Unveiling Lies in Disguise: A Test of Lying Aversion Theories

Abstract

We provide an experimental test to distinguish two prominent theories of lying aver- sion: perceived cheating aversion (Dufwenberg & Dufwenberg 2018) and reputation for honesty (Gneezy et al. 2018, Khalmetski & Sliwka 2019). We use a novel belief-elicitation method, which allows us to estimate the subjects’ strategies, i.e. probability of reporting y ∈ {1,··· ,6} conditional on die roll x ∈ {1,··· ,6}. We also compare lying behav- ior across various non-linear payoff schemes. Our results support no-downward-lies and uniform-cheating properties proposed by Dufwenberg & Dufwenberg (2018). We find par- tial support for an implication of reputation for honesty; people use maximal lies more (less) frequently under a convex (concave) payoff scheme.

Keywords: Perceived cheating aversion, lying, convexity of payoffs, die-roll paradigm, cheating game