Truth Telling Under Oath

Abstract

Oath-taking for senior executives has been promoted as a mean to enhance honesty within and towards organizations. Herein we explore whether people who voluntarily sign a solemn truth-telling oath are more committed to sincere behavior when offered the chance to lie. We design an experiment to test how the oath affects truth-telling in two contexts: a neutral context replicating the typical experiment in the literature, and a "loaded" context in which we remind subjects that "a lie is a lie." We consider four payoff configurations, with differential monetary incentives to lie, implemented as within-subjects treatment variables. The results are reinforced by robustness investigations in which each subject made only one lying decision. Our results show that the oath reduces lying, especially in the loaded environment-falsehoods are reduced by fifty percent. The oath, however, have a weaker effect on lying in the neutral environment. The oath did affect decision times in all instances: the average person takes significantly more time deciding whether to lie under oath.

Do truth-telling oaths improve honesty in crowd-working?

“…(You will be allowed to continue with this survey regardless of your answer to this question) ”. In contrast with previous studies of the oath [e.g., 37 , 38 ] MTurkers were not asked to sign the oath due to the online implementation of the procedure. Rather, they were asked to simply click “ yes ” or “ no ”.…”

“…Using laboratory experiments, the oath has been shown to affect behavior in multiple contexts, including the reduction of hypothetical bias in non-market valuation [ 33 – 35 ], improving coordination in a strategic game with cheap talk [ 36 ] and increasing compliance in tax evasion games [ 37 ]. Both [ 38 ] and [ 39 ] directly test the effect of an oath on truth-telling in a lab setting with European university students, and show that the oath significantly reduced lying in the lab. We provide evidence on the effectiveness of a freely signed truth-telling oath in the field by assigning half the workers to an Oath treatment in which, before the coin-flipping task, they are offered the possibility to take a voluntary solemn oath to honesty.…”

Are Proselfs More Deceptive and Hypocritical? Social Image Concerns in Appearing Fair

“…We did not find that self-deception motivated moral hypocrisy was changed with social context and evaluation from others, supporting the assumption that self-deception serves social advancement on the basis of self-enhancement rather than social image concerns in situations ( Von Hippel and Trivers, 2011 ). Thus enhancing self-enhancement such as endorsing self-affirmation in behaviors or strengthening the power of moral standards by explicitly emphasizing them such as oath taking ( Jacquemet et al, 2018 ), might be more useful in increasing or decreasing self-deception.…”

Public Statements of Good Conduct Promote Pro-Social Behavior

“…In economic experiments, Jacquemet and colleagues introduced a voluntary solemn oath to tell the truth during experiments. Following the oath, participants were more likely to reveal their true preferences (Jacquemet et al, 2013), less likely to lie (Jacquemet et al, 2018) and coordination improved through the more truthful communication (Jacquemet et al, 2017). Also Mazar et al (2008) examined the behavioral impact of codes of good conduct.…”