, Relational Qualities, and Guilt and Shame

Abstract

Research has identified emotions as key components of the deception process (Buller & Burgoon, 1996). Yet, examining emotions in conjunction with deception has been branded an under-researched area (Seiter & Bruschke, 2007). The goal of this study was to discover if relational qualities (commitment and satisfaction) and the type of deceptive message communicated (lie, evasion, overstatement, concealment, or collusion) related to feelings of guilt and shame following deception. Participants were asked to recall the most recent time they deceived their romantic partner, describe the lie, and complete relational quality and emotional response measures. Results indicate that the type of deceptive message communicated was not related to relational qualities. Further, feelings of guilt and shame did not differ based on type of deception. However, results indicate positive relationships between the emotional experiences of guilt and shame and relational qualities of commitment and satisfaction. Implications, limitations, and future research are discussed.

Notes

¹In the interests of employing the most parsimonious statistical tests possible, a one-way analysis of variance was used to test Hypotheses 1 through 3, although the wording of these hypotheses suggests the use of discriminant function analyses. Because the study design does not allow for causal claims, switching the independent and dependent variables allows for the use of one-way analyses of variance, which provide an alternative (i.e., simpler) method of testing these hypotheses that reveals the same results (i.e., whether deception type is related to different levels of satisfaction/commitment) as would discriminant function analyses.

²Given that the preliminary data analysis revealed sex differences between commitment, satisfaction, guilt, and shame, the three hypotheses were subsequently analyzed separately for men and women. None of the ANOVAs were significant. Contact the first author for a copy of these analyses.

³Collusion is described as the communication of deception with your partner's knowledge that deception is occurring. It is likely that the majority of deceivers do not know when collusion is occurring because they do not have knowledge of whether their partner knows they are communicating deception. This is evident in the present sample, with only four respondents describing their deception as collusion. Because of the low number falling into this category and the probability that most people do not know when collusion occurs, collusion was removed from the data set and analyses were conducted on the deceptive message data. However, all ANOVAs remained nonsignificant.