Beliefs and truth-telling: A laboratory experiment

Ronald Peeters, Marc Vorsatz and Markus Walzl

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2015, vol. 113, issue C, 1-12

Abstract: We conduct a laboratory experiment with a constant-sum sender–receiver game and a sequential game of matching pennies with the same payoff structure to investigate the impact of individuals’ first- and second-order beliefs on truth-telling. While first-movers in matching pennies choose an action at random, senders in the sender–receiver game tell the truth more often than they lie. Since second-order beliefs are uncorrelated with actions in both games, excessive truth-telling is unlikely to be driven by guilt aversion or preferences for truth-telling that are based on second-order beliefs; preferences for truth-telling per-se, on the other hand, cannot be rejected.

Keywords: Experiment; Sender–receiver games; Strategic information transmission; Belief elicitation; Guilt aversion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C70 C91 D01 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

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Working Paper: Beliefs and truth-telling: A laboratory experiment (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:113:y:2015:i:c:p:1-12

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2015.02.009

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