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Do I care if others lie? Current and future effects when lies can be delegated

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  • Kandul, Serhiy
  • Kirchkamp, Oliver

Abstract

In this study we want to find out how people behave in a situation where they can themselves lie or they can share the responsibility for lying with others. To answer this question we study a sender-receiver game followed by a dictator game. It is possible to delegate the act of lying in the sender-receiver game and take pro-social actions in the subsequent dictator game. We examine how delegation affects the outcomes of current and future ethical decisions. We find that a non-trivial fraction of participants delegate their decision and delegation is associated with higher transfers in the subsequent dictator game.

Suggested Citation

  • Kandul, Serhiy & Kirchkamp, Oliver, 2018. "Do I care if others lie? Current and future effects when lies can be delegated," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 70-78.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:soceco:v:74:y:2018:i:c:p:70-78
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2018.03.006
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    Cited by:

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Sender-receiver games; Delegation; Moral balancing; Guilt aversion; Experiments;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

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