Clever Enough to Tell the Truth

Bradley Ruffle and Yossef Tobol ()
Additional contact information
Yossef Tobol: Jerusalem College of Technology (JTC)

No 9860, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We conduct a field experiment on 427 Israeli soldiers who each rolled a six-sided die in private and reported the outcome. For every point reported, the soldier received an additional half-hour early release from the army base on Thursday afternoon. We find that the higher a soldier's military entrance score, the more honest he is on average. We replicate this finding on a sample of 156 civilians paid in cash for their die reports. Furthermore, the civilian experiments reveal that two measures of cognitive ability predict honesty, whereas general self-report honesty questions and a consistency check among them are of no value. We provide a rationale for the relationship between cognitive ability and honesty and discuss its generalizability.

Keywords: high non-monetary stakes; honesty; cognitive ability; soldiers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 M51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2016-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp and nep-neu
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published - published in: Experimental Economics, 2017, 20, 130-155

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Related works:
Journal Article: Clever enough to tell the truth (2017)
Working Paper: Clever enough to tell the truth (2015)
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