Malleability of Preferences for Honesty

Abeler, Johannes; Falk, Armin and Kosse, Fabian (15. November 2021): Malleability of Preferences for Honesty. Collaborative Research Center Transregio 190, Discussion Paper No. 296

Abstract

Reporting private information is a key part of economic decision making. A recent litera-ture has found that many people have a preference for honest reporting, contrary to usualeconomic assumptions. In this paper, we investigate whether preferences for honesty aremalleable and what determines them. We experimentally measure preferences for honestyin a sample of children. As our main result, we provide causal evidence on the effect of thesocial environment by randomly enrolling children in a year-long mentoring programme.We find that, about four years after the end of the programme, mentored children aresignificantly more honest.

• Item Type: Paper
• Keywords: honesty, lying, truth-telling, formation of preferences, experiments with children
• Faculties: Economics > Collaborative Research Center Transregio "Rationality and Competition"
• Subjects: 300 Social sciences > 330 Economics
• JEL Classification: C90, D90, D64, D82, H26, J13
• Language: English