Deceptive Communication: Direct Lies vs. Ignorance, Partial-Truth and Silence

Despoina Alempaki, Valeria Burdea and Daniel Read
Additional contact information
Despoina Alempaki: Warwick Business School
Daniel Read: Warwick Business School

No 444, Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series from CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition

Abstract: In cases of conflict of interest, people can lie directly or evade the truth. We analyse this situation theoretically and test the key behavioural predictions in a novel sender-receiver game. We find senders prefer to deceive through evasion rather than direct lying, more so when evasion is a partial-truth. This is because they do not want to deceive others nor be seen as deceptive. Receivers are sensitive to the deceptive language and more likely to act in senders’ favour when these lie directly. Our findings suggest dishonesty is more prevalent and costlier than previous best estimates focusing on direct lies.

JEL-codes: C91 D82 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-11-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp and nep-gth
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Related works:
Working Paper: Deceptive Communication: Direct Lies vs. Ignorance, Partial-Truth and Silence (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rco:dpaper:444

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