Lying and team incentives

Julian Conrads, Bernd Irlenbusch, Rainer Rilke and Gari Walkowitz

Journal of Economic Psychology, 2013, vol. 34, issue C, 1-7

Abstract: We investigate the influence of two popular compensation schemes on subjects’ inclination to lie by adapting an experimental setup of Fischbacher and Heusi (2008). Lying turns out to be more pronounced under team incentives than under individual piece-rates, which highlights a fairly neglected feature of compensation schemes. Moreover, when disentangling different motives of the more pronounced unethical conduct under team incentives, we find that subjects tend to lie more under team incentives because they can diffuse their responsibility, i.e., their deceptive acts cannot unambiguously be attributed to them individually. Our findings are robust even when controlling for individual difference variables. In both compensation schemes subjects who are younger, male, high on Extraversion, and high on Neuroticism tend to lie more.

Keywords: Compensation schemes; Lying; Team; Individual differences; Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 C92 M52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (128)

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Working Paper: Lying and Team Incentives (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:34:y:2013:i:c:p:1-7

DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2012.10.011

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