Are People Willing to Tell Pareto White Lies? A Review and New Experimental Evidence

Abstract

We explore whether individuals are averse to telling a Pareto white lie—a lie that benefits both themselves and another. We first review and summarize the existing evidence on Pareto white lies. We find that the evidence is relatively limited and varied in its conclusions. We then present new experimental results obtained using a coin-tossing experiment. Results are provided for both the UK and China. We find evidence of willingness to tell a partial lie (i.e., inflating reports slightly) and high levels of aversion to telling a Pareto white lie that would maximize payoffs. We also find no significant difference between willingness to tell a Pareto white lie and a selfish black lie—a lie that harms another. We find marginal evidence of more lying in China than the UK, but the overall results in the UK and China are very similar.

Truth-telling with a smartphone: The effect of communication media in strategic interactions

“…The evidence that individuals are more willing to tell a Pareto lie than a selfish lie is, however, mixed (Cartwright et al, 2020). This mixed evidence may reflect the subtle relationship between lie aversion and social preferences (Sanchez-Pages and Vorsatz, 2009;Cappelen et al, 2013;Okeke and Godlonton, 2014;Biziouvan Pol et al, 2015;Li et al, 2022).…”

“…Moreover, we have seen that the effect of communication media may differ for a Pareto and selfish lie. We, therefore, use a simple extension to the standard coin-flipping task that allows us to study dishonesty in a setting with direct payoff inter-dependence (see also Biziou-van Pol et al, 2015;Hermann and Ostermaier, 2018;Thielmann and Hilbig, 2019;Cartwright et al, 2020).…”

Reputation and prosocial lies in development

“…Adults engage in lying for a variety of reasons, ranging from maximizing self‐benefits to protecting others (Bucciol & Piovesan, 2011; Kaplar & Gordan, 2004). Some lies are even driven by more than one motive (Erat & Gneezy, 2012; Gino et al., 2013), as in Pareto lies that benefit both the lie‐teller and the lie recipient (e.g., a sportsperson may use illegal drugs to improve their own performance as well as to help their team win the competition; Cartwright et al., 2020; Kim & Kim, 2021). The question is, how do we reach this level of complexity in our attempt to conceal the truth?…”

Supervise me if you can. Relational feelings, incentive pays and supervisory violations

“…2 That supervisors could lie about the performances of the agents they supervise is a rather standard assumption in the literature to which this paper relates (from Tirole 1986, to Saygili andKucucksenel 2019). It is true that experiments have shown that lie aversion can be rather strong (see Cartwright et al 2021). Yet, Cartwright et al (2021) also point out that the evidence on lie aversion is yet to be conclusive, yielding very different predictions depending on the type of lie (white, black, altruistic, selfish and so on) and the type of experimental design.…”

“…It is true that experiments have shown that lie aversion can be rather strong (see Cartwright et al 2021). Yet, Cartwright et al (2021) also point out that the evidence on lie aversion is yet to be conclusive, yielding very different predictions depending on the type of lie (white, black, altruistic, selfish and so on) and the type of experimental design. In addition, even if almost a half of the experimental subjects surveyed by Cartwright et al (2021) were reluctant to tell even a Pareto white lie (i.e., a lie improving the wellbeing of all the agents involved), the share of individuals having no problem in telling lies range from 80 to 40% depending on the type of the latter.…”