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Who never tells a lie?

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  • Vanberg, Christoph

Abstract

Erat and Gneezy (2012) conduct an experiment to test whether people avoid lying in a situation where doing so would lead to a Pareto improvement. They conclude that many people exhibit such a "pure lie aversion." I argue that the experiment does not provide a reliable test for such an aversion, and that the evidence does not support the authors' conclusion. I conduct two new experiments which are explicitly designed to test for a 'pure' aversion to lying, and find no evidence for the existence of such a motivation. I discuss the implications of the findings for moral behavior and rule following more generally.

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  • Vanberg, Christoph, 2015. "Who never tells a lie?," Working Papers 0581, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:awi:wpaper:0581
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Urs Fischbacher & Franziska Föllmi-Heusi, 2013. "Lies In Disguise—An Experimental Study On Cheating," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 525-547, June.
    2. Ben Greiner, 2015. "Subject pool recruitment procedures: organizing experiments with ORSEE," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 1(1), pages 114-125, July.
    3. Sanjiv Erat & Uri Gneezy, 2012. "White Lies," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(4), pages 723-733, April.
    4. Uri Gneezy, 2005. "Deception: The Role of Consequences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 384-394, March.
    5. Rosaz, Julie & Villeval, Marie Claire, 2012. "Lies and biased evaluation: A real-effort experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 84(2), pages 537-549.
    6. Matthias Sutter, 2009. "Deception Through Telling the Truth?! Experimental Evidence From Individuals and Teams," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(534), pages 47-60, January.
    7. Dreber, Anna & Johannesson, Magnus, 2008. "Gender differences in deception," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 99(1), pages 197-199, April.
    8. Jingnan (Cecilia) Chen & Daniel Houser, 2013. "Promises and Lies: An Experiment on Detecting Deception," Working Papers 1038, George Mason University, Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science, revised Feb 2013.
    9. Cappelen, Alexander W. & Sørensen, Erik Ø. & Tungodden, Bertil, 2013. "When do we lie?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 258-265.
    10. Greiner, Ben, 2004. "An Online Recruitment System for Economic Experiments," MPRA Paper 13513, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Gneezy, Uri & Rockenbach, Bettina & Serra-Garcia, Marta, 2013. "Measuring lying aversion," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 293-300.
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Brown, Martin & Schmitz, Jan & Zehnder, Christian, 2024. "Communication and hidden action: A credit market experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 218(C), pages 423-455.
    2. Bilen, Eren & Matros, Alexander, 2021. "Online cheating amid COVID-19," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 182(C), pages 196-211.
    3. Blazquiz-Pulido, Juan Francisco & Polonio, Luca & Bilancini, Ennio, 2024. "Who's the deceiver? Identifying deceptive intentions in communication," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 451-466.
    4. Angelova, Vera & Regner, Tobias, 2016. "Can a bonus overcome moral hazard? An experiment on voluntary payments, competition, and reputation in markets for expert services," SFB 649 Discussion Papers 2016-027, Humboldt University Berlin, Collaborative Research Center 649: Economic Risk.
    5. 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.
    6. Edward Cartwright & Lian Xue & Charlotte Brown, 2020. "Are People Willing to Tell Pareto White Lies? A Review and New Experimental Evidence," Games, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-23, December.
    7. Vecchi, Martina, 2022. "Groups and socially responsible production: An experiment with farmers," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 196(C), pages 372-392.
    8. repec:hum:wpaper:sfb649dp2016-027 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Angelova, Vera & Regner, Tobias, 2018. "Can a bonus overcome moral hazard? Experimental evidence from markets for expert services," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 362-378.
    10. Gary Charness & Celia Blanco-Jimenez & Lara Ezquerra & Ismael Rodriguez-Lara, 2019. "Cheating, incentives, and money manipulation," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 22(1), pages 155-177, March.
    11. Cao, Qian & Li, Jianbiao & Niu, Xiaofei, 2022. "White lies in tournaments," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    12. 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.
    13. Tobias Beck, 2020. "Lying and Mistrust in the Continuous Deception Game," MAGKS Papers on Economics 202030, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    14. Martin Brown & Jan Schmitz & Christian Zehnder, 2018. "Communication, Credit Provision and Loan Repayment: Evidence from a Person-to-Person Lending Experiment," Working Papers on Finance 1819, University of St. Gallen, School of Finance, revised Aug 2020.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Lying; Deception; Morality; Ethics; Experiments;
    All these keywords.

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