Truth-telling under Oath

Nicolas Jacquemet (), Stéphane Luchini (), Julie Rosaz () and Jason Shogren
Additional contact information
Stéphane Luchini: GREQAM - Groupement de Recherche en Économie Quantitative d'Aix-Marseille - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - École Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: A growing experimental literature has explored how monetary incentives affect truth-telling and lying behavior. We extend this literature to consider how to non-monetary incentives–a loaded environment and commitment through a truth-telling oath–affect truth-telling and lying behavior. For a loaded environment, we revise the standard lying experiment by making it explicit and clear to the person that "a lie is a lie". We then combine the lying experiment with a solemn oath procedure, by which subjects commit themselves to tell the truth before entering the laboratory. Both non-monetary incentive devices affect a person's willingness to tell the truth: subjects lie slightly less frequently in the loaded environment, and drastically less after they signed the solemn oath. Interestingly, the loaded environment and oath have distinct effects–the oath changes the incentive to lie only when truthfulness is made meaningful through the loaded environment.

Keywords: Deception; lies; truth-telling oath; experiments; serment à dire la vérité; expérience en laboratoire; Mensonge (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-hpe
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-01224135v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in 2015

Downloads: (external link)
https://shs.hal.science/halshs-01224135v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Truth Telling Under Oath (2019)
Working Paper: Truth Telling Under Oath (2019)
Working Paper: Truth Telling Under Oath (2019)
Working Paper: Truth Telling Under Oath (2019)
Working Paper: Truth-telling under Oath (2018)
Working Paper: Truth-telling under Oath (2018)
Working Paper: Truth-telling under Oath (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-01224135

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().