Truth Telling Under Oath

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Jacguemet, Nicolas; Luchini, Stephane; Rosaz, Julie; Shogren, Jason F.
• 署名单位: Paris School of Economics; Aix-Marseille Universite; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Universite de Montpellier; INRAE; Institut Agro; Montpellier SupAgro; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); University of Wyoming
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2017.2892
• 发表日期: 2019
• 页码: 426-438
• 关键词: Deception; lies; truth-telling oath; laboratory experiment

摘要

Oath taking for senior executives has been promoted as a means to enhance honesty within and toward organizations. Herein we explore whether people who voluntarily sign a solemn truth-telling oath are more committed to sincere behavior when offered the chance to lie. We design an experiment to test how the oath affects truth telling in two contexts: a neutral context replicating the typical experiment in the literature, and a loaded context in which we remind subjects that a lie is a lie. We consider four payoff configurations, with differential monetary incentives to lie, implemented as within-subjects treatment variables. The results are reinforced by robustness investigations in which each subject made only one lying decision. Our results show that the oath reduces lying, especially in the loaded environment-falsehoods are reduced by 50%. The oath, however, has a weaker effect on lying in the neutral environment. The oath did affect decision times in all instances: the average person takes significantly more time deciding whether to lie under oath.