IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0073223.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Decision Makers Use Norms, Not Cost-Benefit Analysis, When Choosing to Conceal or Reveal Unfair Rewards

Author

Listed:
  • Marco Heimann
  • Vittorio Girotto
  • Paolo Legrenzi
  • Jean-François Bonnefon

Abstract

We introduce the Conceal or Reveal Dilemma, in which individuals receive unfair benefits, and must decide whether to conceal or to reveal this unfair advantage. This dilemma has two important characteristics: it does not lend itself easily to cost-benefit analysis, neither to the application of any strong universal norm. As a consequence, it is ideally suited to the study of interindividual and intercultural variations in moral-economic norms. In this paper we focus on interindividual variations, and we report four studies showing that individuals cannot be swayed by financial incentives to conceal or to reveal, and follow instead fixed, idiosyncratic strategies. We discuss how this result can be extended to individual and cultural variations in the tendency to display or to hide unfair rewards.

Suggested Citation

  • Marco Heimann & Vittorio Girotto & Paolo Legrenzi & Jean-François Bonnefon, 2013. "Decision Makers Use Norms, Not Cost-Benefit Analysis, When Choosing to Conceal or Reveal Unfair Rewards," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(9), pages 1-6, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0073223
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0073223
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0073223
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0073223&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0073223?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Uri Gneezy, 2005. "Deception: The Role of Consequences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 384-394, March.
    2. Axelrod, Robert, 1986. "An Evolutionary Approach to Norms," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 80(4), pages 1095-1111, December.
    3. Lundquist, Tobias & Ellingsen, Tore & Gribbe, Erik & Johannesson, Magnus, 2009. "The aversion to lying," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 70(1-2), pages 81-92, May.
    4. Matthew Rabin, 1998. "Psychology and Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 36(1), pages 11-46, March.
    5. Ritov, Ilana & Baron, Jonathan, 1999. "Protected Values and Omission Bias," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 79(2), pages 79-94, August.
    6. Sarah F. Brosnan & Frans B. M. de Waal, 2003. "Monkeys reject unequal pay," Nature, Nature, vol. 425(6955), pages 297-299, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Lisa M. Scheele & Ulrich W. Thonemann & Marco Slikker, 2018. "Designing Incentive Systems for Truthful Forecast Information Sharing Within a Firm," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(8), pages 3690-3713, August.
    2. Jacquemet, N. & Luchini, S. & Malézieux, A. & Shogren, J.F., 2020. "Who’ll stop lying under oath? Empirical evidence from tax evasion games," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    3. Johannesson Magnus & Östling Robert & Ranehill Eva, 2010. "The Effect of Competition on Physical Activity: A Randomized Trial," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-31, September.
    4. Raúl López-Pérez & Eli Spiegelman, 2013. "Why do people tell the truth? Experimental evidence for pure lie aversion," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 16(3), pages 233-247, September.
    5. Shalvi, Shaul & Dana, Jason & Handgraaf, Michel J.J. & De Dreu, Carsten K.W., 2011. "Justified ethicality: Observing desired counterfactuals modifies ethical perceptions and behavior," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 115(2), pages 181-190, July.
    6. Patricia Funk, 2012. "How accurate are surveyed preferences for public policies? Evidence from a unique institutional setup," Economics Working Papers 1334, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Nov 2013.
    7. 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.
    8. Gerald Eisenkopf & Ruslan Gurtoviy & Verena Utikal, 2017. "Punishment Motives for Small and Big Lies," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(2), pages 484-498, June.
    9. Dufwenberg, Martin & Feldman, Paul & Servátka, Maroš & Tarrasó, Jorge & Vadovič, Radovan, 2023. "Honesty in the city," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 15-25.
      • Dufwenberg, Martin & Servátka, Maroš & Tarrasó, Jorge & Vadovič, Radovan, 2021. "Honesty in the City," MPRA Paper 106256, University Library of Munich, Germany.
      • Martin Dufwenberg & Paul Feldman & Maros Servatka & Jorge Tarraso & Radovan Vadovic, 2022. "Honesty in the City," Working Papers 2022-03, University of Alaska Anchorage, Department of Economics.
      • Dufwenberg, Martin & Feldman, Paul & Servátka, Maroš & Tarrasó, Jorge & Vadovič, Radovan, 2022. "Honesty in the city," MPRA Paper 115044, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Adrian de Groot Ruiz & Theo Offerman & Sander Onderstal, 2011. "An Experimental Study of Credible Deviations and ACDC," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 11-153/1, Tinbergen Institute.
    11. 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.
    12. Alm, James & Bruner, David M. & McKee, Michael, 2016. "Honesty or dishonesty of taxpayer communications in an enforcement regime," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 85-96.
    13. David J. Cooper & Jordi Brandts, 2020. "Managerial Leadership, Truth-Telling, and Efficient Coordination," Working Papers 1211, Barcelona School of Economics.
    14. 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.
    15. Olsson, Ola, 2000. "A Microeconomic Analysis of Institutions," Working Papers in Economics 25, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    16. Nicolas Jacquemet & Stéphane Luchini & Jason F. Shogren & Adam Zylbersztejn, 2018. "Coordination with communication under oath," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 21(3), pages 627-649, September.
    17. Khalmetski, Kiryl, 2019. "Evasion of guilt in expert advice," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 296-310.
    18. Lohse, Tim & Simon, Sven A. & Konrad, Kai A., 2018. "Deception under time pressure: Conscious decision or a problem of awareness?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 31-42.
    19. repec:cgr:cgsser:03-11 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Garbarino, Ellen & Slonim, Robert & Villeval, Marie Claire, 2019. "Loss aversion and lying behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 379-393.
    21. Irlenbusch, Bernd & Mussweiler, Thomas & Saxler, David J. & Shalvi, Shaul & Weiss, Alexa, 2020. "Similarity increases collaborative cheating," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 148-173.

    More about this item

    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:plo:pone00:0073223. 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: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    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.