American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
Preferences for Truthfulness: Heterogeneity among and within Individuals
American Economic Review
vol. 103,
no. 1, February 2013
(pp. 532–48)
Abstract
We conduct an experiment assessing the extent to which people trade off the economic costs of truthfulness against the intrinsic costs of lying. The results allow us to reject a type-based model. People's preferences for truthfulness do not identify them as only either "economic types" (who care only about consequences) or "ethical types" (who care only about process). Instead, we find that preferences for truthfulness are heterogeneous among individuals. Moreover, when examining possible sources of intrinsic costs of lying and their interplay with economic costs of truthfulness, we find that preferences for truthfulness are also heterogeneous within individuals.Citation
Gibson, Rajna, Carmen Tanner, and Alexander F. Wagner. 2013. "Preferences for Truthfulness: Heterogeneity among and within Individuals." American Economic Review, 103 (1): 532–48. DOI: 10.1257/aer.103.1.532Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- A13 Relation of Economics to Social Values
- C91 Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Individual
- D12 Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
- Z13 Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Social and Economic Stratification