Interpersonal Deception Theory - Criticism of IDT

Criticism of IDT

DePaulo, Ansfield, and Bell question the theoretical status of IDT. They write, "We cannot find the 'why' question in Buller and Burgoon's synthesis. There is no intriguing riddle or puzzle that needs to be solved, and no central explanatory mechanism is ever described." They applaud Buller and Burgoon's 18 propositions as a comprehensive description of the timeline of deceptive interactions, but fault the propositions for lacking the interconnectedness and predictive power necessary to qualify as a unifying theory. DePaulo et al. also criticize IDT for failing to distinguish between interactive communication, which emphasizes the situational and contextual aspects of communicative exchanges, from interpersonal communication, which emphasizes exchanges in which the sender and receiver make psychological predictions about one another's behavior based on person-specific prior knowledge. They argue that this conceptual ambiguity limits IDT's explanatory power.