BTW The Business Week

illustration by ted mcgrath

by Jill Hamburg Coplan

True Confessions

Some insight, perhaps, into the willingness of the MySpace generation to publish online accounts of their bad behavior: Researchers at Carnegie Mellon found people are more willing to reveal their misdemeanors when they’re asked about them casually. They balk at more formal surveys, despite (or because of) assurances of confidentiality. In one study, half the subjects answered questions on a computer screen with funny graphics and text. The others did so on a faux university site. (All were asked to provide their e-mail addresses.)

The results: When the questions were accompanied by a cartoon of a smiling devil asking, “How BAD are U?” more than 50% of the subjects admitted to cheating on their taxes. When the same question was posed on a site with an official-looking insignia—and privacy assurances—only 25% said they had cheated. Study co-author George Loewenstein, a behavioral economist, theorizes that promises of privacy remind people that such revelations can be problematic. Informal sites not offering confidentiality may elicit confessions by making light of them. “People look to different cues to determine whether they should reveal information,” Loewenstein says. “Those cues are often misleading.”

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