Why do people tell the truth? Experimental evidence for pure lie aversion
Entity
UAM. Departamento de Análisis Económico, Teoría Económica e Historia EconómicaPublisher
SpringerDate
2012-05-19Citation
10.1007/s10683-012-9324-X
Experimental Economics 3.16 (2012): 233-247
ISSN
1386-4157DOI
10.1007/s10683-012-9324-XFunded by
Financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Education through the research project ECO2008-00510Project
Ministerio de Educación. ECO2008-00510; Ministerio de Educación. ECO2008-00510Editor's Version
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10683-012-9324-xSubjects
Communication; Honesty; Guilt aversion; Lie aversion; Norms; Economía; SociologíaRights
© Economic Science Association 2012Abstract
A recent experimental literature shows that truth-telling is not always motivated
by pecuniary motives, and several alternative motivations have been proposed.
However, their relative importance in any given context is still not totally clear. This
paper investigates the relevance of pure lie aversion, that is, a dislike for lies independent
of their consequences. We propose a very simple design where other motives
considered in the literature predict zero truth-telling, whereas pure lie aversion predicts
a non-zero rate. Thus we interpret the finding that more than a third of the
subjects tell the truth as evidence for pure lie aversion. Our design also prevents
confounds with another motivation (a desire to act as others expect us to act) not frequently
considered but consistent with much existing evidence. We also observe that
subjects who tell the truth are more likely to believe that others will tell the truth as
well.
Files in this item
Google Scholar:López Pérez, Raúl
-
Spiegelman, Eli
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Aversion to norm-breaking: a model
López Pérez, Raúl
2008 -
Older people’s personal strengths during the first wave of the covid-19 pandemic
Pérez-Rojo, Gema; López, Javier; Noriega, Cristina; Martínez-Huertas, José Ángel; Velasco, Cristina; Carretero, Isabel; López-Frutos, Patricia; Galarraga, Leyre; Pillemer, Karl
2021-03-03