Web-based software contracting: an experimental study of deception identification across two different media

This study analyses choices made by subjects who were asked to accept or reject each of 20 clauses of a web-based software-purchasing contract, of which six clauses were deceitful. The subjects were split into two media conditions. In the text condition, the clauses were presented as text in a web browser window. In the video condition, web browser-embedded video clips were used. No significant differences were found across media conditions. Surprisingly though, the subjects did 18% and 14% worse than chance in terms of rejecting deceitful clauses through the text and video conditions, respectively.

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