Let’s be honest: A review of experimental evidence of honesty and truth-telling

Rosenbaum, Stephen Mark; Billinger, Stephan; Stieglitz, Nils

doi:10.1016/j.joep.2014.10.002

Cited by 230 publications

(175 citation statements)

References 96 publications

(173 reference statements)

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“…Our results show that subjects' gender matters for honesty, i.e., we confirm previous findings of gender differences (Rosenbaum et al 2014). Interestingly, we report a novel result: individual SVO plays an important role for the decision to behave honestly.…”

supporting

confidence: 90%

“…In an excellent survey, Rosenbaum et al (2014) emphasize that despite honesty is not a fixed trait, most of the studies report that women cheat less than men. 1 This is shown in the lab (e.g., Erat and Gneezy, 2012;Houser et al, 2012;Conrads et al, 2014;Kocher et al, 2016) 2 and in the field (Azar et al, 2013;Bucciol et al, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to Rosenbaum et al (2014), "[..] it seems that the experimental agenda regarding honesty could greatly benefit from having a more precise understanding of underlying individual-level motives and how they aggregate to prosocial norms, which would provide a better understanding of how dishonest behavior may be impeded " (p.194). Many experiments on dishonest behavior analyze settings where cheating has an externality on another person (e.g., Sutter 2009;Gneezy et al 2013;Cappelen et al 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The paper aims at better understanding the determinants of dishonest behavior and the common gender effect observed in cheating games (Rosenbaum et al 2014). In the beginning of the experiment we measure SVO in a task where subjects have to choose a money allocation between them and a matched partner.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Gender differences in honesty: The role of social value orientation

Grosch

Rau

2017

Journal of Economic Psychology

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may University of Mannheim, University of Göttingen March 2017Abstract This paper experimentally analyzes the determinants of the honesty norm in a lying game. The findings confirm common gender differences, i.e., men cheat significantly more than women. We detect a novel correlation between subjects' magnitude of concern they have for others (social value orientation) and their moral valuation of the norm honesty. The data suggest that individualistic subjects are less honest than prosocial ones. Interestingly, this difference can explain the gender differences we observe. First, we find that the distribution of social value orientation differs between gender, i.e., significantly more male subjects are characterized as individualistic subjects. Second, once we control for social value orientation the gender differential disappears. JEL Classification numbers: C91, H26, J16.

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supporting

confidence: 90%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Gender differences in honesty: The role of social value orientation

Grosch

Rau

2017

Journal of Economic Psychology

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“…A growing number of laboratory studies have investigated how subjects decide when they have the incentive to be dishonest (see Rosenbaum et al 2014 for a survey on experiments on honesty and truth-telling). A central result in this literature is that humans are heterogeneous concerning lying behavior -some subjects are found to have intrinsic preferences not to lie, whereas others tend to lie when it is line with their material interest (Gneezy 2005, Sutter 2009, Gibson et al 2013, Gneezy et al 2013, Fischbacher and Föllmi-Heusi 2013, Kajackaite and Gneezy 2015.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Evasive lying in strategic communication

Khalmetski

Rockenbach

Werner

2017

Journal of Public Economics

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. 18 January 2017 Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may AbstractInformation asymmetries in economic transactions are omnipresent and a regular source of fraudulent behavior. In a theoretical and an experimental analysis of a sender-receiver game we investigate whether sanctions for lying induce more truthtelling. The novel aspect in our model is that senders may not only choose between truth-telling and (explicit) lying, but may also engage in evasive lying by credibly pretending not to know. While we find that sanctions promote truth-telling when senders cannot engage in evasive lying, this is no longer true when evasive lying is possible. Then, explicit lying is largely substituted by evasive lying, which completely eliminates the otherwise positive effect of sanctions on the rate of truthtelling. As outlined in our model, the necessary prerequisite for such an 'erosion' effect is that evasive lying is perceived as sufficiently less psychologically costly than direct lying. Our results clearly demonstrate the limitations of sanctioning lying to counteract the exploitation of informational asymmetries and may explain the empirical evidence from the finance industry that sanctions for financial misconduct eventually appear to be not very efficient.

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Is the victim Max (Planck) or Moritz? How victim type and social value orientation affect dishonest behavior

Soraperra

Weisel

Ploner

2018

Behavioral Decision Making

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Does the potential victim of dishonest behavior—a family or a bank, a pensioner or an insurance firm—affect the propensity to engage in such behavior? We investigate the effect of victim type—an individual person or an impersonal institution—on dishonest behavior and test whether it interacts with potential perpetrators' social value orientation (prosocial or proself). In a between‐subjects design, we allowed experimental participants (N = 368) to misreport private information in order to increase (decrease) their profit (loss) at the expense of either another participant or the experimenter's budget. Both prosocials and proselfs engaged in dishonesty, but proselfs did so much more. Furthermore, prosocials reduced their dishonesty when the victim was another person, rather than an institution, but proselfs did not. A direct implication is that the dishonesty of prosocials may be curbed by increasing the salience of the adverse effect their dishonesty has on other individual people but that such interventions will not be effective for proselfs. In contrast with recent results, we did not find a general effect of increased dishonesty under a loss (vs. gain) frame.

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Let’s be honest: A review of experimental evidence of honesty and truth-telling

Cited by 230 publications

References 96 publications

Gender differences in honesty: The role of social value orientation

Gender differences in honesty: The role of social value orientation

Evasive lying in strategic communication

Is the victim Max (Planck) or Moritz? How victim type and social value orientation affect dishonest behavior

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