They say that on the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog. An article noted by Deception Blog puts that in some perspective.

An article under the title, “Deception in cyberspace: A comparison of text-only vs. avatar-supported medium,” in the September 2007 issue of International Journal of Human-Computer Studies relays the results of an experiment in online deception. Student participants were randomly assigned to either tell the truth or lie to online conversation partners. They then conducted conversations in either text-only or avatar-supported chat rooms.

There were three key findings:

* Participants who had been assigned to lie were more likely than truth-tellers to choose avatars that looked different from themselves.

* In text-only chat, liars had higher (self-reported) anxiety levels than truth-tellers; but the same effect did not show up in the avatar-supported chat.

* Avatar or no avatar, participants were not able to pick up on cues to deception.

In other words, an online avatar can make it easier (and less stressful) to lie, but it doesn’t make you any more or less trustworthy to those with whom you interact. You may be a dog, but to the world you have a poker face.