Lying for Image
The extensive economics literature on lying has focused nearly exclusively on studying experimental settings where individuals can lie for financial rewards. However, in everyday interactions, lying to enhance one’s social- and self-image is ubiquitous and perhaps even more common than lying to gain a financial advantage. In this paper, we introduce three laboratory and online experiments in which individuals can lie about their physical strength, their preferences over everyday items (e.g., color, season, or food), or their favorite American President. We use these experiments to examine how the desire to achieve a desirable social- and self-image, or avoid an undesirable image, affect lying behavior. Our results reveal that such concerns shape the decision to lie: they increase lying rates even in absence of financial incentives to lie and they increase truth-telling rates when lying would be financially beneficial but threatening to one’s image. Our work introduces new paradigms for studying lying behavior and suggests that image concerns could be leveraged when designing interventions to deter dishonesty
Year of publication: |
2023
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Authors: | Barron, Kai ; Kajackaite, Agne ; Saccardo, Silvia |
Publisher: |
[S.l.] : SSRN |
Saved in:
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