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Profession and deception: Experimental evidence on lying behavior among business and medical students

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  • Besancenot, Damien
  • Vranceanu, Radu

Abstract

This paper reports data from a sender-receiver experiment that compares lying behavior between two groups of students, one in business administration and the other in medicine. We use a modified version of the sender-receiver deception game introduced by Erat and Gneezy (2012) to collect data on 393 subjects. The results show that both groups of students respond to incentives as expected: the frequency of lying is higher, the higher the benefit for the sender, and the lower the loss for the receiver is. For given payoffs, there is little difference between the two groups in the domain of white lies; however, business students resort to selfish lies more frequently than do medical students. Furthermore, the analysis does not confirm differences in altruism between the two groups. A representative survey reveals a substantial degree of coherence between the beliefs of the general public of France and behavior observed in this lab experiment.

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  • Besancenot, Damien & Vranceanu, Radu, 2020. "Profession and deception: Experimental evidence on lying behavior among business and medical students," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 175-187.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:179:y:2020:i:c:p:175-187
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2020.08.047
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Lies; Deception; Communication; Medicine; Business administration; Survey data;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • I19 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Other

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