Study: Employees more willing to lie over e-mail
September 4, 2008 by Sam NarisiPosted in: Employee computer use, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views
Here’s more evidence that e-mail isn’t the best form of communication in many situations.
People are more willing to lie when writing an e-mail than when communicating in other ways, according to a recent study presented at the Academy of Management’s annual meeting.
In the experiment, business school students were each given 89$ and told they had to share it with another person. The assignment was to tell the other folks how big the pot was and how much their share would be.
Some had to communicate via e-mail, and others by a handwritten note. The ones who typed were much more likely to lie about the amount.
A similar study conducted a few years by the same authors found that people were more likely to speak negatively about co-workers online than in writing.
Tags: Academy of Management, e-mail, lying
September 10th, 2008 at 10:09 am
If this is true, then employees are also more stupid. Not that lying is EVER appropriate, but who would put it in writing?? –whether the lie is hand written or even worse, email?