The Wall Street Journal recently picked up on Cornell-led research that used the online version of the classic game Diplomacy to explore the tells that hint of a coming betrayal. The article, which ran in WSJ's print edition and online (behind a paywall), outlines findings from Cornell Computer Scientists Vlad Niculae and Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, along with researchers Srijan Kumar (University of Maryland) and Jordan Boyd-Graber (UC Boulder). Using an algorithm to sort through some 145,000 online messages among Diplomacy players involved in 249 games, the research team found that players who ultimately betrayed their teammates chatted less about future actions in the game, wrote more sentences in their chat messages, and were far more positive than usual.
Read more about the "Linguistics Harbingers of Betrayal" here.