Hiding in Plain Sight: A Turing Test on Fake Persona Spotting

我的博士研究重点是网络空间中的虚假身份，特别是社交媒体，以及这些虚假身份如何以虚假社交媒体资料的形式呈现。这项研究的主要目的是调查人类是否能准确地检测出虚假的社交媒体资料，以及他们用来检测这些资料的过程。目前关于虚假社交媒体个人资料以及如何检测虚假社交媒体个人资料的大部分文献来自计算机科学研究人员，他们开发了一系列算法或数据机器人（Efthimion等人，2018;Van der Walt & Eloff, 2018）来检测和删除社交媒体平台上的虚假个人资料。然而，从心理学的角度来看，这一领域的研究还很缺乏，特别是在分析个人资料的实际内容以得出虚假的结论方面（即个人资料的特征，以及创建这些个人资料的人是谁）。为了研究这些问题，我们试图通过应用“图灵测试”风格的方法，将传统的社会感知和“现实准确性判断”（Funder, 1999）的研究扩展到真实和虚假角色的领域。到目前为止，总共完成了三项研究，所有这些研究都采用了相同的方法：要求参与者查看一系列虚假和真实的Facebook个人资料（个人资料的截图），并要求他们判断个人资料的真实性。假的个人资料是专门为这项研究创建的，使用谷歌图像和photoshop。有关被操纵的个人资料特征的信息是从有关Facebook使用的统计报告中收集的，以及关于该主题的有限文献。研究人员从认识的人那里获得了真实的个人资料，以使他们能够被官方认证为真实的。一旦参与者对个人资料的真实性做出判断，他们被要求点击他们在做出判断时使用的个人资料的区域。这样做的目的是，它可以让我们看到哪些特征被使用得最多，从而可以为我们提供答案，当我们自己判断一个特征时，应该注意哪些特征。这三项研究的结果表明，总体而言，人类在判断社交媒体个人资料的真实性方面并不是很准确，这一结果是可以预测的，因为大量关于人类欺骗检测准确性的文献都在偶然水平左右（DePaulo, 2004）。此外，在每项研究中，参与者对个人资料上的照片点击最多，这属于照片类型的总体特征，比其他任何特征都多，这表明他们过度依赖个人资料上呈现的视觉图像，而对使用的语言和发布在“墙上”的物品的依赖较少。目前正在进行的第四项研究使用了与前三项相同的方法，但引入了不同的文化。这项研究将比较西方文化和东方文化，特别是印度文化的概况。印度是世界上Facebook使用率最高的国家，拥有超过4000万用户，因此是本研究的一个非常感兴趣的领域。这项研究的主要目的是分析来自一种文化的人是否更准确地识别来自另一种文化的虚假资料，还是来自自己文化的虚假资料。此外，我们的目的还在于了解在另一种文化中，什么构成了虚假的社交媒体个人资料，即，当他们做出真实性判断时，他们会查看/使用个人资料的哪些区域。这些领域与之前西方参与者的结果有什么不同吗？为了验证这一点，同样的方法将被用于一系列新的印度假个人资料，以及来自兰开斯特大学国际学生的真实印度个人资料。

My PhD research focus is on fake identities in the online space, specifically social media, and how these fake identities present in the form of fake social media profiles. The main overall aim of the research is to investigate whether humans can accurately detect fake social media profiles and the processes they use to detect said profiles. The bulk of the current literature on fake social media profiles and how they can be detected is derived from computer science researchers, who have developed a series of algorithms or data bots (Efthimion et al., 2018; Van der Walt & Eloff, 2018) to detect and remove said profiles from social media platforms. However, there is a lack of research in this area from a psychological perspective, specifically in relation to what is actually analysed on the profile to conclude that it is fake (i.e. the profile characteristics, and who the people are behind the creation of such profiles). To investigate these issues, we seek to extend traditional research on social perception and 'realistic accuracy judgements' (Funder, 1999) to the domain of real and fake persona by applying a 'Turing test' style methodology.A total of three studies have been completed so far, all of which involved the same methodology: participants were required to view a series of fake and real Facebook profiles (screenshot images of the profile) and asked to judge the authenticity of the profile. The fake profiles were created specifically for this research using google images and photoshop. The information regarding the characteristics of the profiles that were manipulated were gathered from statistical reports regarding Facebook use, and the limited literature available on the topic. The real profiles were obtained from people known to the researcher to allow for them to be officially authenticated as real. Once participants had made their authenticity judgement of the profiles, they were asked to click on the areas of the profile they used when making their judgement. The purpose for this being that it would allow us to see which characteristics of the profile are used the most and thus may provide us answers as to which characteristics to look out for when judging a profile ourselves. Results from these three studies indicate that humans overall are not very accurate at judging the authenticity of social media profiles, a result that was predicted due to the larger amount of literature on human deception detection accuracy being around the level of chance (DePaulo, 2004). Additionally, consistently across each study, participants clicked the most on the photos on the profile, which came under the umbrella characteristic of Photo-Type, more than any other characteristic, suggesting an overreliance on the visual imagery presented on the profile and less so on the language used and items posted on the 'wall'. The fourth study that is currently ongoing is using the same methodology as the previous three, with the introduction of a different culture. The study will be comparing profiles from Western culture to Eastern cultures, specifically India. India is the country with the highest Facebook use around the world, with over 40 million users, and so is an area of great interest to this research. The main aim of this study is to analyse whether humans from one culture are more accurate at detecting fake profiles from another culture or from their own culture. Further, the aim is to also understand what constitutes a fake social media profile in another culture, i.e., what areas of the profile are they looking at/using when making their authenticity judgement. Do these areas differ from the results found previously from Western participants? To test this, the same methodology will be used alongside a series of new Indian fake profiles that have been created and real Indian profiles that are being sourced from International students at Lancaster University.