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Do Liars Believe? Beliefs and Other-Regarding Preferences in Sender-Receiver Games

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Author Info

  • Roman M. Sheremeta

    (Argyros School of Business and Economics, Chapman University)

  • Timothy Shields

    () (Argyros School of Business and Economics, Chapman University)

Abstract

We examine subjects' behavior in sender-receiver games where there are gains from trade and alignment of interests in one of the two states. We elicit subjects' beliefs, risk and other-regarding preferences. Our design also allows us to examine the behavior of subjects in both roles, to determine whether the behavior in one role is the best response to the subject's own behavior in the other role. The results of the experiment indicate that 60 percent of senders adopt deceptive strategies by sending favorable message when the true state of the nature is unfavorable. Nevertheless, 67 percent of receivers invest conditional upon a favorable message. The investing behavior of receivers cannot be explained by risk preferences or as a best response to subject's own behavior in the sender's role. However, it can be rationalized by accounting for elicited beliefs and other-regarding preferences. Finally, the honest behavior of some senders can be explained by other-regarding preferences. Thus we find liars do believe, and individuals who care about the payoffs of others tend to be honest.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Chapman University, Economic Science Institute in its series Working Papers with number 12-05.

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Length: 30 pages
Date of creation: 2012
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:chu:wpaper:12-05

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Related research

Keywords: experiment; strategic communication; beliefs; lying; deception; other-regarding preferences;

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  1. Dirk Engelmann & Martin Strobel, 2004. "Inequality Aversion, Efficiency, and Maximin Preferences in Simple Distribution Experiments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(4), pages 857-869, September.
  2. Charness, Gary B & Rabin, Matthew, 2001. "Understanding Social Preferences With Simple Tests," University of California at Santa Barbara, Economics Working Paper Series qt0dc3k4m5, Department of Economics, UC Santa Barbara.
  3. Mariana Blanco & Dirk Engelmann & Alexander Koch & Hans-Theo Normann, 2010. "Belief elicitation in experiments: is there a hedging problem?," Experimental Economics, Springer, vol. 13(4), pages 412-438, December.
  4. Balafoutas, Loukas & Kerschbamer, Rudolf & Sutter, Matthias, 2012. "Distributional preferences and competitive behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 125-135.
  5. Santiago Sanchez-Pages & Marc Vorsatz, 2004. "An Experimental Study of Truth-Telling in a Sender-Receiver Game," ESE Discussion Papers 128, Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh.
  6. Cai, Hongbin & Wang, Joseph Tao-Yi, 2006. "Overcommunication in strategic information transmission games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 7-36, July.
  7. Bjorn Bartling & Ernst Fehr & Michel Andre Marechal & Daniel Schunk, 2009. "Egalitarianism and Competitiveness," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(2), pages 93-98, May.
  8. Kartik, Navin & Ottaviani, Marco & Squintani, Francesco, 2007. "Credulity, lies, and costly talk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 134(1), pages 93-116, May.
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Cited by:
  1. Curtis R. Price & Roman M. Sheremeta, 2012. "Endowment Origin, Demographic Effects and Individual Preferences in Contests," Working Papers 12-07, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
  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.

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