Eliciting preferences for truth-telling in a survey of politicians

Abstract

Honesty is one of the most valued traits in politicians. Yet, because lies often remain undiscovered, it is difficult to study if some politicians are more honest than others. This paper examines which individual characteristics are correlated with truth-telling in a controlled setting in a large sample of politicians. We designed and embedded a game that incentivizes lying with a nonmonetary method in a survey answered by 816 Spanish mayors. Mayors were first asked how interested they were in obtaining a detailed report about the survey results, and at the end of the survey, they had to flip a coin to find out whether they would be sent the report. Because the probability of heads is known, we can estimate the proportion of mayors who lied to obtain the report. We find that a large and statistically significant proportion of mayors lied. Mayors that are members of the two major political parties lied significantly more. We further find that women and men were equally likely to lie. Finally, we find a negative relationship between truth-telling and reelection in the next municipal elections, which suggests that dishonesty might help politicians survive in office.

Primary elections and electoral outcomes: evidence from the Spanish Socialist Party

“…Thus, it is plausible to think that the PSOE candidate running for mayor in places where the mayor is chosen via primary elections by its militants is more leftist than PSOE candidates in places where candidates are chosen by the local committee of the political party. We find evidence that supports this claim using data from a survey conducted to over a thousand mayors in Spain (Janezic and Gallego 2020). The majors were asked about their spending preferences.…”

Deception Detection in Politics: Can Voters Tell When Politicians are Lying?

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(Dis)honesty and the value of transparency for campaign promises

“…Lying costs appear strong and widespread around the globe (Gächter and Schulz, 2016;Cohn et al, 2019). Janezic and Gallego (2020) study the preferences for truthtelling of Spanish mayors. They find extensive variation in preferences for truth-telling among these politicians.…”