It's Not a Lie If You Believe It: Lying and Belief Distortion Under Norm
It's Not A Lie If You Believe It: Lying and Belief Distortion Under Norm-Uncertainty Cristina Bicchieria,b,c, Eugen Dimanta,c,d aUniversity of Pennsylvania bWharton School of Business cBehavioral Ethics Lab dCeDEx Abstract We explore the relationship between norm-uncertainty and lying. Lies are ubiquitous, and people often lie for their own benefit or for the benefit of others. Research in environments in which social norms are clearly defined and communicated finds that social norms influ- ence personal decisions, even when they are not in our own self-interest. We deviate from this approach and study lying under norm uncertainty with scope for opportunistic inter- pretation of the norm. We introduce variation along three dimensions: salience of different types of norm-uncertainty (normative/empirical), the beneficiary of the lie (self/other), and ex-ante knowledge about the opportunity to tell a lie in order to tease out potential belief-distortion mechanisms. We also find compelling evidence that individuals engage in self-serving belief distortion to increase lying overall. However, we observe this only when uncertainty about what others do (empirical uncertainty), but not when uncertainty about what others approve of (normative uncertainty) is made salient. We also observe condi- tional liars, but only when the lie is self-serving rather than to the benefit of a third party. We discuss policy implications to improve the effectiveness of norm-based interventions. Keywords: Cheating, Experiment, Lying, Social Norms, Uncertainty JEL: C72, C91, D8, D9 ∗This work benefited from discussions with Pierpaolo Battigalli, Valentina Bosetti, Alexander Cappelen, Gary Charness, Christine Exley, Tobias Gesche, Sandy Goldberg, Peter Graham, David Henderson, Agne Kajackaite, Michel Mar´echal, Gloria Origgi, Silvia Sonderegger, Guido Tabellini, Bertil Tungodden, Jo¨elvan der Weele, and Roberto Weber.
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