When Do We Lie? 2012

"When Do We Lie? 2012" reports from an experiment studying how the aversion to lying is affected by non-economic dimensions of the choice situation. Specifically the study investigates whether people are more or less likely to lie when the content of the lie is personal, when they base decisions on intuition, and when they are in a market context. In addition, the study focused on how aversion to lying depends on personal characteristics, including age, gender, cognitive ability, personality and social preferences. The main finding is that non-economic aspects of the choice situation are crucial in understanding aversion to lying. In particular, people seem to be less likely to lie when the content of the message is personal. There are also found to be large effects from priming the participants to rely on intuition, but, interestingly, in this case the effect only applies to males. Finally, people who are highly motivated by social preferences are more averse to lying, but there is no significant relationship between lying behavior and other personal characteristics. "When Do We Lie? 2012" is generated in the project "Responsibility, Individual Choice and Restributive Policy".