Size Matters - When it Comes to Lies

Gerald Eisenkopf, Ruslan Gurtoviy () and Verena Utikal ()
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Ruslan Gurtoviy: Department of Business Administration, University of Trier, Germany

No 2011-14, Working Paper Series of the Department of Economics, University of Konstanz from Department of Economics, University of Konstanz

Abstract: A small lie appears trivial but it obviously violates moral commandments. We analyze whether the preference for others’ truth telling is absolute or depends on the size of a lie. In a laboratory experiment we compare punishment for different sizes of lies controlling for the resulting economic harm. We find that people are sensitive to the size of a lie and that this behavioural pattern is driven by honest people. People who lie themselves punish softly in any context.

Keywords: Lying; norm violation; punishment; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D03 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2011-05-17
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cwa, nep-evo, nep-exp and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Size matters - when it comes to lies (2011)
Working Paper: Size matters - when it comes to lies (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:knz:dpteco:1114

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