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

Author

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  • Besancenot, Damien

    (Université de Paris Descartes)

  • Vranceanu, Radu

    (ESSEC Research Center, ESSEC Business School)

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

Suggested Citation

  • Besancenot, Damien & Vranceanu, Radu, 2020. "Profession and deception: Experimental evidence on lying behavior among business and medical students," ESSEC Working Papers WP2006, ESSEC Research Center, ESSEC Business School.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebg:essewp:dr-20006
    Note: This is the preprint version of the paper published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2020, with DOI.ORG/10.1016/j.jebo.2020.08.47
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    2. Bernabe, Angelique & Hossain, Tanjim & Yu, Haomiao, 2021. "Truth, Honesty, and Strategic Interactions," MPRA Paper 109968, University Library of Munich, Germany.

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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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