JKATHERINE
10-19-2008, 06:06 PM
Death and Deception on the Internet
October 03, 2008 9:04 AM
By Joanna Schaffhausen, ABC News Medical Unit
How can you tell if someone is lying over e-mail or on the internet? The temptation is apparently great, and new research suggests people lie more easily over e-mail than they do with a pencil and paper.
Luiba Belkin, an assistant professor of management in the College of Business and Economics at Lehigh University, tested truthfulness in 48 MBA students. Belkin and her colleagues gave the students $89 to divide among themselves and another fictional party, who knew only that the dollar amount fell somewhere between $5 and $100.
Using either e-mail or pen-and-paper, the MBA students reported the size of the pot to the fictional party and explained how the money would be divided.
Over e-mail, students lied about how much money was in the pot more than 92 percent of the time, while those using pen-and-paper lied slightly less than 64 percent.
Something about the anonymity of the Internet appears to foster dishonesty, psychologists find.
But can lying on the Internet be considered a mental illness? Yes, according to some psychologists, who say it’s a growing problem. People desperate for attention make up entire fictional lives for themselves, only to turn around and “die” so that they can attend their own online funerals.
I wouldn’t have believed it possible … until it happened to me.
She said her name was Evie. She was a member of an internet fiction writing community I belonged to back in 2002. At the tender age of 22, she had a toddler, twin babies and a master’s degree. She connected, with other women especially, sending them pictures of her children and little presents in the mail.
Then one day, Evie sent a troubling message to the community: She was sick in the hospital with pneumonia. People sent their good wishes and for a while Evie seemed to be doing better. Her husband, Adam, even brought her laptop to the hospital for her to use.
But suddenly Evie took a turn for the worse. Her heart was failing and she slipped into a coma.
We received regular updates on her condition from Adam, who was by her side through it all. The details were sometimes horrifying. Doctors had to shock her heart back into rhythm. They gave her ice baths to relieve her fever. And worst of all, the nurses had to cut her beautiful waist-length hair.
We prayed for her, but our prayers went unanswered. Adam came online to deliver the awful news: Evie had died.
Shock reverberated through the community. How could this happen to a young, healthy mother in the prime of life?
Her Internet friends cried, wrote tributes and donated to charities in her name. Adam answered every one of their heartfelt e-mails. And despite having a funeral to plan and three young motherless children at home, Adam appeared to be on the Internet all the time.
Whispers started in certain circles. The story didn’t seem to add up. Community members with medical backgrounds said Evie’s treatment hadn’t made any sense. The devastated husband was spending all his time online, encouraging tributes to Evie.
Skepticism grew, especially when no one could find an obituary for Evie online. Finally someone dared say it in public: We’d been duped. Evie was never sick, hadn’t died, and in fact was still with us, posing as Adam. The whole story, including the three small children and her master’s degree, was a lie.
Adam denied it, and many community members rallied around him. They said the disbelievers were horrible people for adding to Adam’s pain.
But then one astute person noticed an interesting detail in Adam’s writing style. He had a strange habit of putting a space between the last word of a sentence and the period -- like this . A check of Evie’s e-mails showed she made the same idiosyncratic punctuation error too. This seemed to prove it -- Evie and Adam were the same person.
This discovery just prompted Evie to adopt a new persona, her sister Aisha, who came online to scold everyone for doubting Evie and Adam. Aisha’s messages had the same strange spaces before the periods at the end of her sentences.
By now, the community was torn apart between those who still believed Aisha and Adam, and those who were furious with Evie for lying.
But the most bizarre twist was yet to come -- Evie herself reappeared! She claimed a stalker had stolen her laptop and faked Evie’s death, even going so far as to learn her odd punctuation style.
Few believed her story, and she was forced to leave the community. But for months afterward, every new member was suspected of being Evie writing under yet another different name. The closeness and trust that members once shared was gone, irreparably harmed.
It turns out Evie’s story is not that unusual and is part of a growing phenomenon called Munchausen’s by Internet. Munchausen’s disease is a mental illness in which people fake being sick to get attention from doctors and nurses. Munchausen’s by Internet is pretty much the same thing, only in cyberspace, with the added bonus that sufferers can even “die” and watch people’s reactions.
According to psychologist Marc Feldman, who coined the phrase Munchausen’s by Internet, people with the disorder frequently target communities devoted to medical issues, such as support groups for cancer patients or people with anorexia.
The communities often dissolve after the truth is uncovered. Some people refuse to believe they’ve been suckered, and the skeptics have trouble trusting again.
Now I know that Evie’s story had all the signs of a classic Munchausen’s by Internet case. Feldman lists the main ways to spot a faker:
The user’s e-mails or posts consistently duplicate material in other posts, in books or on health-related Web site.
The characteristics of the supposed illness emerge as caricatures.
Near-fatal bouts of illness alternate with miraculous recoveries.
Claims are fantastic, contradicted by subsequent posts, or flatly disprove.
Continual dramatic events take place in the person's life, especially when other group members have become the focus of attention.
There is feigned blitheness about crises (for example, going into septic shock) that will predictably attract immediate attention;
Others apparently posting on behalf of the individual (such as family members and friends) have identical patterns of writing.
Have you ever been duped over e-mail? Why do you think the internet fosters deception?
http://blogs.abcnews.com/health_insider/2008/10/03/index.html
October 03, 2008 9:04 AM
By Joanna Schaffhausen, ABC News Medical Unit
How can you tell if someone is lying over e-mail or on the internet? The temptation is apparently great, and new research suggests people lie more easily over e-mail than they do with a pencil and paper.
Luiba Belkin, an assistant professor of management in the College of Business and Economics at Lehigh University, tested truthfulness in 48 MBA students. Belkin and her colleagues gave the students $89 to divide among themselves and another fictional party, who knew only that the dollar amount fell somewhere between $5 and $100.
Using either e-mail or pen-and-paper, the MBA students reported the size of the pot to the fictional party and explained how the money would be divided.
Over e-mail, students lied about how much money was in the pot more than 92 percent of the time, while those using pen-and-paper lied slightly less than 64 percent.
Something about the anonymity of the Internet appears to foster dishonesty, psychologists find.
But can lying on the Internet be considered a mental illness? Yes, according to some psychologists, who say it’s a growing problem. People desperate for attention make up entire fictional lives for themselves, only to turn around and “die” so that they can attend their own online funerals.
I wouldn’t have believed it possible … until it happened to me.
She said her name was Evie. She was a member of an internet fiction writing community I belonged to back in 2002. At the tender age of 22, she had a toddler, twin babies and a master’s degree. She connected, with other women especially, sending them pictures of her children and little presents in the mail.
Then one day, Evie sent a troubling message to the community: She was sick in the hospital with pneumonia. People sent their good wishes and for a while Evie seemed to be doing better. Her husband, Adam, even brought her laptop to the hospital for her to use.
But suddenly Evie took a turn for the worse. Her heart was failing and she slipped into a coma.
We received regular updates on her condition from Adam, who was by her side through it all. The details were sometimes horrifying. Doctors had to shock her heart back into rhythm. They gave her ice baths to relieve her fever. And worst of all, the nurses had to cut her beautiful waist-length hair.
We prayed for her, but our prayers went unanswered. Adam came online to deliver the awful news: Evie had died.
Shock reverberated through the community. How could this happen to a young, healthy mother in the prime of life?
Her Internet friends cried, wrote tributes and donated to charities in her name. Adam answered every one of their heartfelt e-mails. And despite having a funeral to plan and three young motherless children at home, Adam appeared to be on the Internet all the time.
Whispers started in certain circles. The story didn’t seem to add up. Community members with medical backgrounds said Evie’s treatment hadn’t made any sense. The devastated husband was spending all his time online, encouraging tributes to Evie.
Skepticism grew, especially when no one could find an obituary for Evie online. Finally someone dared say it in public: We’d been duped. Evie was never sick, hadn’t died, and in fact was still with us, posing as Adam. The whole story, including the three small children and her master’s degree, was a lie.
Adam denied it, and many community members rallied around him. They said the disbelievers were horrible people for adding to Adam’s pain.
But then one astute person noticed an interesting detail in Adam’s writing style. He had a strange habit of putting a space between the last word of a sentence and the period -- like this . A check of Evie’s e-mails showed she made the same idiosyncratic punctuation error too. This seemed to prove it -- Evie and Adam were the same person.
This discovery just prompted Evie to adopt a new persona, her sister Aisha, who came online to scold everyone for doubting Evie and Adam. Aisha’s messages had the same strange spaces before the periods at the end of her sentences.
By now, the community was torn apart between those who still believed Aisha and Adam, and those who were furious with Evie for lying.
But the most bizarre twist was yet to come -- Evie herself reappeared! She claimed a stalker had stolen her laptop and faked Evie’s death, even going so far as to learn her odd punctuation style.
Few believed her story, and she was forced to leave the community. But for months afterward, every new member was suspected of being Evie writing under yet another different name. The closeness and trust that members once shared was gone, irreparably harmed.
It turns out Evie’s story is not that unusual and is part of a growing phenomenon called Munchausen’s by Internet. Munchausen’s disease is a mental illness in which people fake being sick to get attention from doctors and nurses. Munchausen’s by Internet is pretty much the same thing, only in cyberspace, with the added bonus that sufferers can even “die” and watch people’s reactions.
According to psychologist Marc Feldman, who coined the phrase Munchausen’s by Internet, people with the disorder frequently target communities devoted to medical issues, such as support groups for cancer patients or people with anorexia.
The communities often dissolve after the truth is uncovered. Some people refuse to believe they’ve been suckered, and the skeptics have trouble trusting again.
Now I know that Evie’s story had all the signs of a classic Munchausen’s by Internet case. Feldman lists the main ways to spot a faker:
The user’s e-mails or posts consistently duplicate material in other posts, in books or on health-related Web site.
The characteristics of the supposed illness emerge as caricatures.
Near-fatal bouts of illness alternate with miraculous recoveries.
Claims are fantastic, contradicted by subsequent posts, or flatly disprove.
Continual dramatic events take place in the person's life, especially when other group members have become the focus of attention.
There is feigned blitheness about crises (for example, going into septic shock) that will predictably attract immediate attention;
Others apparently posting on behalf of the individual (such as family members and friends) have identical patterns of writing.
Have you ever been duped over e-mail? Why do you think the internet fosters deception?
http://blogs.abcnews.com/health_insider/2008/10/03/index.html