The Truth About Tattoos

Bradley Ruffle

LCERPA Working Papers from Laurier Centre for Economic Research and Policy Analysis

Abstract: Despite their ubiquity, tattoos continue to be associated with dishonesty. Yet, scarce behavioral evidence exists. We test whether the tattooed and non-tattooed differ in their dishonest reporting in two consecutive incentivized experiments. First, subjects toss a coin privately five times and receive payment for each heads reported. After, subjects perform five additional coin tosses with the payment for each heads reported increased tenfold. We find few differences in the reporting behavior between the tattooed and non-tattooed in the number of heads reported in either reporting task or the difference between the two. Strategic dishonesty is limited to a small minority of subjects and to only one additional reported heads in the high-stakes tosses.

Keywords: experimental economics; tattoo; honesty; strategic cheating (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-06-18, Revised 2018-06-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp and nep-knm
Note: LCERPA Working Paper No. 2018-10
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Journal Article: The truth about tattoos (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wlu:lcerpa:0116

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