The Effect of Observing Multiple Private Information Outcomes on the Inclination to Cheat

Sandro Casal and Antonio Filippin

No 13689, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper investigates experimentally how the inclination to cheat changes when agents report the result of multiple realizations of a (private information) stochastic event rather than a single outcome. Extreme outcomes clearly signal opportunistic behavior with multiple realizations. The consequent reputation concerns dramatically reduce cheating by large amounts. Multiple draws, however, erode the intrinsic cost of lying, inducing a widespread inclination to slightly misreport the outcomes in a plausible manner. These two opposite effects are similar in magnitude, on average, but show an interesting gender differentiation implying that multiple realizations can be effective with males but may backfire with females.

Keywords: moral self-licensing; reputation concerns; cheating (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C81 C91 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2020-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published - published in: Economic Inquiry, 2024, 62 (2), 543 - 562

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp13689.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The effect of observing multiple private information outcomes on the inclination to cheat (2024)
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:iza:izadps:dp13689

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().