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This mixed-methods study applies Communication Accommodation Theory to explore how liking, power, and sex predict one's likelihood for using textisms in digital interpersonal interactions. Textisms are digital cues that convey nonverbal meaning and emotion in text communication. The main experiment used a hypothetical texting scenario to manipulate textism amounts (none/many) and participant's perceived power levels (low/equal/high) during texting interactions to examine the number of textisms participants used in subsequent responses in comparison to the number of textisms they viewed. Primary results show that (1) participants moderately converged to use similar amounts of textisms, and (2) those with low power who viewed many textisms were more likely to use textisms themselves during subsequent responses. Through the examination of adaption behaviors in text messaging, scholars can better understand the contexts in which users will include textisms to intentionally convey nonverbal meaning and emotion in digital communication.

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Extant research indicates that professional law enforcement officers (LEOs) are generally no better than untrained novices at detecting deception. Moreover, traditional training methods are often less effective than no training at all at improving successful detection. Compared to the traditional training, interactive digital games can provide an immersive learning environment for deeper internalization of new information through simulated practices. VERITAS—an interactive digital game—was designed and developed to train LEOs to better detect reliable deception cues when questioning suspects and determining the veracity of their answers. The authors hypothesized that reducing players' reactance would mitigate resistance to training, motivate engagement with materials, and result in greater success at deception detection and knowledge. As hypothesized, LEOs playing VERITAS showed significant improvement in deception detection from the first to the second scenario within the game; and the low-reactance version provided the most effective training. The authors also compared various responses to the game between LEOs and a separate undergraduate student sample. Relative to students, findings show LEOs perceived VERITAS to be significantly more intrinsically motivating, engaging, and appealing as a deception detection activity.

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