 It's not a lie if you believe the norm does not apply: Conditional norm-following and belief distortionCristina Bicchieri, Eugen Dimant and Silvia Sonderegger Games and Economic Behavior, 2023, vol. 138, issue C, 321-354 Abstract: We investigate self-serving belief distortion about dominant norms of honesty. Consider an environment where the subject can earn a monetary reward by lying. In contrast to the existing literature on motivated beliefs, we do not focus on distortion in one dimension alone, but instead consider beliefs in two dimensions: empirical (what other people do) and normative (what other people approve of). Our experimental findings are consistent with the predictions of a dual-self model in which conditional norm-followers strategically distort their beliefs to justify self-serving behavior. We argue that the asymmetry between what we infer from empirical as opposed to normative information is a key ingredient of belief distortion in our context: widespread honest behavior is a strong indicator of disapproval of lying (and thus that a norm of honesty is followed), but the opposite does not hold. Taken together, we show why, when, and which norm-relevant beliefs are strategically distorted. Keywords: Lying; Social norms; Strategic beliefs; Uncertainty (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:138:y:2023:i:c:p:321-354 DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2023.01.005 Access Statistics for this article Games and Economic Behavior is currently edited by E. Kalai More articles in Games and Economic Behavior from Elsevier |
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