Vanberg, Christoph
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Abstract
Erat and Gneezy (2012) conduct an experiment to test whether people avoid lying in a situation where doing so would lead to a Pareto improvement. They conclude that many people exhibit such a "pure lie aversion." I argue that the experiment does not provide a reliable test for such an aversion, and that the evidence does not support the authors' conclusion. I conduct two new experiments which are explicitly designed to test for a 'pure' aversion to lying, and find no evidence for the existence of such a motivation. I discuss the implications of the findings for moral behavior and rule following more generally.
| Document type: | Working paper |
|---|---|
| Series Name: | Discussion Paper Series, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics |
| Volume: | 0581 |
| Place of Publication: | Heidelberg |
| Date Deposited: | 10 Feb 2015 14:38 |
| Date: | February 2015 |
| Number of Pages: | 26 |
| Faculties / Institutes: | The Faculty of Economics and Social Studies > Alfred-Weber-Institut for Economics |
| DDC-classification: | 330 Economics |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Lying; Deception; Morality; Ethics; Experiments |
| Series: | Discussion Paper Series / University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics |
