Apps & Explanations

Among us is an online game where 10 players come together and try to figure out who
the “imposter” is. First everyone is assigned a role, whether that is crewmate or imposter. Then
all players are placed in a spaceship and assigned tasks. The crewmates goal is to accomplish
each task and stay alive for the round. The imposter's goal is to fake his tasks, kill as many
people as he can, and not get caught. The round is over when someone reports a dead body or
calls a meeting. At these meetings everyone is able to discuss over a chat who they think the
imposter is. Then there is a vote and someone gets kicked off. The rounds go until the imposter
has been caught, or all but one crewmate is dead.
This mafia style game is easily related to the interpersonal deception theory. As it is the
imposter's goal to deceive all the other players. The tactics used by the imposter to uphold his
innocence can be related to the three styles of word manipulation in our theory. They may use
falsification and create a story of where they were and what they were doing while the murder
happend. They could use concealment, trying to just keep quiet and respond to interrogation with
vague answers. Or they could use equivocation, avoiding the accusations towards them, maybe
by pointing the figure elsewhere. The imposter also has all three of the theories motives,
accomplishing a task, establishing a relationship, and protecting an image. Unfortunately due to
the fact that the communication happens to only be through a chat, there would be no way for
non-verbal cues to give the imposter away. However the verbal cues do come into play. When
the imposter is being interrogated they may respond with any of the theory’s messaging
characteristics or verbal cues that could give them away. These cues being uncertainty,
withdrawal and dissociation.
From the side of the crewmate. They don’t know if any of their fellow players can be
trusted. As they interrogate each other in the chat, they have to go off of these verbal cues, truth
bias and suspicion. In this game it’s interesting to see how truth bias comes into play, because
they don’t know any of their fellow players. However, during the round as they accomplish tasks,
some people naturally begin to pair off with one another. When this happens, essentially an alibi
is created. So after a murder occurs, if you were with another player the entire round, some trust
has built and often in the chat those two players will defend one another. Overall the entire game
is a great example of how the interpersonal deception theory works. With the exception of the
non-verbal cues. However even then there are few chances during the rounds where you can spot
non-verbal leakage from the imposter, if you can tell he is faking a task, or if he is constantly
following you, or obviously if you find him near a dead body. All those things will raise a
player's suspicion, but then the challenge is convincing everyone else of what you’ve seen,
without raising suspicion to yourself.

Eharmony is a dating app that until recently was just a dating website. It’s known as
being one of the safer and more useful dating apps. However that doesn’t mean it's free of
deceivers. Just like any dating app, you sign up and create a profile with photos of yourself and
information about your interests. Although there is a verification feature, it isn’t required. That
means that anyone can sign up with any name and any photo. It’s extremely easy to pretend to be
someone you’re not.
It’s related to the interpersonal deception theory due to the fact that it is a form of verbal
communication between two people where lying can possibly occur. However this app, unlike
my other two, can be harder to catch a deciever with. This is mainly due to the fact that the only
form of nonverbal cue that could possibly help someone catch a deceiver, would be the photo on
their profile. It’s obvious to avoid someone’s profile if you can tell the photo is fake. Besides
that, there is no other nonverbal cue. The rest of your communication relies on text messages.
The biggest part of the interpersonal deception theory that is related to this app is going to be the
motive. For the most part the motive behind downloading a dating app is to establish a
relationship with someone, and possibly to accomplish the task of going on a date or finding a
girlfriend/boyfriend. Although, sometimes these dating apps can be used by people who have
dangerous intentions in mind, when that happens it’s highly beneficial for one to be able to
understand and point out verbal cues of deception.

I found marco polo interesting because it’s an app where the users can send short
facetime format videos to each other and it stitches back and forth in a timeline that you can go
back and rewatch as many times as you want. For the most part, the people that I know who use
it, use it for communication between family members. It’s a lot more personal than snapchat
because it is only videos but isn’t as draining as facetimes because it’s not live.
Unlike the other two apps Marco Polo has more of the non verbal factors come into play
when it comes to the interpersonal deception theory. We start again with an app that provides
communication between the two individuals, with a chance that lying could occur. The deception
can really have any of the manipulation styles and motives, it mostly depends on the situation of
who is messaging each other. Verbal cues are present like usual, but what's most interesting is to
look at the non-verbal cues because this app does provide video. This gives you the ability to
point out those signs like increased blinking, fidgety movement, and dilation. Another thing that
is more prominent in this app is the truth bias. Usually when you marco polo, it’s a person from
your contacts, so it’s usually someone you know. This brings in truth bias because now you have
a preconceived idea of whether this person is trustworthy or not.