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Who never tells a lie?

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  • Vanberg, Christoph

Abstract

Erat and Gneezy (2012) conduct an experiment to test whether people avoid lying in a situation where doing so would lead to a Pareto improvement. They conclude that many people exhibit such a "pure lie aversion." I argue that the experiment does not provide a reliable test for such an aversion, and that the evidence does not support the authors' conclusion. I conduct two new experiments which are explicitly designed to test for a 'pure' aversion to lying, and find no evidence for the existence of such a motivation. I discuss the implications of the findings for moral behavior and rule following more generally.

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  • Vanberg, Christoph, 2015. "Who never tells a lie?," Working Papers 0581, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:awi:wpaper:0581
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Rosaz, Julie & Villeval, Marie Claire, 2012. "Lies and biased evaluation: A real-effort experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 84(2), pages 537-549.
    2. Urs Fischbacher & Franziska Föllmi-Heusi, 2013. "Lies In Disguise—An Experimental Study On Cheating," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 525-547, June.
    3. Ben Greiner, 2015. "Subject pool recruitment procedures: organizing experiments with ORSEE," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 1(1), pages 114-125, July.
    4. Jingnan (Cecilia) Chen & Daniel Houser, 2013. "Promises and Lies: An Experiment on Detecting Deception," Working Papers 1038, George Mason University, Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science, revised Feb 2013.
    5. Sanjiv Erat & Uri Gneezy, 2012. "White Lies," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(4), pages 723-733, April.
    6. Uri Gneezy, 2005. "Deception: The Role of Consequences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 384-394, March.
    7. Cappelen, Alexander W. & Sørensen, Erik Ø. & Tungodden, Bertil, 2013. "When do we lie?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 258-265.
    8. Greiner, Ben, 2004. "An Online Recruitment System for Economic Experiments," MPRA Paper 13513, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Matthias Sutter, 2009. "Deception Through Telling the Truth?! Experimental Evidence From Individuals and Teams," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(534), pages 47-60, January.
    10. Dreber, Anna & Johannesson, Magnus, 2008. "Gender differences in deception," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 99(1), pages 197-199, April.
    11. Gneezy, Uri & Rockenbach, Bettina & Serra-Garcia, Marta, 2013. "Measuring lying aversion," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 293-300.
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Cao, Qian & Li, Jianbiao & Niu, Xiaofei, 2022. "White lies in tournaments," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    2. Martin Brown & Jan Schmitz & Christian Zehnder, 2023. "Communication and Hidden Action: A Credit Market Experiment," Working Papers 23.02, Swiss National Bank, Study Center Gerzensee.
    3. Drouvelis, Michalis & Pearce, Graeme, 2023. "Is there a link between intelligence and lying?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 206(C), pages 182-203.
    4. Tobias Beck, 2020. "Lying and Mistrust in the Continuous Deception Game," MAGKS Papers on Economics 202030, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    5. Valeria Maggian & Marie Claire Villeval, 2016. "Social preferences and lying aversion in children," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(3), pages 663-685, September.
    6. Edward Cartwright & Lian Xue & Charlotte Brown, 2020. "Are People Willing to Tell Pareto White Lies? A Review and New Experimental Evidence," Games, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-23, December.
    7. Martin Brown & Jan Schmitz & Christian Zehnder, 2018. "Communication, Credit Provision and Loan Repayment: Evidence from a Person-to-Person Lending Experiment," Working Papers on Finance 1819, University of St. Gallen, School of Finance, revised Aug 2020.
    8. Bilen, Eren & Matros, Alexander, 2021. "Online cheating amid COVID-19," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 182(C), pages 196-211.
    9. Vera Angelova & Tobias Regner, 2016. "Can a Bonus Overcome Moral Hazard? An Experiment on Voluntary Payments, Competition, and Reputation in Markets for Expert Services," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2016-027, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany.
    10. Vecchi, Martina, 2022. "Groups and socially responsible production: An experiment with farmers," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 196(C), pages 372-392.
    11. Angelova, Vera & Regner, Tobias, 2018. "Can a bonus overcome moral hazard? Experimental evidence from markets for expert services," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 362-378.
    12. Gary Charness & Celia Blanco-Jimenez & Lara Ezquerra & Ismael Rodriguez-Lara, 2019. "Cheating, incentives, and money manipulation," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 22(1), pages 155-177, March.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Lying; Deception; Morality; Ethics; Experiments;
    All these keywords.

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