Blurring the lines: Strategic deception and self-deception in markets

Laura Gruss and Geny Piotti

No 10/13, MPIfG Discussion Paper from Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies

Abstract: Building on the results of a participant observation in a Chinese IT-sector company located in the northern part of China, this paper aims to clarify the nature of deception in markets. Contrary to the position of information economics and game theoretical approaches to trust, the paper argues that deception is not reducible to a question of opportunism or sending signals in order to create trustworthiness. Deception, in fact, may coexist and even be strictly entangled with self-deception, which builds on the conception of an agent whose rationality can fail or whose cognition can be biased. This paper argues that rationality failures and cognitive biases are not driven by psychological mechanisms alone. They have to be related to the social structure in which economic actors operate. In particular, the paper focuses on anticipatory socialization as one source of self-deception and the deception of others. Both types of deception are associated with a gap between aspirations and the available resources necessary for attaining them.

Date: 2010
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hpe
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:mpifgd:1013

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