White Lies

Abstract

I n this paper we distinguish between two types of white lies: those that help others at the expense of the person telling the lie, which we term altruistic white lies, and those that help both others and the liar, which we term Pareto white lies. We find that a large fraction of participants are reluctant to tell even a Pareto white lie, demonstrating a pure lie aversion independent of any social preferences for outcomes. In contrast, a nonnegligible fraction of participants are willing to tell an altruistic white lie that hurts them a bit but significantly helps others. Comparing white lies to those where lying increases the liar's payoff at the expense of another reveals important insights into the interaction of incentives, lying aversion, and preferences for payoff distributions. Finally, in line with previous findings, women are less likely to lie when it is costly to the other side. Interestingly though, we find that women are more likely to tell an altruistic lie.

Why do people tell the truth? Experimental evidence for pure lie aversion

“…It is most closely related to Peeters et al (2007), Fischbacher and Heusi (2008), Erat and Gneezy (2012), and Sánchez-Pagés and Vorsatz (2009), which provide evidence consistent with the existence of lie-averse agents, controlling for several potential confounds. We offer additional evidence in this line and complement this literature with a design that can discriminate between two forms of lie aversion, 3 controlling moreover for the effect of altruism, social distance, social identity, and guilt aversion on truth-telling.…”

“…For instance, subjects who lied in our study were significantly more likely to believe that others would lie as well. This suggests a need to enrich the assumptions surrounding the theory of lie aversion (as suggested in Bicchieri 2005;López-Pérez 2012, or Erat andGneezy 2012).…”

Aproximaciones Psicosociales a la Corrupción: Una Revisión Teórica

“…Pero, así mismo, las justificaciones posteriores se dirigen a compensar las conductas poco éticas y modificar la disonancia cognitiva. Algunas de las justificaciones previas a la violación de un principio ético son (a) la ambigüedad, que se produce cuando las personas perciben las normas o reglas de una situación como poco claras (Schweitzer & Hsee, 2002); (b) el altruismo, cuando las personas perciben que tal violación se justifica por el beneficio personal y ajeno que acarrean las consecuencias de sus actos (Erat & Gneezy, 2012); (c) la licencia moral, cuando las personas se creen autorizadas moralmente a comportarse de manera corrupta, debido al historial personal de acciones éticas sostenidas en el tiempo (Mazar & Zhong, 2010).…”

Complicity without connection or communication

“…Motivated by the literature on altruistic white lies (Erat and Gneezy, 2011;Rosaz and Villeval, 2011), we assume that Player A may derive utility from securing her co-player a higher monetary payoff. We assume that ( ) is strictly monotonically increasing in the coplayer's monetary payoff.…”