IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0109591.html

Everybody Else Is Doing It: Exploring Social Transmission of Lying Behavior

Author

Listed:
  • Heather Mann
  • Ximena Garcia-Rada
  • Daniel Houser
  • Dan Ariely

Abstract

Lying is a common occurrence in social interactions, but what predicts whether an individual will tell a lie? While previous studies have focused on personality factors, here we asked whether lying tendencies might be transmitted through social networks. Using an international sample of 1,687 socially connected pairs, we investigated whether lying tendencies were related in socially connected individuals, and tested two moderators of observed relationships. Participants recruited through a massive open online course reported how likely they would be to engage in specific lies; a friend or relative responded to the same scenarios independently. We classified lies according to their beneficiary (antisocial vs. prosocial lies), and their directness (lies of commission vs. omission), resulting in four unique lying categories. Regression analyses showed that antisocial commission, antisocial omission, and prosocial commission lying tendencies were all uniquely related in connected pairs, even when the analyses were limited to pairs that were not biologically related. For antisocial lies of commission, these relationships were strongest, and were moderated by amount of time spent together. Randomly paired individuals from the same countries were also related in their antisocial commission lying tendencies, signifying country-level norms. Our results indicate that a person's lying tendencies can be predicted by the lying tendencies of his or her friends and family members.

Suggested Citation

  • Heather Mann & Ximena Garcia-Rada & Daniel Houser & Dan Ariely, 2014. "Everybody Else Is Doing It: Exploring Social Transmission of Lying Behavior," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(10), pages 1-9, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0109591
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0109591
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0109591
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0109591&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0109591?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. Simon Gaechter & Benedikt Herrmann & Christian Thoeni, 2010. "Culture and Cooperation," Discussion Papers 2010-09, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    2. Simon Gaechter & Benedikt Herrmann & Christian Thöni, 2010. "Culture and Cooperation," CESifo Working Paper Series 3070, CESifo.
      • Simon Gaechter & Benedikt Herrmann & Christian Thoeni, 2010. "Culture and Cooperation," Discussion Papers 2010-09, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
      • Simon Gaechter & Benedikt Herrmann & Christian Thoeni, 2010. "Culture and Cooperation," Discussion Papers 2010-09, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    3. Hessel Oosterbeek & Randolph Sloof & Gijs van de Kuilen, 2004. "Cultural Differences in Ultimatum Game Experiments: Evidence from a Meta-Analysis," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 7(2), pages 171-188, June.
    4. Baron, Jonathan & Ritov, Ilana, 1994. "Reference Points and Omission Bias," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 59(3), pages 475-498, September.
    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. Daniel Houser & John A. List & Marco Piovesan & Anya Savikhin Samek & Joachim Winter, 2015. "On the Origins of Dishonesty: From Parents to Children," NBER Working Papers 20897, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Gustavo Gouvêa Maciel, 2021. "What We (Don't) Know so Far About Tolerance Towards Corruption in European Democracies: Measurement Approaches, Determinants, and Types," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 157(3), pages 1131-1153, October.
    3. Carolin V. Zorell, 2020. "Nudges, Norms, or Just Contagion? A Theory on Influences on the Practice of (Non-)Sustainable Behavior," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(24), pages 1-21, December.
    4. Houser, Daniel & List, John A. & Piovesan, Marco & Samek, Anya & Winter, Joachim, 2016. "Dishonesty: From parents to children," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 242-254.
    5. Ariely, Dan & Garcia-Rada, Ximena & Gödker, Katrin & Hornuf, Lars & Mann, Heather, 2019. "The impact of two different economic systems on dishonesty," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 179-195.
    6. Susanne Braun & Lars Hornuf, 2015. "Leadership and persistency in spontaneuous dishonesty," IAAEU Discussion Papers 201510, Institute of Labour Law and Industrial Relations in the European Union (IAAEU).
    7. Irving Argaez Corona & Béatrice Boulu-Reshef & Jean-Christophe Vergnaud, 2024. "How close is close enough? When social closeness backfires on honesty [Jusqu’où peut aller la proximité sociale ? Quand la proximité sociale se retourne contre l’honnêteté]," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-05386224, HAL.
    8. Drouvelis, Michalis & Pearce, Graeme, 2023. "Is there a link between intelligence and lying?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 206(C), pages 182-203.

    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. Sun-Ki Chai & Dolgorsuren Dorj & Katerina Sherstyuk, 2018. "Cultural Values and Behavior in Dictator, Ultimatum, and Trust Games: An Experimental Study," Research in Experimental Economics, in: Experimental Economics and Culture, volume 20, pages 89-166, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    2. Buser, Thomas, 2012. "Digit ratios, the menstrual cycle and social preferences," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 457-470.
    3. Weber, Till O. & Schulz, Jonathan F. & Beranek, Benjamin & Lambarraa-Lehnhardt, Fatima & Gächter, Simon, 2023. "The behavioral mechanisms of voluntary cooperation across culturally diverse societies: Evidence from the US, the UK, Morocco, and Turkey," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 215(C), pages 134-152.
    4. Heike Hennig-Schmidt & Zhuyu Li & Gari Walkowitz, 2024. "Fairness Deliberations and Fair Allocations in Symmetric and Asymmetric Bargaining–An Experimental Study on Group Decisions in Germany and China," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 33(6), pages 1429-1469, December.
    5. Camerer, Colin F. & Ho, Teck-Hua, 2015. "Behavioral Game Theory Experiments and Modeling," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications,, Elsevier.
    6. van Hoorn, André, 2018. "The use of identity primes to explain behavioral differences between groups: A methodological note," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 146-150.
    7. Johnson, Noel D. & Mislin, Alexandra A., 2011. "Trust games: A meta-analysis," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 865-889.
    8. Ahern, Kenneth R. & Daminelli, Daniele & Fracassi, Cesare, 2015. "Lost in translation? The effect of cultural values on mergers around the world," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(1), pages 165-189.
    9. Heineck, Guido & Süssmuth, Bernd, 2013. "A different look at Lenin’s legacy: Social capital and risk taking in the Two Germanies," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 789-803.
    10. Christian Thöni, 2014. "Inequality aversion and antisocial punishment," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 76(4), pages 529-545, April.
    11. Andrea Bshary & Redouan Bshary, 2012. "Individual Differences in Foraging Strategies of Parasitic Sabre-Tooth Blennies," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(9), pages 1-9, September.
    12. Masters-Waage, Theodore C. & Nai, Jared & Reb, Jochen & Sim, Samantha & Narayanan, Jayanth & Tan, Noriko, 2021. "Going far together by being here now: Mindfulness increases cooperation in negotiations," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 189-205.
    13. Jana Freundt & Holger Herz, 2025. "A Cross-Country Study of Preferences for Choice Autonomy," CESifo Working Paper Series 12238, CESifo.
    14. Tore Ellingsen & Benedikt Herrmann & Martin A. Nowak & David G. Rand & Corina E. Tarnita, 2012. "Civic Capital in Two Cultures: The Nature of Cooperation in Romania and USA," CESifo Working Paper Series 4042, CESifo.
    15. Akay, Alpaslan & Karabulut, Gökhan & Martinsson, Peter, 2015. "Cooperation and punishment: The effect of religiosity and religious festival," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 43-46.
    16. Chen, Wei & Wang, Jianwei & Yu, Fengyuan & He, Jialu & Xu, Wenshu & Dai, Wenhui, 2024. "Successful initial positioning of non-cooperative individuals in cooperative populations effectively hinders cooperation prosperity," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 462(C).
    17. Volk, Stefan & Thöni, Christian & Ruigrok, Winfried, 2012. "Temporal stability and psychological foundations of cooperation preferences," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 664-676.
    18. Francesco Bogliacino & Laura Jim�nez & Gianluca Grimalda, 2015. "Consultative, Democracy and Trust," Documentos de Trabajo, Escuela de Economía 12696, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, FCE, CID.
    19. Dimant, Eugen, 2023. "Beyond average: A method for measuring the tightness, looseness, and polarization of social norms," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 233(C).
    20. Freya Harrison & Claire El Mouden, 2011. "Exploring the Effects of Working for Endowments on Behaviour in Standard Economic Games," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(11), pages 1-6, November.

    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:pone00:0109591. 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.