IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jeborg/v93y2013icp305-313.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The royal lie

Author

Listed:
  • Hoffmann, Mareike
  • Lauer, Thomas
  • Rockenbach, Bettina

Abstract

According to the Greek philosopher Plato “[…] if anyone at all is to have the privilege of lying the rulers of the State […] may be allowed to lie for the public good” (The Royal Lie). To investigate whether The Royal Lie may foster cooperation in public goods provision we experimentally study centralized manipulations of contribution feedback. We find that a uniform feedback exaggeration does not increase cooperation and is disapproved once it is disclosed. An individual exaggeration, however, that gives nobody the feeling of being a sucker sustains cooperation on a high level.

Suggested Citation

  • Hoffmann, Mareike & Lauer, Thomas & Rockenbach, Bettina, 2013. "The royal lie," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 305-313.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:93:y:2013:i:c:p:305-313
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2013.03.020
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268113000656
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jebo.2013.03.020?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rachel T. A. Croson, 2007. "Theories Of Commitment, Altruism And Reciprocity: Evidence From Linear Public Goods Games," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 45(2), pages 199-216, April.
    2. Marta Serra-Garcia & Eric van Damme & Jan Potters, 2013. "Lying About What You Know Or About What You Do?," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11(5), pages 1204-1229, October.
    3. Sanchez-Pages, Santiago & Vorsatz, Marc, 2007. "An experimental study of truth-telling in a sender-receiver game," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 86-112, October.
    4. Fischbacher, Urs & Gachter, Simon & Fehr, Ernst, 2001. "Are people conditionally cooperative? Evidence from a public goods experiment," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 397-404, June.
    5. Serra-Garcia, Marta & van Damme, Eric & Potters, Jan, 2011. "Hiding an inconvenient truth: Lies and vagueness," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 244-261, September.
    6. Urs Fischbacher & Simon Gachter, 2010. "Social Preferences, Beliefs, and the Dynamics of Free Riding in Public Goods Experiments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 541-556, March.
    7. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    8. 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.
    9. Vincent P. Crawford, 2003. "Lying for Strategic Advantage: Rational and Boundedly Rational Misrepresentation of Intentions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 133-149, March.
    10. Brennan, Geoffrey & González, Luis G. & Güth, Werner & Levati, M. Vittoria, 2008. "Attitudes toward private and collective risk in individual and strategic choice situations," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 253-262, July.
    11. Croson, Rachel & Boles, Terry & Murnighan, J. Keith, 2003. "Cheap talk in bargaining experiments: lying and threats in ultimatum games," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 143-159, June.
    12. Irlenbusch, Bernd & Ter Meer, Janna, 2013. "Fooling the Nice Guys: Explaining receiver credulity in a public good game with lying and punishment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 321-327.
    13. Uri Gneezy, 2005. "Deception: The Role of Consequences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 384-394, March.
    14. Au, Wing Tung & Chen, Xiao-Ping & Komorita, S. S., 1998. "A Probabilistic Model of Criticality in a Sequential Public Good Dilemma," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 75(3), pages 274-293, September.
    15. Ananish Chaudhuri, 2011. "Sustaining cooperation in laboratory public goods experiments: a selective survey of the literature," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 14(1), pages 47-83, March.
    16. Jordi Brandts & Gary Charness, 2003. "Truth or Consequences: An Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 49(1), pages 116-130, January.
    17. Ackert, Lucy F. & Church, Bryan K. & Kuang, Xi (Jason) & Qi, Li, 2011. "Lying: An Experimental Investigation of the Role of Situational Factors," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 21(4), pages 605-632, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. 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.
    2. Bernd Irlenbusch & Rainer Michael Rilke & Gari Walkowitz, 2019. "Designing feedback in voluntary contribution games: the role of transparency," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 22(2), pages 552-576, June.
    3. Bettina Rockenbach & Irenaeus Wolff, 2016. "Designing Institutions for Social Dilemmas," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 17(3), pages 316-336, August.
    4. Sarah Mörtenhuber & Andreas Nicklisch & Kai-Uwe Schnapp, 2016. "What Goes Around, Comes Around: Experimental Evidence on Exposed Lies," Games, MDPI, vol. 7(4), pages 1-14, October.
    5. Bernd Irlenbusch & Rainer Michael Rilke, 2013. "(Public) Good Examples - On the Role of Limited Feedback in Voluntary Contribution Games," Cologne Graduate School Working Paper Series 04-04, Cologne Graduate School in Management, Economics and Social Sciences.
    6. Bernd Irlenbusch & Janna Ter Meer, 2015. "Lying in public good games with and without punishment," Cologne Graduate School Working Paper Series 06-02, Cologne Graduate School in Management, Economics and Social Sciences.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bernd Irlenbusch & Janna Ter Meer, 2015. "Lying in public good games with and without punishment," Cologne Graduate School Working Paper Series 06-02, Cologne Graduate School in Management, Economics and Social Sciences.
    2. Bernd Irlenbusch & Janna Ter Meer, 2012. "Fooling the Nice Guys: The effect of lying about contributions on public good provision and punishment," Cologne Graduate School Working Paper Series 03-11, Cologne Graduate School in Management, Economics and Social Sciences.
    3. Sarah Mörtenhuber & Andreas Nicklisch & Kai-Uwe Schnapp, 2016. "What Goes Around, Comes Around: Experimental Evidence on Exposed Lies," Games, MDPI, vol. 7(4), pages 1-14, October.
    4. Serra Garcia, M. & van Damme, E.E.C. & Potters, J.J.M., 2010. "Which Words Bond? An Experiment on Signaling in a Public Good Game (replaced by TILEC DP 2011-055)," Other publications TiSEM 5ed24dc3-e6cf-4fa4-bace-2, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    5. Serra Garcia, M. & van Damme, E.E.C. & Potters, J.J.M., 2011. "Lying About What you Know or About What you Do? (replaces CentER DP 2010-033)," Discussion Paper 2011-139, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    6. Khalmetski, Kiryl & Rockenbach, Bettina & Werner, Peter, 2017. "Evasive lying in strategic communication," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 59-72.
    7. Lang, Matthias & Schudy, Simeon, 2023. "(Dis)honesty and the value of transparency for campaign promises," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    8. Gerald Eisenkopf & Ruslan Gurtoviy & Verena Utikal, 2011. "Size matters - when it comes to lies," IAAEG Discussion Papers until 2011 20110517, Institute of Labour Law and Industrial Relations in the European Union (IAAEU).
    9. Barron, Kai & Nurminen, Tuomas, 2020. "Nudging cooperation in public goods provision," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 88, pages 1-1.
    10. Xiao, Erte, 2013. "Profit-seeking punishment corrupts norm obedience," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 321-344.
    11. Barron, Kai & Nurminen, Tuomas, 2018. "Nudging cooperation," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Economics of Change SP II 2018-305, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    12. Serra Garcia, M. & van Damme, E.E.C. & Potters, J.J.M., 2011. "Lying About What you Know or About What you do? (replaces TILEC DP 2010-016)," Other publications TiSEM 09940b68-7bfa-44a7-bc4e-b, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    13. López-Pérez, Raúl, 2012. "The power of words: A model of honesty and fairness," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 642-658.
    14. Reuben, Ernesto & Stephenson, Matthew, 2012. "Nobody Likes a Rat: On the Willingness and Consequences of Reporting Lies," IZA Discussion Papers 6998, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Dwenger, Nadja & Lohse, Tim, 2019. "Do individuals successfully cover up their lies? Evidence from a compliance experiment," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 74-87.
    16. Boosey, Luke A., 2017. "Conditional cooperation in network public goods experiments," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 108-116.
    17. Radu, Vranceanu & Delphine, Dubart, 2019. "Experimental evidence on deceitful communication: does everyone have a price ?," ESSEC Working Papers WP1806, ESSEC Research Center, ESSEC Business School.
    18. Martin G. Kocher & Peter Martinsson & Kristian Ove R. Myrseth & Conny E. Wollbrant, 2017. "Strong, bold, and kind: self-control and cooperation in social dilemmas," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 20(1), pages 44-69, March.
    19. Kreitmair, Ursula & Bower-Bir, Jacob, 2021. "Too different to solve climate change? Experimental evidence on the effects of production and benefit heterogeneity on collective action," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    20. Hartig, Björn & Irlenbusch, Bernd & Kölle, Felix, 2015. "Conditioning on what? Heterogeneous contributions and conditional cooperation," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 48-64.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Public goods provision; Feedback manipulation; Lying; Experiment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
    • D02 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Institutions: Design, Formation, Operations, and Impact
    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:93:y:2013:i:c:p:305-313. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jebo .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.