Time Pressure and Honesty in a Deception Game

Abstract

Previous experiments have found mixed results on whether honesty is intuitive or requires deliberation. Here we add to this literature by building on prior work of Capraro (2017). We report a large study (N=1,389) manipulating time pressure vs time delay in a deception game. We find that, in this setting, people are more honest under time pressure, and that this result is not driven by confounds present in earlier work.

Keywords: honesty, deception, intuition, deliberation, sender-receiver

JEL Classification: C70, C79, C90, C91, C92, D64, D70, D71, H41