Digital Deceit: Jeff Hancock at TEDxWinnipeg 2012

Deception is one of the most significant and pervasive social phenomena of our age. On average, people tell one to two lies a day, and these lies range from the trivial to the more serious, including deception between friends and family, in the workplace, and in politics. At the same time, information and communication technologies have pervaded almost all aspects of human communication and interaction, from everyday technologies that support interpersonal interactions, such as email and instant messaging, to more sophisticated systems that support organizational interactions.

Jeff Hancock is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Communication and Information Science, and co-Director of Cognitive Science at Cornell University. He is currently Chair of the Information Science Department. His work is concerned with understanding they psychological and linguistic aspects of social media, with a particular emphasis on deception, identity, social interaction, and the psychological effects of online interaction. His research is supported by funding from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Defense, and his work on lying online has been featured in the New York Times, CNN, CBC, NPR, BBC and the CBC documentary The Truth About Lying. Dr. Hancock earned his PhD in Psychology at Dalhousie University, Canada, and joined Cornell in 2002.

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