It's Not a Lie If You Believe It: Lying and Belief Distortion Under Norm-Uncertainty

Abstract

We explore the relationship between norm-uncertainty and lying. Lies are ubiquitous, and people often lie for their own benefit or for the benefit of others. Research in environments in which social norms are clearly defined and communicated finds that social norms influence personal decisions, even when they are not in our own self-interest. We deviate from this approach and study lying under norm uncertainty with scope for opportunistic interpretation of the norm. We introduce variation along three dimensions: salience of different types of norm-uncertainty (normative/empirical), the beneficiary of the lie (self/other), and ex-ante knowledge about the opportunity to tell a lie in order to tease out potential belief-distortion mechanisms. We also find compelling evidence that individuals engage in self-serving belief distortion to increase lying overall. However, we observe this only when uncertainty about what others do (empirical uncertainty), but not when uncertainty about what others approve of (normative uncertainty) is made salient. We also observe conditional liars, but only when the lie is self-serving rather than to the benefit of a third party. We discuss policy implications to improve the effectiveness of norm-based interventions.

Nudging with Care: The Risks and Benefits of Social Information

“…In another experiment, Bicchieri et al (2019b) we explore the relationship between norm-uncertainty and lying. Our goal was to understand how individuals use information (empirical or normative) to form beliefs about whether a norm applies and how belief formation is affected by the source of the uncertainty and awareness of the possibility of subsequent lying.…”

“…Publicizing any behavior, whether good or bad, may lead the receiver to conclude that the behavior is also approved of. In this case empirical information leads to parallel normative conclusions (Eriksson et al, 2015;Lindström et al, 2018;Bicchieri et al, 2019b). Conversely, when getting normative information about common approval of good behavior, one may not infer that most people behave in the appropriate way.…”

“…Distribution of normative (empirical) information inferred from being provided empirical (normative) information. Figure appeared originally inBicchieri et al (2019b) …”

Deviant or Wrong? The Effects of Norm Information on the Efficacy of Punishment

“…Our findings suggest that supporting the required behavior with normative information can serve such a purpose. In contrast, empirical information may not help and may even be abused for self-serving purposes (Bicchieri and Dimant, 2018). In effect, our results raise concerns about the combination of punishment and empirical information, which is part of the recent wave of social norm nudging (i.e., Hallsworth et al, 2017).…”

“…By signaling a norm violation, punishment increases the psychological cost of violation, thus enforcing compliance. However, when an enforced behavior is only supported by empirical information and noncompliance is perceived simply as a deviation from what others do, norms-signaling punishment may be weakened and even lead to transgression (see Schultz et al, 2007;Bicchieri and Dimant, 2018). Thus, we hypothesize that punishment is more effective when an enforced behavior is presented as the right course of action rather than what others do or would do.…”