Preferences for Truthfulness: Heterogeneity among and within Individuals

摘要

In this study, we examined individuals who were exposed to a simple but realistic trade-off: they could tell the truth and suffer economic costs of truthfulness, or they could lie and potentially incur intrinsic costs of lying. In our setting, there was no strategic incentive to tell the truth; the participants had no counterparty, no notion of a repeated game, no legal obligation, and no risk of being punished.