(Willett, 2014)
Interpersonal deception has three characteristics: The speaker must know he or she isn't telling the truth, the speaker must be intentionally revealing that information, and the speaker must intend for the listener to believe that information (Floyd, 2011, p. 385). When Stanley appears at Fraulein Elsa's Cabinet of Curiosities, he meets all three of those criteria. When introducing himself to the members of the fourth season's Freak Show in episode four of the season, Stanley introduces himself as Richard Spencer, a talent scout from Hollywood. In reality, he is a con artist intending to harvest "freak" body parts and sell them for money. "I'm here from, uh, out of town. Yeah, Hollywood, California, is where I call home," he says (Salt & Deutch, 2014). Spencer also displays one of the behaviors common during acts of deception. People make more speech errors when they lie, including using filler words like "uh." "People often feel guilty or nervous (or both) when they are lying, and those emotions can cause their speech patterns to become less fluent than normal" (Floyd, 2011, p. 395). Indeed, Stanley's first impression should have made him nervous, since it would determine whether or not he was given a trustworthy "in" to the freak show. | (Fe Fi Fo Moody) |