Hostname: page-component-7b9c58cd5d-hpxsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-03-17T08:27:51.609Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Would I lie to you? On social preferences and lying aversion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Sjaak Hurkens  and
Navin Kartik
Sjaak Hurkens*
Affiliation:
Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica (CSIC), Campus UAB, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain
Navin Kartik*
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego, USA Economics Department, Columbia University, 420 West 118th Street, New York, NY 10027, USA
*
e-mail: [email protected] url: http://hurkens.iae-csic.org
e-mail: [email protected] url: http://www.columbia.edu/~nk2339/
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper reinterprets the evidence on lying or deception presented in Gneezy (Am. Econ. Rev. 95(1):384-394, 2005). We show that Gneezy's data are consistent with the simple hypothesis that people are one of two kinds: either a person will never lie, or a person will lie whenever she prefers the outcome obtained by lying over the outcome obtained by telling the truth. This implies that so long as lying induces a preferred outcome over truth-telling, a person's decision of whether to lie may be completely insensitive to other changes in the induced outcomes, such as exactly how much she monetarily gains relative to how much she hurts an anonymous partner. We run new but broadly similar experiments to those of Gneezy in order to test this hypothesis. While we also confirm that there is an aversion to lying in our subject population, our data cannot reject the simple hypothesis described above either.

Keywords

Experimental economicsLyingDeceptionSocial preferences

JEL classification

C91: Laboratory, Individual Behavior
Type
Research Article
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , June 2009 , pp. 180 - 192
Copyright
Copyright © Economic Science Association 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10683-008-9208-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

References

Andreoni, J., & Miller, J. (2002). Giving according to GARP: an experimental test of the consistency of preferences for altruism. Econometrica, 70(2), 737–753.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brandts, J., & Charness, G. (2000). Hot and cold decisions and reciprocity in experiments with sequential games. Experimental Economics, 2(3), 227–238.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brandts, J., & Charness, G. (2003). Truth or consequences: an experiment. Management Science, 49, 116–130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Charness, G., & Dufwenberg, M. (2005). Deception: the role of guilt. Mimeo. UC Santa Barbara and University of Arizona.Google Scholar
Charness, G., & Dufwenberg, M. (2006). Promises and partnership. Econometrica, 74(6), 1579–1601.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Charness, G., & Dufwenberg, M. (2007). Broken promises: an experiment. Mimeo. UC Santa Barbara and University of Arizona.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crawford, V., & Sobel, J. (1982). Strategic information transmission. Econometrica, 50(6), 1431–1451.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ederer, F., & Fehr, E. (2008). Deception and incentives — how Dishonesty undermines effort provision. Mimeo. MIT and University of Zurich.Google Scholar
Fehr, E., & Schmidt, K. M. (1999). A Theory of fairness, competition, and cooperation. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 114(3), 817–868.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gächter, S., & Renner, E. (2006). The effects of (incentivized) belief elicitation in public good experiments. Discussion Papers 2006-16. The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham, September 2006.Google Scholar
Gneezy, U. (2005). Deception: the role of consequences. American Economic Review, 95(1), 384–394.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rode, J. (2006). Truth and trust in communication: an experimental study of behavior under asymmetric information. Mimeo. Universitat Pompeu Fabra.Google Scholar
Sánchez-Pagés, S., & Vorsatz, M. (2007). An experimental study of truth-telling in a sender-receiver game. Games and Economic Behavior, 61(1), 86–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Selten, R. (1967). Die Strategiemethode zur Erforschung des eingeschränkt rationalen Verhaltens im Rahmen eines Oligopolexperiments. In Sauermann, H. (Ed.), Beiträge zur experimentellen Wirtschaftsforschung. Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr.Google Scholar
Sen, A. (1997). Maximization and the act of choice. Econometrica, 65(4), 745–780.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sutter, M. (2007, forthcoming). Deception through telling the truth?! Experimental evidence from individuals and teams. Economic Journal.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vanberg, C. (2008, forthcoming). Why do people keep their promises? An experimental test of two explanations. Econometrica. http://www.econometricsociety.org/asp/pdfstreamer.asp?ref=298.Google Scholar
Wang, J. T. Y., Spezio, M., & Camerer, C. F. (2008). Pinocchio's pupil: using eyetracking and pupil dilation to understand truth-telling and deception in sender-receiver games. Mimeo. National Taiwan University and Caltech.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Hurkens and Kartik supplementary material

Appendix 1
Download Hurkens and Kartik supplementary material(File)
File 144 KB
Supplementary material: File

Hurkens and Kartik supplementary material

Appendix 2
Download Hurkens and Kartik supplementary material(File)
File 59.4 KB
Supplementary material: File

Hurkens and Kartik supplementary material

Appendix 3
Download Hurkens and Kartik supplementary material(File)
File 306.2 KB